This homily was given by Abbot Matthew at a Mass for the School on Sunday, October 2, 2022 (27th Sunday in Ordinary Time).
 

Abbot Matthew Stark at Conventual Mass of St. Francis of Assisi

The apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith, and he is often criticizing them for lack of faith. Here he says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea!’ and it would obey you.” So, he seems to be saying to them, “You don’t have any faith at all to be increased.” And that doesn’t sound like a very encouraging thing to say to these men, followers of his, who have been with him and who have watched him perform miracles and preach, and multiply loaves and fish, and so forth. So why is he taking that attitude, that critical attitude, in which he seems to criticize their lack of faith, when they are asking him to increase that faith? It is a difficult thing for me to answer, but the answer I come up with is that they have seen a lot of things that he did that should give them faith, but what is lacking is that their faith is not been tested. That would happen. Their faith will be tested severely when he is crucified and killed on the cross. And they will all, except John the Apostle, fail that test. They will all not live by faith but will run and hide, because they are scared, which presumably would not be the case if they were truly faithful. So it is with us. We may believe, because we have been taught, by our parents and teachers and what not, but our faith will have to be tested if it’s going to be genuine.

Padre Pio

One of the great saints of the last century, Padre Pio, whose feast we celebrated the other day, Pio of Pietrelcina, when he was a young priest, bore the stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his hands and his feet and his side. So, he had evidence in his own body of the sufferings of Christ. When he was a young man, before that happened, writing to his Spiritual Director, he said, “My dear father, how hard it is to believe. May the Lord help me and not allow me to cast a shadow of doubt on what He has been pleased to reveal to us.“ He is saying that he does not want to doubt the teaching of the faith, the summary of which we will recite in a few moments in the Nicene Creed - “I believe in one God, etc.“ The other aspect of faith is trust in God. Trust that He is working His work. Padre Pio said again, writing to another priest, “Dear father, when will the sun shine in the heavens of my soul?” In other words, he was in darkness. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t see his spiritual life developing or growing. He was in darkness. “Alas, I see myself astray (that is, wandering) through the deep dark night through which I am passing. Praise be to God, who never abandons anyone who hopes and places his trust in Him.”

Mother Teresa, another great saint - maybe the greatest, the two of them, are the greatest sense of the 20th century, Pio and Teresa - she spent most of her life not in a comfortable, happy-go-lucky faith, but in severe darkness and lack of understanding of what God was doing. Though, it was obvious to everybody else that He was working great things through her.

Mother Teresa

Another woman of great faith who was severely tested in many areas of life was the novelist and short story writer Flannery O’Connor, who is recognized by the majority of critics and people as being an outstanding writer. You may have read some of her stories yourselves. Others collected her letters on her religious belief, her Catholicism, and they published them in The Habit of Being. Here is something she wrote to a friend of hers, a woman who was leaving the church, who had lost her faith. She said, “I don’t know anything that could grieve us here (that is her mother and herself) like this news. I know that what you do you do because you think it is right. And I don’t think any less of you outside the church than in it. But what is painful is the realization that this means a narrowing of life for you, and a lessening of the desire for life. Faith is a gift. But the will has a great deal to do with it.” That’s an important sentence. “Faith is a gift, but the will has a great deal to do with it. The loss of it (the loss of faith) is basically a failure of appetite, assisted by sterile intellect. Some people, when they lose their faith in Christ, substitute a swollen faith in themselves. I think you are too honest for that. You never had much faith in yourself in the first place, and that now you don’t believe in Christ you will believe even less in yourself, which itself is regrettable. But let me tell you this: Faith comes and goes.

(And that is true too!) Sometimes faith in you feels strong, and sometimes it doesn’t. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will. Leaving the Church is not the solution. But since you think it is, all I can suggest to you, as your one-time friend and sponsor, is that if you find in yourself the least return of a desire for faith, go back to the church with a light heart and without the conscience raking to which you are probably subject.” And then she says this sentence, which I am not quite sure I get: “Subtlety is the curse of man. It is not found in God.” God is not subtle. I don’t know, but that’s what she thought. And one more quotation: “I didn’t mean to imply that you felt any guilt over leaving in the Church.” (This is from a letter in reply to another letter the person had written) “I presumed that you had felt what you would not have felt. I think your idea of why you left it ingenious. I am glad the Church has given you the ability to look at yourself and like yourself as you are. The natural comes before the supernatural. That is perhaps the first step towards finding the Church again. Then you will wonder why it was necessary to look at yourself or like or dislike yourself at all. You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.” That’s a very interesting statement. “You will have found Christ, you will have found God, when you are more interested in other people’s sufferings than in your own.”

Flannery O’Connor

The way to increase your faith is to pray. If you give up praying, you will lose your faith. If you pray consciously and carefully sincerely intelligently your faith will probably be maintained.