"You Just Have to Have Faith"

27^th Sunday of Ordinary Time

How many times have you told someone or heard someone tell you, “You just have to have faith!”

They make it sound so simple.

Well, recently my daughter and her family moved back to Ohio from California and it was quite an endeavor.  They had to sell their home, find a new place to live, new job, etc. etc.  Their biggest worry was whether or not they were going to sell their condo in San Diego, but they got lucky and sold it in just a few weeks.  Or so they thought.

    After they were settled in their home in Columbus, they heard there was a problem.  Seems that there was a glitch in the condo association contract.  When Kathleen started to worry, I just told her, “You just have to have faith.”

    Then there was a problem with the inspection and it looked like the deal might fall through.  Again, I told her, “Kath, you just have to have faith.”

    Then after that was settled, the buyer’s realtor wasn’t moving fast enough to set up the closing.  I told Kathleen, “You just have to have faith.”

    Then, this week, after everything was finally set up, she called me and said, “Dad, you are not going to believe this one.  We are all ready to close and I just got another call from my realtor.  Since this was going to be a VA loan, we can’t close because the government has shut down. We don’t know when we are going to get things done now!”

    I thought a minute and then finally replied, “Kath, this might be it.  I don’t think even God can help you now.”

We have all had those moments like Habakkuk did in today’s first reading, those moments when we have called out to God, “Lord, how long must I call for help, but you do not listen?”  How many times have we been at the end of our ropes with one obstacle after another being thrown at us wondering how we would ever overcome them?  And then someone would tell us, “You just have to have faith!”

Did we?  Could we?

Jesus tells us in today’s gospel that we have faith.  But sometimes we look at faith like we do everything else in our earthly life and that it must be judged in both quality and quantity.  But Jesus said if our faith the size of a mustard seed, that is all we will need because our faith, based on trust in Him, will give us everything we will ever need.  It may not give us everything that we want, but when we trust Jesus, we will receive everything we need to achieve eternal life.

How often have we heard someone say, “I stopped believing in God” or “I stopped praying” because they didn’t think their prayers were answered?  They felt God had forsaken them because their prayers were not answered the way they wanted.  They had asked for pain to be taken from them, for a loved one’s life to be spared, or for miracle solutions to their economic problems.  And when they didn’t get what they asked for, they gave up on God saying they no longer had faith because God had abandoned them.

But when we stop believing because we have experienced disappointment, pain or suffering, we are missing a wonderful opportunity to grow closer to God through His gifts of grace.

At a retreat recently, we held a discussion about faith and how it relates to suffering.  Most of the people there had experienced pain and loss very deeply but many spoke about the joys that came from their suffering.  One told of the deepening friendship she developed with a neighbor who helped care for her after a surgery.  Another told of the love that she was able to finally accept after giving into the fact that she was being cared for rather than being the one doing the caring.  Another told of her desire to use her suffering as prayer, asking for God to accept her sacrifice as redemption for a relative who had gone astray.

It is easy to have faith when all goes well.  But faith is more than words.  Faith is more than joining in prayer at Sunday liturgies.  Faith is more than saying, “I believe” when the house is paid off, the refrigerator is full and you haven’t had to go to a doctor in years.

Faith is saying “I believe in you,”  “I trust you,” even when we suffer from illness, from injustice, from despair, from the shutdown of the government.  Faith is finding strength in our weakness and our pain and trusting that God has accepted our suffering as an offering to Him – not for our purposes, but for His. 

Pope Francis said, ““To suffer is to take the difficulty and to carry it with strength, so that the difficulty does not drag us down.”   He added,  we are, ““To suffer with patience and to overcome external and internal oppression with love.”

That is a lot to ask:  To suffer, to be patient, to trust.

Pope Francis has come to us with a message that is not new, but that many have forgotten and that is our church today was founded by Christ as a church of love.  He reminds us of the 2 big commandments and says that while we don’t want to forget the big 10, we cannot forget that we need to be people of compassion, understanding and people of faith.  Pope Francis has shown us through his leadership how we can deepen our faith through our relationships with each other and through our recognition of Christ’s  presence in our lives.  He wants to understand that our faith must be built on trust – trust that even though we suffer, we continue to be supported and at times carried by the one who never stops loving us.

We live in times where it is difficult to have faith.  We have been let down over and over by human beings making human choices that destroy our ability to trust.  But we can’t let our earthly experiences and human failings lead us from the ultimate truth that God loves us so much he will never let us down.  God doesn’t cause us to suffer, but he allows us to suffer so that we can experience His love, grow in our faith and learn to trust Him.

All you have to do is “Just have faith.”   

Trust in Him.   He is waiting for you.