In today’s Gospel, we hear our Lord say something quite amazing! God Himself, the creator of all, tells us that if we have just a tiny bit of faith, the size of a mustard seed, nothing would be impossible to us! But when we hear out Lord say these words, we might be tempted to question the validity of the claim which He made. We tell ourselves that there are moments in our lives where we do have faith and when we don’t have any doubt in our mind about our destiny with Christ and about God’s real presence in the world, working through everything. So why is it that in those moments of clarity, we are not able to act like a Jedi and move a mountain?
Perhaps an example that might hit closer to home…despite having all of the trust that we can have in God’s love and His providential care for us, why is it that when our spouse, parents, children, or friends are lying sick in a hospital bed with a disease, we don’t have the power to instantly heal whatever is ailing them?
In order to understand the answers to these questions, we have to first understand what this “faith” is that Christ was talking about. There is a common thought that faith is the same as belief.
During the Divine Liturgy, everyone hopefully sings or reads the Creed together, where we begin with the words “I believe”, and then go through a Divinely inspired list of what we know and believe about God and His Church. All of us should be able to say that yes, in my heart of hearts, I believe all of this to be true and 100% accurate. But the Creed by itself, albeit an important symbol of faith, is not the “faith” that our Lord spoke about this morning.
When someone comes to the Church to the first time to a Divine Liturgy or Great Vespers, if I am able to catch them early enough, I always give the same piece of advice to them:
“On your first visits to the Church, forget about the “why”, and just concentrate on “being present.” Don’t think about why people are venerating icons, or let it bother you when you hear the choir sing “Most Holy Theotokos Save us”, or wonder when the guitar and fog machines are going to come out. The answers to those questions are indeed important, but they are not the “one thing that is needed”, in order to understand faith.”
Faith isn’t about concepts, or words, or anything that we can or cannot do. It isn’t about acing a catechumen or understanding everything with perfect clarity. Faith is about first learning to sit and be in the presence of God. It is about trusting in His word with every fiber of our being and relying only on His presence in our life, and this is only the first step. What truly differentiates belief and faith, is that cultivating faith requires labor. It requires work. True Faith is a life of learning and laboring to trust in God Who is beyond belief.
Learning to cultivate faith through hard work is the reason that we are all here. It is the reason why the Church (and yes, sometimes even our priests), encourages and pushes us to do those two things that our Lord said are necessary to Grow in faith: Prayer and fasting. It is the reason you get texts and phone calls from me if you disappear for a few weeks, because it is here, and not “out there” where we learn how to start living.
Coming to services all of the time, entering fasting periods when they are not convenient, and spending time daily in personal prayer, are sometimes bitter pills to swallow for us. There is a beautiful saying by St. Anthony the Great, who once said:
“It is absurd to be grateful to doctors, who give us bitter and unpleasant medicines to cure our bodies, and yet be ungrateful to God for what appears to us to be harsh and difficult...for knowledge of God and faith in Him, is the salvation and perfection of the soul.”
St. Anthony is asking us why we are willing to take bitter medicines from the doctors to make our bodies well, and yet fail so miserably in the sometimes-difficult prescriptions that we receive from God Himself, in order to cure our souls. Fasting during the upcoming Nativity Season is hard. Coming to Church on Saturday Night and Sunday morning can sometimes feel inconvenient. Coming to Liturgy in a few weeks for the next major Feast, the Nativity of the Theotokos, is going to be inconvenient for our secular lives. Daily prayer…taking time out of our busy lives every day especially before and after a hard days work, is a hard pill to swallow.
What is the common theme in all of these things that makes them so difficult? They require effort. Making the Church and Christ a part of our life requires labors and sacrifices. We cannot treat the Church as some kind of sacrament and holy oil dispensary, but rather a place where we come to labor, or as St. Paul says in Corinthians, to become workers in God’s house.
It is that work, all of these God given medications, that it will lead us to a perfect life of Faith and a perfect existence with God. So today, and every day, I urge you all to be regular, and to be vigilant in your prayer life, not only here at the Church for Divine Services, but also at home.
If you have never been assigned a prayer rule, or have never fasted in your Orthodox Christian Life, talk to your priest about a prayer rule to follow. Having a regular prayer life is truly transformative, and for those who stick with it, I can promise you that it will, without a shadow of a doubt, change your life. It will change the way that you look at the world. It will transform you into more loving person and it will bring a clarity to your life that one cannot describe in words.
Our Lord reminds us in the Gospel that this transformative life is right there in front of us, completely within our grasp! Let us go forth and cultivate that mustard seed of faith, learning not only to move mountains, but how to labor in order to change the entire world.