Fear knocked at the door and faith answered. No one was there

My confidence is placed in God who does not need our help for accomplishing his designs. Our single endeavor should be to give ourselves to the work and to be faithful to him, and not to spoil his work by our shortcomings. ~St. Isaac Jogues

(Gospel Text: Mt 17:14-20)

A man came up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said,

"Lord, have pity on my son, who is a lunatic and suffers severely;

often he falls into fire, and often into water.

I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him."

Jesus said in reply,

"O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you?

How long will I endure you?

Bring the boy here to me."

Jesus rebuked him and the demon came out of him,

and from that hour the boy was cured.

Then the disciples approached Jesus in private and said,

"Why could we not drive it out?"

He said to them, "Because of your little faith.

Amen, I say to you, 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."

It’s a familiar story: a neighbor saw a little girl trapped under a car, and amazingly was able to lift the car off her. The mother praised him as “Superman,” but he said he hardly thought about what he was doing. He just responded as fast as he could.

This man had a mountain to move and he moved it! Of course, in his case it wasn’t an issue of faith. It was more an adrenaline-powered response to a crisis. Nonetheless, this story can be a moving analogy to teach us about living by faith.

We tend to think of faith as something that’s in our heads. But there is also a spontaneous, heroic side to faith. Sometimes, our faith will move us to take quick action. We won’t have time to survey the situation or pray for hours to muster up our courage. Sometimes, a situation crops up that demands a swift response—a response that arises more from our hearts than from our brains.

Keep your eyes open today. Most likely, something will happen that will call for an immediate response of faith. Don’t think too much about it, or you may lose the opportunity. Just move forward and follow your gut instinct. And if you end up being wrong, you can take comfort in knowing that at least you tried and God will reward your effort.