A faith that moves everyday mountains

A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Dominic, Priest

Find today’s readings here.

I recall a faint childhood memory, staring down the lane toward my Catholic grammar school and the “mountain” that rose in the distance behind it, a diminished mound along the Hudson River that ends just before the Palisades in New Jersey, thinking that if my faith were true and strong then that mountain should move in accordance with my command. I stared. I focused hard. Nothing.

I was testing my faith and, in a way, looking for proof of the divine. I guess those clashing impulses canceled themselves out. Who knows? Maybe it did move, just so imperceptibly my eyes could not discern it.

In today’s Gospel Jesus is speaking figuratively about the power of faith (right?) when he suggests that even faith as tiny as a mustard seed would be sufficient to move mountains. My faith must be infinitesimally smaller than that mustard seed, I guess.

Jesus had the power to drive out demons, or perhaps in this instance to cure the epilepsy that had this unfortunate youth thrashing on the ground or falling into fire and water, and he imparted that power to work miracles to his disciples.

One wonders if their capacity to work those miracles flickered on and off depending on the strength of their faith day to day. Mine surely would have, I suspect. How frustrating for the people hoping for a miracle to encounter a “faithless and perverse” disciple on a low-faith day.

The admonishment from Jesus in Matthew 17 appears to call back to Matthew 13, when Jesus concludes a run of parables to describe how faith is like a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds but one which grows into a life-giving plant—so large it sustains the birds of the sky that “come and dwell in its branches.”

I did not move that mountain in the distance in my past, but we are asked to move many mountains throughout our lives as new obligations and burdens—and their co-mixtures of joy and sorrow—come our way. I’ve moved mountains through adulthood, parenthood, caring for children and caring for elderly parents, anxious over wayward family members or agonizing over struggling children.

When we fully place our trust in the Lord, all such burdens and worries are lightened; mountains of anxiety, hillsides of sorrow are moved away from us. When we are free in faith, unafraid to be our best selves, instruments of love and mercy, “nothing will be impossible.”

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