Increase our Faith

Gospel: Luke 17: 1-6

In today's Gospel reading the disciples offer a noble and sincere prayer: increase our faith.  Notice the context in which they make this request.  Jesus has encouraged them to forgive others every single time, no matter how many times forgiveness is needed.  This is not an easy thing, and the disciples know that.  They realize they're going to need God's help in order to accomplish this feat, and so do we.  They also realize in this moment that this is the core of being a follower of Jesus: to live a life of mercy.  Everything else is secondary.

We come to this same realization.  We need God's help to be merciful.  We have taken part in backbiting, slander, keeping grudges, reveling in violence, perpetuating and justifying wars, excommunicating and denying sacraments to others, and excluding others from church and society.  We realize we are a long way from what Jesus calls us to be.  We need to increase our faith.  We don't need books on faith or courses on faith or workshops or anything else on the topic.  We need faith, faith to be merciful to others.  

If we see a loss of faith in our world it may be due to the fact that we have misplaced what faith we want increased.  We have made faith about theological propositions, adherence to a particular group, following voting suggestions of clerics - and not at all about what the disciples today request.  Perhaps if we ask for an increase of that faith within us we might see it grow in our world once again.