The Prayers and Means to Grow In Faith, 32nd Monday (II), November 11, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Martin of Tours
November 11, 2024
Ti 1:1-9, Ps 24, Lk 17:1-6

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• “Increase our faith.” Since faith is a gift, and since we as Christians try to walk by faith and not by sight, these words should always be on a Christian’s lips as a prayerful aspiration. God loves us so much that he will generally provide plenty of opportunities for us to need to cry out for increased faith. But Jesus today likewise reminds us that even a little faith is able to do the impossible, like transplanting mulberry trees into the sea. The apostles were provoked to ask Jesus for that gift because of his words about scandal and then forgiveness, and we can ponder them as well as apply this petition to the life of the influential saint the Church celebrates today.
• Jesus begins today’s Gospel passage talking about scandal and the damage it causes for others’ growth in faith. “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur,” the Lord says, “but woe to the one through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.” Jesus is clearly describing the punishment scandalous behavior warrants. At the same time that he mentions a millstone, however, he wants to help unshackle someone from that millstone through mercy. One of the most important parts of our life of faith, is our recognition that just as God never tires of forgiving us, we should never tire of asking him for forgiveness and of sharing a similar mercy with others. This is hard. It requires great humility to ask for forgiveness. It requires greater humility to give it. Jesus is calling us not merely to give people a second chance, but, literalistically, an eighth chance. And in another part of the Gospel he says, depending upon the translation, that we need to give a 78th chance or a 491st chance. Since the number 7 in Hebrew carries with it a sense of infinity, Jesus is saying that, like our faith has no upper limit, neither should our mercy. In order to be capable of doing this, we need his help, we need the strength that comes from faith. That’s why we humbly beg, “Increase our faith!”
• In the first reading, St. Paul describes the qualities for the discernment of priests and bishops precisely so that they won’t cause scandal but rather bring people to imitate God. He says that they need to be blameless, which is the opposite of scandalous; married only once, meaning that they can live chastely and not be men who had to marry after the death of a first wife, because then probably they wouldn’t be able to live the continent chastity required; with believing children who are not accused of licentiousness or rebellious, because if a father can’t raise his own children in the faith, how can he raise others’ children in the faith?; not arrogant, because he must be a humble servant like Christ; not irritable, because he must love even those who annoy him; not a drunkard because he must be sober and alert; not aggressive, but meek; not greedy for sordid gain, but poor in spirit because the kingdom he seeks is the Lord’s; hospitable because he sees Christ in the stranger saying, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me”; a lover of goodness, so that his virtue is not just in seemingly virtuous deeds but comes from a good fruit-producing tree; temperate since he must have self-mastery; just, since he should be right with God and fair with others; self-controlled since he must be disciplined to be a disciple and help form other disciples; holding fast to the true message as taught so that by his life he can exhort the faithful and refute opponents; and in short, holy, dwelling in and reflecting the holiness of God.
• When a priest or a bishop or a Christian does not live with these traits, it obviously does impact people’s faith. They have high expectations of those who have been given much in the Lord’s service. They expect us to behave like Jesus, to speak like him, to love like him, to be merciful like him. People can be easily scandalized when fellow priests, or bishops, live in a spiritually worldly way, make decisions as serpents without any glimpse of the purity of doves,  speak more like sailors than they do the Lord. Today Jesus is calling priests, bishops and indeed everyone to a higher standard, reminding us that by faith in him, by his power, we can live up to that standard, so that we might draw people to him by our behavior rather than drive them away.
• Today we celebrate the feast of a saint whose faith increased enormously and whose eventually holy life inspired many others to seek to grow in faith as well. St. Martin of Tours was the son of a pagan army officer and was brought into the Roman army as a teenager. Eventually he was stationed to Amiens in the north of France, which is where his celebrated conversion took place. He was on patrol duty one frigid night when he saw a shivering, lightly clad man begging for alms near the city gate. Martin was shocked that no one was giving this man assistance. He had no money on him; all he had was his horse, his armor and his own clothes. But he dismounted, took out his Roman lance, and cut his military cappa in two, covering the beggar with half and wearing the other half himself. Later that night, Jesus appeared to him in a dream dressed in the half of the cape given to the beggar and said, “Martin, the unbaptized Roman soldier, has clad me.” That taught Martin that whenever he cared for, whenever he served, anyone else, he was caring for Christ himself. He was a catechumen at this point but immediately sought and received baptism. Knowing that he could not fully live the Gospel and live by the principles of the Roman army at the time, he soon after he left the army, put himself under the charge of St. Hilary of Poitiers and began a life of prayer as a hermit, which is how he lived for the next 12 years. In 371, the Christians of Tours demanded him to be ordained their bishop. And there, over the next 25 years, his faith grew, he sought to bring to faith and to increase the faith of all the people in the region. He taught them how to pray. He fought against the paganism of the terrority and against heresies in Christianity of the faith, seeking to help people build their whole lives on the true faith. He traveled all throughout his enormous diocese by foot, on a donkey or by boat. Even when it was clear that his ascetical life, age and hard work were catching up with him, he kept going on. There was a controversy in the parish of Candes because of disputes among priests and he wanted to visit to help remove the sin from their midst. Those around him tried to prevent his going, saying he would likely die on the way. He turned to the Lord and said, “Lord, if your people still need me, I am ready for the task. Your will be done.” He went and reconciled the priests and people. But he informed them that he was about to die. As he lay on his death bed, they wanted to turn him around to prevent bedsores, but he said, “Allow me to look to heaven rather than at earth, so that my spirit may set on the right course when the time comes for me to go on my journey to the Lord.” He was seeking to grow in faith until the end and trying to give an example to others about how to keep their eyes on heaven. Especially on this Veteran’s Day, he shows us that the best soldiers and best Christians are soldiers of Christ. We ask his intercession that the Lord may increase our faith to be more and more like St. Martin’s!
• The means by which the Lord most seeks to augment our faith each day happens at Mass. He strengthens our faith by what he teaches us in the Liturgy of the Word. He strengthens us even more by entering into us in Holy Communion. We know that if we receive a particle of the host the size of a mustard seed, we’re receiving within Him who can strengthen us to do all things. As we consume his precious blood given for the remission of sins, this is the way by which we’re able to go out to forgive others their sins. This is the means by which we are strengthened never to give scandal but instead become “signs of contradiction,” just like Jesus, capable of bringing people to conversion, to the forgiveness he wants to give, and to holiness. On this day after the Eucharistic Procession here on the Columbia campus, and during our ongoing Eucharistic Revival in the Church in the United States, it’s important for us to focus on growing in faith each time we come to daily Mass. In St. Thomas Aquinas’ beautiful Eucharistic hymns, he regularly has us ask the Lord to increase our faith as we prepare to meet him in the Eucharist: praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui (“may faith offer a supplement to the defect of the senses”), fac me tibi semper magis credere (“make me always believe in you more”), and ad firmandum cor sincerum sola fides sufficit (“only faith suffices to strengthen a sincere heart”). Today at Mass, we reiterate those prayers so that we might live by Eucharistic faith all our days and, by keeping our face set on the right course who is Christ, come one day, with St. Martin, to behold Jesus face-to-face forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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