27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - C 10-07-07

Scripture Readings
First Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4
Second 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14
Gospel Luke 17:5-10

Prepared by: Peter John Cameron, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• “Increase our faith.”
• “Stir into flame the gift of God.”
• “The just one, because of his faith, shall live.”

2. Exegetical Notes
• Hab. 2:2-4: “The prophet again comes into the presence of YHWH; this time, however, he
does not complain but awaits YHWH’s response. The delay does not lessen his certainty”
(J.M. Abrego).
• “In 2 Timothy the power of the Spirit is given to the leaders of the Church to authorize and
validate their teaching and their persons as apostolic ministers” (E. Nardoni).
• The Acts of the Apostles abounds with reports of how the faith increased because of the
increased faith of the apostles: Acts 2:41, 47; 5:14; 11:24.

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• CCC 153: “Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. ‘Before this faith can
be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the
interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the
eyes of the mind and 'makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.’”
• CCC 163: “Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our
journey here below. Then we shall see God ‘face to face’, ‘as he is’. So faith is already the
beginning of eternal life: When we contemplate the blessings of faith even now, as if gazing
at a reflection in a mirror, it is as if we already possessed the wonderful things which our faith
assures us we shall one day enjoy.”
• CCC 2732: “The most common yet most hidden temptation is our lack of faith. It expresses
itself less by declared incredulity than by our actual preferences.”

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

• St. Peter Chrysologus: “The full perfection of a kingdom remains and consists in the
kingdom of heaven. Christ is the kingdom of heaven. He was planted, like a grain of mustard
seed, in the Virgin’s body. He grew into the tree of the cross spread throughout the world. He
emitted the pungency of its seed when he as abraded by his passion. Consequently, by a
mere touch he gave savor and seasoning to anything which sustains life. When a grain of
mustard seed is still whole, its power lies hidden inside it; if the grain is abraded, its power
becomes forcefully evident. Similarly, Christ wanted his body to be abraded, because he did
not want his power to lie hidden inside it. Brethren, let us abrade that grain of mustard seed,
that we may discover its force in this parable. Christ is a king, because he is the full source of
authority. Christ is the kingdom, because the full majesty of his kingdom is in him. Christ is
the man, because every man is renewed in Christ. Christ is the mustard seed, because in his
case, the full greatness of God appears in miniature inside the tinyness of man.”
• St. Maximus the Confessor: The Logos of God is like a grain of mustard seed (Mt 13:31):
before cultivation it looks extremely small, but when cultivated in the right way it grows so
large that the highest principles of both sensible and intelligible creation come like birds to
revive themselves in it. For the principles or inner essences of all things are embraced by the
Logos, but the Logos is not embraced by any thing. Hence the Lord has said that he who has
faith as a grain of mustard seed can move a mountain by a word of command (Mt 17:20),
that is, he can destroy the devil’s dominion over us and remove it from its foundation. The
grain of mustard seed is the Lord, who by faith is sown spiritually in the hearts of those who
accept him. He who diligently cultivates the seed by practicing the virtues moves the
mountain of earth-bound pride and, through the power he has gained, he expels from himself
the obdurate habit of sin. In this way he revives in himself the activity of the principles and
qualities or divine powers present in the commandments, as though they were birds.”
• Josef Pieper: “In all belief, the decisive factor is who it is whose statement is assented to; by
comparison the subject matter assented to is in a certain sense secondary. If we pursue this
consistently, it follows that belief itself is not yet ‘purely’ achieved when someone accepts as
truth the statement of one whom he trusts, but only when he accepts it for the simple reason
that the trusted person states it.… The will of the believer is directed toward the person of
the witness” (Faith, Hope, Love, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 31, 38, 42, 45).

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• The sixteen Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne:
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/library/onlinelibrary/martyrs.htm;
• Also the opera The Dialogues of the Carmelites based on this event…especially the aspect
that one nun, weak in faith, is fortified to approach the guillotine.
• St. Ambrose: “The mustard seed grows hot when rubbed: St. Lawrence, when he suffers in
his martyrdom, is inflamed.”
6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI
• “To become a believer means to become light, to escape our own gravity, which drags us
down, and thus to enter the weightlessness of faith.”
• “The Christian faith is not the product of our own experiences; rather, it is an event that
comes to us from without. Faith is based on our meeting something (or someone) for which
our capacity for experiencing things is inadequate. It is not our experience that is widened or
deepened…but something happens. The categories of ‘encounter’, ‘otherness’; ‘event’,
describe the inner origins of the Christian faith and indicate the limitations of the concept of
‘experience.’ Certainly, what touches us there effects an experience in us, but experience as
the result of an event, not of reaching deeper into ourselves. This is exactly what is meant by
the concept of revelation: something not ours, not to be found in what we have, comes to me
and takes me out of myself, above myself, creates something new.”
• “Faith is not the resignation of reason in view of the limits of our knowledge; it is not a retreat
into the irrational in view of the dangers of a merely instrumental reason. Faith is not the
expression of weariness and flight but is courage to exist and an awakening to the greatness
and breadth of what is real. Faith is an act of affirmation; it is based on the power of a new
Yes, which becomes possible for man when he is touched by God.”
• “The essence of faith is that I do not meet with something that has been thought up, but that
here something meets me that is greater than anything we can think of for ourselves.”

Recommended Resources
Benedictus Yonkers: Magnificat, 2006