Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Have you ever had an encounter with someone who challenged your faith? Perhaps it was a polite discourse sparked by genuine curiosity. Or maybe it wasn’t so friendly, and someone made you feel foolish for being a Christian. It’s very possible that you yourself have asked questions. So much of our faith seems totally unbelievable… so why do we believe it?

The truth is that our faith is pretty unbelievable. It so surpasses the capabilities of our human intellect to fathom that, as in today’s Gospel, Jesus can only reveal it to us through parable and comparison. This makes the faith deeply personal, because each of us receives the faith in a way that is totally unique. In a way, we believe the faith because we cannot totally understand it, because we know that anything we can say or understand about the faith cannot properly express the joy that awaits us in eternity.

While our faith is deeply personal, we cannot grow it alone. Just as God is a communion of persons, our faith must be lived out in communion with each other. We must also always remember that faith itself is a gift. God freely gave us this gift so that we might come to know Him. And Jesus also gave us the Church so that, through its sacraments and communion, we might have the best means of living out that faith as One Body of Christ and experience the kingdom of heaven on Earth. Let us give thanks to God, as is “our duty and our salvation,” for these salvific gifts.

What Saint or Church writing can I study to expand my knowledge of my own faith?

Who is someone in my life with whom God might be calling me to live out my faith in communion?

Do I thank God for the gift of faith and the gift of the Church every day?