How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord. Then the LORD answered me and said: Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.
Responsorial PSALM Psalms 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
R. (8) If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD; let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us joyfully sing psalms to him. R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the LORD who made us. For he is our God, and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides. R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice: “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the desert, Where your fathers tempted me; they tested me though they had seen my works.” R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
2nd Reading – 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14 (S. Paul)
Beloved: I remind you, to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God. Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us.
Special Healing Prayers to pray for sick family members, friends and loved ones Healing Prayer
Alleluia – (1 Peter 1:25) R. Alleluia, alleluia. The word of the Lord remains forever. This is the word that has been proclaimed to you. R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel – Luke 17:5-10 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. “Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'”
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER It seems that we can all make this our invocation. Let us too, like the Apostles, say to the Lord: “Increase our faith!”. And how does the Lord answer us? He responds: “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine tree, ‘Be rooted up, and be planted in the sea’, and it would obey you”. A mustard seed is tiny, yet Jesus says that faith this size, small but true and sincere, suffices to achieve what is humanly impossible, unthinkable. And it is true! We all know people who are simple, humble, but whose faith is so strong it can move mountains! Let us think, for example, of some mothers and fathers who face very difficult situations; or of some sick, and even gravely ill, people who transmit serenity to those who come to visit them. And how do we draw from this strength? We draw it from God in prayer. Prayer is the breath of faith: in a relationship of trust, in a relationship of love, dialogue cannot be left out, and prayer is the dialogue of the soul with God. (Angelus, 6 October 2013)
FAUSTI - The whole journey to Jerusalem contains a Catechism that develops the requests of the Our Father: "Your Name be sanctified" (chap. 11) "Thy Kingdom come" (cc.12/13) "Give us the bread" (c 14) "Forgive us" (c.15) "As we forgive" (c 16) "Let us not yield, let us not lose faith" (c.17). Luke does not contain the question "Your Will be done". Jesus is the only one to accomplish it (c 22, 42), satisfying all the other requests, even in our name. This part, which begins from the Apostles' request for an increase of faith and culminates in enlightenment (18:43), shows the faith as the possibility of the impossible, love and gratuitousness, a path of purification, which makes us know how and when the Kingdom comes, lives of trust and humility, makes us children, capable to decide for the Son who goes to Jerusalem to give His life and makes us come to the light as new men. The Apostles are the disciples who, having learned from the Teacher, receive His same commission: they are sent to carry the Lord's Mercy beyond the circle of the community, to the ends of the earth. The Apostles feel inadequate for their task because they have little faith. Faith is the personal experience of the Father's Mercy, the origin of the mission to the brothers and sisters. It must be asked as the daily bread and forgiveness. After prayer: "Teach us to pray" (11:1), this is the typical prayer of the believer, especially of the Apostle: "Increase our faith!". With it everything is obtained. Everything is possible for those who believe, because nothing is impossible for God (1:37). The Lord explains that faith is like a small seed, but with vital force and such as to move a tree into the sea. For it, St. Paul says: "I can do everything in Him who gives me strength" (Phil 4:13), because my powerlessness is filled with the very power of God. To believe is to stop trusting in oneself and to let it may be He who acts. That is why "when I am weak, it is then that I am strong" (St. Paul 2 Cor 12:10). We now proceed from the personal faith of the Apostle to his apostolic work of proclaiming to others. He is compared to the servant, or rather, to the slave, because he does not belong to himself. This slavery of his is the highest realization of the freedom to love: it makes him like his Lord, entirely of the Father and of his brothers and sisters. Just as the slave belongs to his master who enslaves him, so does the Apostle belongs to his Lord Who gives him the freedom to be like Him, his collaborator, associated with His ministry. This slavery for love is total liberation from selfishness: "You, in fact, brethren, are called to freedom" and this does not consist in living according to selfishness, but in being, through charity, slaves to one another. The two typical actions of the Apostle are: the proclamation (sower) and the care of the brothers (shepherd). Whoever "ploughs or pastures" does it not for of a disgraceful profit, but because he is driven by the love of his Lord , dead for all. For Paul, the highest reward is to preach the Gospel freely. The Apostle is associated to the ministry of Grace and Mercy of his Lord for the world. The origin of his service is faith, as the personal experience of the One who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal 2:20). For this reason it is not in the logic of giving and having, but in that of free gift. The love he has experienced makes him free to serve as his Lord.
HOMILY OF BENEDICT XVI ...Every liturgical assembly is a place of God's presence. Gathered together for the Holy Eucharist, disciples of the Lord are immersed in Christ's redeeming sacrifice, they proclaim that he is Risen, is alive and is the Giver of life, and witness that his Presence is grace, strength and joy. Let us open our hearts to his Word and welcome the gift of his presence! All the texts of this Sunday's Liturgy speak to us of faith, which is the foundation of the whole of Christian life. Jesus taught his disciples to grow in faith, to believe and to entrust themselves increasingly to him, in order to build their own lives on the rock. For this reason they asked him "increase our faith!" (Lk 17: 5). What they asked the Lord for is beautiful, it is the fundamental request: disciples do not ask for material gifts, they do not ask for privileges but for the grace of faith, which guides and illumines the whole of life; they ask for the grace to recognize God and to be in a close relationship with him, receiving from him all his gifts, even those of courage, love and hope.
Jesus, without directly answering their prayer, has recourse to a paradoxical image to express the incredible vitality of faith. Just as a lever raises something far heavier than its own weight, so faith, even a crumb of faith, can do unthinkable, extraordinary things, such as uproot a great tree and plant it in the sea (ibid.). Faith trusting in Christ, welcoming him, letting him transform us, following him to the very end makes humanly impossible things possible in every situation. The Prophet Habbakuk also bears witness to this in the First Reading. He implores the Lord, starting with a dreadful situation of violence, iniquity and oppression. And even in this difficult, insecure situation, the Prophet introduces a vision that offers an inside view of the plan that God is outlining and bringing to fulfilment in history: "He whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith" (Hab 2: 4). The godless person, the one who does not behave in accordance with God, who trusts in his own power but is relying on a frail and inconsistent reality that will therefore give way, is destined to fall; the righteous person, on the other hand, trusts in a hidden but sound reality, he trusts in God and for this reason will have life.
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER POPE FRANCIS 2-10 - 2016 The word of God presents us today with two essential aspects of the Christian life: faith and service. With regard to faith, two specific requests are made to the Lord. The first is made by the Prophet Habakkuk, who implores God to intervene in order to re-establish the justice and peace which men have shattered by violence, quarrels and disputes: “O Lord, how long”, he says, “shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?” (Hab 1:2). God, in response, does not intervene directly, does not resolve the situation in an abrupt way, does not make himself present by a show of force. Rather, he invites patient waiting, without ever losing hope; above all, he emphasizes the importance of faith, since it is by faith that man will live (cf. Hab 2:4). God treats us in the same way: he does not indulge our desire to immediately and repeatedly change the world and other people. Instead, he intends primarily to heal the heart, my heart, your heart, and the heart of each person; God changes the world by transforming our hearts, and this he cannot do without us. The Lord wants us to open the door of our hearts, in order to enter into our lives. And this act of opening to him, this trust in him is precisely “the victory that overcomes the world, our faith” (1 Jn 5:4). For when God finds an open and trusting heart, then he can work wonders there.
But to have faith, a lively faith, is not easy; and so we pass to the second request, which the Apostles bring to the Lord in the Gospel: “Increase our faith!” (Lk 17:6). It is a good question, a prayer which we too can direct to the Lord each day. But the divine response is surprising and here too turns the question around: “If you had faith…”. It is the Lord who asks us to have faith. Because faith, which is always God’s gift and always to be asked for, must be nurtured by us. It is no magic power which comes down from heaven, it is not a “talent” which is given once and for all, not a special force for solving life’s problems. A faith useful for satisfying our needs would be a selfish one, centred entirely on ourselves. Faith must not be confused with well-being or feeling well, with having consolation in our heart that gives us inner peace. Faith is the golden thread which binds us to the Lord, the pure joy of being with him, united to him; it is a gift that lasts our whole life, but bears fruit only if we play our part.
...-->The Christian life that each of you has, also comes from afar. It is a gift we received in the Church which comes from the heart of God our Father, who wishes to make each of us a masterpiece of creation and of history. Every carpet, and you know this well, must be made according to a weft and a warp; only with this form can the carpet be harmoniously woven. So too in the Christian life: every day it must be woven patiently, intertwining a precise weft and warp: the weft of faith and the warp of service. When faith is interwoven with service, the heart remains open and youthful, and it expands in the process of doing good. Thus faith, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, becomes powerful and accomplishes marvellous deeds. If faith follows this path, it matures and grows in strength, but only when it is joined to service. But what is service? We might think that it consists only in being faithful to our duties or carrying out some good action. Yet for Jesus it is much more. In today’s Gospel, and in very firm and radical terms, he asks us for complete availability, a life offered in complete openness, free of calculation and gain. Why is Jesus so exacting? Because he loved us in this way, making himself our servant “to the end” (Jn 13:1), coming “to serve, and to give his life” (Mk 10:45). And this takes place again every time we celebrate the Eucharist: the Lord comes among us, and as much as we intend to serve him and love him, it is always he who precedes us, serving us and loving us more than we can imagine or deserve. He gives us his very own life. He invites us to imitate him, saying: “If anyone serves me, he must follow me” (Jn 12:26)... And so, we are not called to serve merely in order to receive a reward, but rather to imitate God, who made himself a servant for our love. Nor are we called to serve only now and again, but to live in serving. Service is thus a way of life; indeed it recapitulates the entire Christian way of life: serving God in adoration and prayer; being open and available; loving our neighbour with practical deeds; passionately working for the common good... May we be aided by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary and by the saints, especially Saint Teresa of Calcutta, the fruits of whose faith and service are in your midst. Let us recall some of her noble words to summarize today’s message: “The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace” (A Simple Path, Introduction).
1st Reading – PROPHET Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4
RispondiEliminaHow long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.
Then the LORD answered me and said: Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.
Responsorial PSALM
Psalms 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
R. (8) If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;
let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us joyfully sing psalms to him.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.”
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
2nd Reading – 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14 (S. Paul)
Beloved:
I remind you, to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.
So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.
Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
Guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us.
Special Healing Prayers to pray for sick family members, friends and loved ones
Healing Prayer
Alleluia – (1 Peter 1:25)
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The word of the Lord remains forever.
This is the word that has been proclaimed to you.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel – Luke 17:5-10
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
“Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’?
Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’?
Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'”
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER
RispondiEliminaIt seems that we can all make this our invocation. Let us too, like the Apostles, say to the Lord: “Increase our faith!”. And how does the Lord answer us? He responds: “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine tree, ‘Be rooted up, and be planted in the sea’, and it would obey you”. A mustard seed is tiny, yet Jesus says that faith this size, small but true and sincere, suffices to achieve what is humanly impossible, unthinkable. And it is true! We all know people who are simple, humble, but whose faith is so strong it can move mountains! Let us think, for example, of some mothers and fathers who face very difficult situations; or of some sick, and even gravely ill, people who transmit serenity to those who come to visit them. And how do we draw from this strength? We draw it from God in prayer. Prayer is the breath of faith: in a relationship of trust, in a relationship of love, dialogue cannot be left out, and prayer is the dialogue of the soul with God. (Angelus, 6 October 2013)
FAUSTI - The whole journey to Jerusalem contains a Catechism that develops the requests of the Our Father:
RispondiElimina"Your Name be sanctified" (chap. 11)
"Thy Kingdom come" (cc.12/13)
"Give us the bread" (c 14)
"Forgive us" (c.15)
"As we forgive" (c 16)
"Let us not yield, let us not lose faith" (c.17).
Luke does not contain the question "Your Will be done". Jesus is the only one to accomplish it (c 22, 42), satisfying all the other requests, even in our name.
This part, which begins from the Apostles' request for an increase of faith and culminates in enlightenment (18:43), shows the faith as the possibility of the impossible, love and gratuitousness, a path of purification, which makes us know how and when the Kingdom comes, lives of trust and humility, makes us children, capable to decide for the Son who goes to Jerusalem to give His life and makes us come to the light as new men.
The Apostles are the disciples who, having learned from the Teacher, receive His same commission: they are sent to carry the Lord's Mercy beyond the circle of the community, to the ends of the earth.
The Apostles feel inadequate for their task because they have little faith.
Faith is the personal experience of the Father's Mercy, the origin of the mission to the brothers and sisters.
It must be asked as the daily bread and forgiveness. After prayer: "Teach us to pray" (11:1),
this is the typical prayer of the believer, especially of the Apostle: "Increase our faith!".
With it everything is obtained. Everything is possible for those who believe, because nothing is impossible for God (1:37).
The Lord explains that faith is like a small seed, but with vital force and such as to move a tree into the sea.
For it, St. Paul says: "I can do everything in Him who gives me strength" (Phil 4:13), because my powerlessness is filled with the very power of God.
To believe is to stop trusting in oneself and to let it may be He who acts.
That is why "when I am weak, it is then that I am strong" (St. Paul 2 Cor 12:10).
We now proceed from the personal faith of the Apostle to his apostolic work of proclaiming to others.
He is compared to the servant, or rather, to the slave, because he does not belong to himself.
This slavery of his is the highest realization of the freedom to love: it makes him like his Lord, entirely of the Father and of his brothers and sisters.
Just as the slave belongs to his master who enslaves him, so does the Apostle belongs to his Lord Who gives him the freedom to be like Him, his collaborator, associated with His ministry.
This slavery for love is total liberation from selfishness:
"You, in fact, brethren, are called to freedom" and this does not consist in living according to selfishness, but in being, through charity, slaves to one another.
The two typical actions of the Apostle are: the proclamation (sower) and the care of the brothers (shepherd).
Whoever "ploughs or pastures" does it not for of a disgraceful profit, but because he is driven by the love of his Lord , dead for all.
For Paul, the highest reward is to preach the Gospel freely.
The Apostle is associated to the ministry of Grace and Mercy of his Lord for the world.
The origin of his service is faith, as the personal experience of the One who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal 2:20).
For this reason it is not in the logic of giving and having, but in that of free gift.
The love he has experienced makes him free to serve as his Lord.
HOMILY OF BENEDICT XVI
RispondiElimina...Every liturgical assembly is a place of God's presence. Gathered together for the Holy Eucharist, disciples of the Lord are immersed in Christ's redeeming sacrifice, they proclaim that he is Risen, is alive and is the Giver of life, and witness that his Presence is grace, strength and joy. Let us open our hearts to his Word and welcome the gift of his presence! All the texts of this Sunday's Liturgy speak to us of faith, which is the foundation of the whole of Christian life. Jesus taught his disciples to grow in faith, to believe and to entrust themselves increasingly to him, in order to build their own lives on the rock. For this reason they asked him "increase our faith!" (Lk 17: 5). What they asked the Lord for is beautiful, it is the fundamental request: disciples do not ask for material gifts, they do not ask for privileges but for the grace of faith, which guides and illumines the whole of life; they ask for the grace to recognize God and to be in a close relationship with him, receiving from him all his gifts, even those of courage, love and hope.
Jesus, without directly answering their prayer, has recourse to a paradoxical image to express the incredible vitality of faith. Just as a lever raises something far heavier than its own weight, so faith, even a crumb of faith, can do unthinkable, extraordinary things, such as uproot a great tree and plant it in the sea (ibid.). Faith trusting in Christ, welcoming him, letting him transform us, following him to the very end makes humanly impossible things possible in every situation. The Prophet Habbakuk also bears witness to this in the First Reading. He implores the Lord, starting with a dreadful situation of violence, iniquity and oppression. And even in this difficult, insecure situation, the Prophet introduces a vision that offers an inside view of the plan that God is outlining and bringing to fulfilment in history: "He whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith" (Hab 2: 4). The godless person, the one who does not behave in accordance with God, who trusts in his own power but is relying on a frail and inconsistent reality that will therefore give way, is destined to fall; the righteous person, on the other hand, trusts in a hidden but sound reality, he trusts in God and for this reason will have life.
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER POPE FRANCIS 2-10 - 2016
RispondiEliminaThe word of God presents us today with two essential aspects of the Christian life: faith and service. With regard to faith, two specific requests are made to the Lord.
The first is made by the Prophet Habakkuk, who implores God to intervene in order to re-establish the justice and peace which men have shattered by violence, quarrels and disputes: “O Lord, how long”, he says, “shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?” (Hab 1:2). God, in response, does not intervene directly, does not resolve the situation in an abrupt way, does not make himself present by a show of force. Rather, he invites patient waiting, without ever losing hope; above all, he emphasizes the importance of faith, since it is by faith that man will live (cf. Hab 2:4). God treats us in the same way: he does not indulge our desire to immediately and repeatedly change the world and other people. Instead, he intends primarily to heal the heart, my heart, your heart, and the heart of each person; God changes the world by transforming our hearts, and this he cannot do without us. The Lord wants us to open the door of our hearts, in order to enter into our lives. And this act of opening to him, this trust in him is precisely “the victory that overcomes the world, our faith” (1 Jn 5:4). For when God finds an open and trusting heart, then he can work wonders there.
But to have faith, a lively faith, is not easy; and so we pass to the second request, which the Apostles bring to the Lord in the Gospel: “Increase our faith!” (Lk 17:6). It is a good question, a prayer which we too can direct to the Lord each day. But the divine response is surprising and here too turns the question around: “If you had faith…”. It is the Lord who asks us to have faith. Because faith, which is always God’s gift and always to be asked for, must be nurtured by us. It is no magic power which comes down from heaven, it is not a “talent” which is given once and for all, not a special force for solving life’s problems. A faith useful for satisfying our needs would be a selfish one, centred entirely on ourselves. Faith must not be confused with well-being or feeling well, with having consolation in our heart that gives us inner peace. Faith is the golden thread which binds us to the Lord, the pure joy of being with him, united to him; it is a gift that lasts our whole life, but bears fruit only if we play our part.
...-->The Christian life that each of you has, also comes from afar. It is a gift we received in the Church which comes from the heart of God our Father, who wishes to make each of us a masterpiece of creation and of history. Every carpet, and you know this well, must be made according to a weft and a warp; only with this form can the carpet be harmoniously woven. So too in the Christian life: every day it must be woven patiently, intertwining a precise weft and warp: the weft of faith and the warp of service. When faith is interwoven with service, the heart remains open and youthful, and it expands in the process of doing good. Thus faith, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, becomes powerful and accomplishes marvellous deeds. If faith follows this path, it matures and grows in strength, but only when it is joined to service.
RispondiEliminaBut what is service? We might think that it consists only in being faithful to our duties or carrying out some good action. Yet for Jesus it is much more. In today’s Gospel, and in very firm and radical terms, he asks us for complete availability, a life offered in complete openness, free of calculation and gain. Why is Jesus so exacting? Because he loved us in this way, making himself our servant “to the end” (Jn 13:1), coming “to serve, and to give his life” (Mk 10:45). And this takes place again every time we celebrate the Eucharist: the Lord comes among us, and as much as we intend to serve him and love him, it is always he who precedes us, serving us and loving us more than we can imagine or deserve. He gives us his very own life. He invites us to imitate him, saying: “If anyone serves me, he must follow me” (Jn 12:26)...
And so, we are not called to serve merely in order to receive a reward, but rather to imitate God, who made himself a servant for our love. Nor are we called to serve only now and again, but to live in serving. Service is thus a way of life; indeed it recapitulates the entire Christian way of life: serving God in adoration and prayer; being open and available; loving our neighbour with practical deeds; passionately working for the common good...
May we be aided by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary and by the saints, especially Saint Teresa of Calcutta, the fruits of whose faith and service are in your midst. Let us recall some of her noble words to summarize today’s message:
“The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace”
(A Simple Path, Introduction).