Today is the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time and our refection today is on the attitude of a servant. Today’s gospel reading is quite short, but has two parts on what the attitude the followers of Christ ought to have. You can read it in Luke 17:5-10. As we all know, even in a management organization, it isn’t a person’s intellect that raises his stature, but his attitude towards work. Let’s now read what Jesus wants to teach us in today’s gospel.
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5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. 7 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’?
8 Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”
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As we have been taught, faith is a gift given by God himself. So how come the apostles approached Jesus and asked him “Lord increase our faith?” As we read in today’s gospel, he replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
From what we read, it seems the apostles were given the gift of faith by God, but many of them felt it wasn’t enough, which is why they asked the Lord to increase their faith. Perhaps we don’t realize that while we live on earth, even if God gave all of us faith which is supposedly sufficient for us, there are many stumbling blocks to our faith. Even our work, which drives us to succeed can be a stumbling block to our faith because rather than pray to God, we focus too much on our business or work, it decreases our faith.
What we read in today’s gospel is something we also must do if we think our faith is lacking. There’s nothing wrong in asking God to increase our faith so when we pray to God, our prayer would be heard, because after all, God always hears our prayers. As I read in many books on faith and religion, “We grow in faith as we act in faith. Every gift of God is strengthened by the exercise of it, and this is true of faith.”
Mind you, Jesus’s answer to his apostles to increase their faith was telling them the story of the mustard seed, that if you have faith as small as the mustard seed, it can be uprooted and be planted in the sea and it would obey you. In short, our Lord was telling his apostles that their faith, no matter how they felt it to be small, can do a lot of things for them. Indeed, those who have the smallest of faith can do anything he can because of his faith in God.
The other part of today’s gospel is really addressing the attitude of a faithful servant. Lest we already forgot, we must learn to accept that we are nothing but servants of God to start with. As Catholics, the Pope is the Vicar of Christ. However, his official title is in Latin, “Servus Servorum Deit”, Servant of the Servant of God. If Pope Francis accepts his official role that he is only the servant not directly to God, but to the servant of God, it takes a real act of humility to accept this role.
Of course we expect that the faithful servant would not only do his work in the farm, but assure the master he would prepare his meal, and clean up the table after he is done, before having his own dinner. That we are working for the master in heaven is already a privilege for us that we don’t need to be recognized. This is what humility really means to God.