Nothing will be impossible for you – Mt 17:14-20
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength. (Dt 6:4-5)
This is the daily prayer of an Israelite. It is at the same time "the first and foremost commandment". You will love! Not just acknowledge that God existed. Faith is love. If faith isn't love, faith is sick.
In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus accuses his contemporaries, and among others also his disciples: “O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you? (cf. Mt 17:17) Especially it's necessary to say so today, when faith comes down practically to accepting a religious view that recognizes the existence of God. In fact, God should be glad that people still recognize Him and going to church. However, His demands concerning people are being questioned as an attack on freedom. This is one extreme in the understanding of faith. Another wants to see God as a refuge of traditional values and a vision of the world. In this approach, faith is the legitimacy of decent life in a crazy world. In this situation God is treated as insurance and comfort for man.
In both cases, however, there is no love. God as a threat to freedom or as a guarantor of our world, is someone outside, He is the Absolute, but He is not a loving Father, someone close, loved. In both cases, the thought focuses on caring for ourselves, on recognizing our worth and our freedom. It is this focusing on oneself that is the main obstacle on the way to meeting with God and also with other people. True faith begins with recognizing in God the One Who loves us and He wants us to love Him. Love is the correct remedy for a lack of faith.
The Lord Jesus, when asked about the first commandment, gave this formula of Israel's prayer, but at the same time He completed that commandment with the commandment to love our neighbor. It is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor. Faith in God through love with all our heart and all our soul is shown in our attitude towards other people. If we have no love for them, it means that we are not really believers in the living God yet. There is no regard for persons in this matter. Nobody is exempt from this law.
The Gospel according to Matthew also presents us another important issue: the authenticity of our faith. The question of the authenticity of faith is a specific answer of God to people's accusations regarding the injustice prevailing in the world. The Lord Jesus reproaches his disciples for their lack of faith. “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (cf. Mt 17:20)
Asking hard questions about our faith is not only an okay thing to do, it’s crucial to our Christian growth. Faith for us is still more of a pious wish than a firm commitment. If we recognize that Jesus is Lord, then in Him and through Him everything is possible and it has a very concrete dimension in life.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george