Fr. Jorge Miró shares with Exaudi readers his commentary on the Gospel for Sunday, October 5, entitled “If you had faith as small as a mustard seed… ”.

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The Word today invites us to have faith like a mustard seed.  With it, the Lord wants to invite you to enter the path of humility and gratuity.

In being a Christian, everything is a gift from the Lord, who loves you; everything is a grace that precedes man; everything is a work that the Lord, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, must accomplish in you. And you must accept it. It seems like little, but it is not little.

It is recognizing that everything you have and what you are, you have received for free, and that the true protagonist is not you, but the Lord.

Likewise, it is recognizing that God’s method is humility : it is the method of the Incarnation, of Bethlehem, of the simple life in Nazareth, of the Upper Room, of the Cross, of Pentecost…

This gospel is an invitation not to be afraid of the humility of small steps and to trust not in your own strength, but in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Faith will always be a gift from God, so it’s good, as we see in today’s Gospel, to ask Him to increase it.  Faith is a gift, a grace. No one can earn it, buy it, or inherit it: it can only be asked of the Lord and received and welcomed as a gift.

But we must take care of our faith. If we can’t lose it, how do we take care of it? The Word has told us.

May you hear the voice of the Lord today: “Do not harden your hearts.”  This is the primary attitude. So important that the Church invites us to begin the Liturgy of the Hours every day with this Psalm. We must not fear weakness, but we must fear pride and hardening of heart. Because they close the heart to the action of the Spirit.

The arrogant will not triumph, but the righteous will live by faith.  The Lord has hidden the mysteries of the Kingdom from the proud and gives them to the poor, the simple, the humble, to those who trust in Him and allow themselves to be led by the Holy Spirit.

I remind you to rekindle God’s gift.  Everything is a gift, everything is grace. And we are called to take care of what we have received. This is what the fear of God primarily consists of:  being “afraid” that we might extinguish the Spirit, that we might not let Him act, and our faith might die. For to him who has, to him will be given, and he will have abundance…  (cf.  Mt 25). Cherish prayer, listening to the Word, the Eucharist… and above all, conversion.

Do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord.  Go through the world doing good, living the works of mercy, and bearing courageous witness to Jesus Christ and the Church wherever the Lord calls you.

Share in suffering for the Gospel, according to the power of God.  Take up the cross, your cross. The Lord awaits you on it. If you flee from the cross, you will end up fleeing from the Lord.

Watch over this precious deposit with the help of the Holy Spirit.  To faithfully guard the treasure of faith is to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Pope, and the Bishops in communion with him; it is not to “manufacture” a Christianity tailored to your own desires.

The word of the Lord endures forever; this is the word of the Gospel that has been proclaimed to you.

Come, Holy Spirit!