Two men in today's readings ask the same thing in different words: why is nothing happening? Neither of them is given an explanation. Both are given something to hold on to.
"At that time a man came up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said, "Lord, have pity on my son, for he 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 him 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." (Mt 17:14-20)
Habakkuk is the most impertinent prophet in the Bible, and God does not seem to mind. He stands and accuses: "Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil — why then do you gaze on the faithless and stay silent while the wicked swallow the one more just than himself?" Then he does something extraordinary. He does not walk away. "I will stand at my guard post, and station myself upon the rampart, and keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what answer he will give to my complaint."
He does not get an answer to the question. He gets a different kind of reply: "Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time; it presses on to fulfilment and will not disappoint. If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late." And then the sentence that Paul will build half his theology on: "the just shall live by his faithfulness."
Not by his understanding. Not by seeing results. By staying.
In the Gospel, a father kneels down with the same complaint, dressed as a request. "I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him." We meet him at the bottom of the mountain — the very morning after the Transfiguration, three of them coming down still dazzled — and the first thing they find is a failure. Their own.
Jesus' reaction is startling and worth not smoothing over. "O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you?" This is exasperation, and it is honest. But notice that the very next words are: "Bring him here to me." The exasperation does not stop the healing. It never does.
And then, in private, the disciples ask the question that is really ours: "Why could we not?" The answer is "because of your little faith" — and then, immediately, a measure that turns the reproach inside out. A mustard seed. The smallest thing a farmer in Galilee could hold. Jesus does not say "you need great faith". He says the required quantity is nearly nothing — which means the problem was never quantity.
What is missing, then? Perhaps this: the disciples had been given a power and had begun to treat it as a possession. They had done this before and it had worked. They arrived at the boy with a method. Faith is not a method. It is the movement of turning towards someone else, and it survives being very small — it does not survive being replaced by competence.
This is the seed and the wait, joined. Habakkuk is told his vision will come and to write it down while it delays; the disciples are told that what they lack is not a larger faith but a real one, however small. Both are being taught the same discipline: fidelity in the time when nothing visible happens.
The Missionaries of Bethlehem have never had another spirituality than this. The Child is the mustard seed — God's own decision to begin at the smallest possible size, and to take thirty hidden years before anything visible occurred. Whoever waits for a work to look impressive before believing in it has misread how God works. Whoever stays at the post when nothing moves is doing the most Christian thing available.
The Church remembers Dominic today, and he fits exactly. He preached in the south of France for ten years with almost nothing to show. His method was poverty, walking, and conversation — nothing that photographs well. The Order that came out of it has lasted eight hundred years. He would not have recognised our impatience.
So the question for this Saturday is not whether our faith is large. It is not, and it does not need to be. The question is whether there is a post we have abandoned because nothing was happening there — a prayer, a relationship, a work, a person we have stopped expecting anything from. Habakkuk's instruction is to go back and stand on it, and to write the vision down while we wait.
"If it delays, wait for it. It will surely come, it will not be late."
Scripture text: Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV), public domain.
Prayer of the Day
Lord, you let Habakkuk complain and did not answer his question; you told him instead to write and to wait. You told your disciples that a seed would be enough and that their trouble was not the size of their faith. Keep us at the post we are tempted to leave. Give us the small, real trust that turns towards you rather than the competence that manages without you. Through the prayers of Saint Dominic, who preached ten years before anything grew, teach us the patience of those who sow. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
For Meditation
- Which post have we quietly abandoned because nothing was happening there?
- Where have we replaced faith with method — doing again what once worked, without turning towards him?
- What is the vision we would need to write down clearly, so as to still recognise it when it finally comes?
