More. I feel like I am always asking God for more. Not more material blessings…because (thank God) I can at least appreciate how incredibly generous He is to me. No…when I ask for more I’m always asking for something to make me better…something to improve me or my faith. I pray for more strength, or more patience, or more direction. I pray for more wisdom, for greater understanding, for a faster transformation. I ask God to make me a better husband, a better father, a better employee. And I do all this genuinely…wanting so desperately to be the man God created me to be…and knowing I have so far to go. I long to be useful to Him, and so I am constantly wanting more help overcoming all my flaws. But then I read today’s Gospel.
Here are the disciples…blessed with knowing our savior in the flesh. They get to eat with Him, joke with Him, walk with Him, even touch Him. And while I realize none of these men started as Saints, I can’t help but believe if I got to actually know Jesus in that way…my faith would be through the roof. I would be unstoppable for God. Yet here they are wanting Jesus to increase their faith…asking for more. Are they kidding? What more could they expect Jesus to do?
But as always, Jesus sees through their question (as He does our’s)…and instead of answering what we thought we were asking, He addresses the true heart of the matter.

The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you would say to this mulberry tree,
‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’
and it would obey you.” Luke 17:6

When I read this, I imagine Jesus’ response to my own requests for more. “You are right to desire Faith…to want to continue to be transformed into My likeness. But rather than ask me for more, why not ask yourself what are you doing with what I have already given you?” Isn’t that what He is saying? The disciples ask for more faith, and Jesus explains how even the tiniest amount of Faith is sufficient. The disciples didn’t see what they already have as enough…just as I don’t see the strength I have already been given (or the patience or the widsom or the…) as enough. But it must be…because Jesus says it is. In this passage of Scripture I believe He is telling us that if only we truly believed in what we’ve come to understand thus far…if only we fully acted on the Truth He has revealed to us up to this point…if only we did more with what He has already provided…then we’d realize, we don’t need more. He has given us enough. He has given us all that we need. We have Him…we have the Holy Spirit…we have the Saints…we have our Holy Mother…and we have His strength…His wisdom…His Love. He is not going to do the work for us. It is our cross…we have to carry it. But He’ll give us the strength to lift it, the wisdom to accept it, the patience to endure it. In fact He already has…that’s the point. We just need to use what He has given us. We need to step out in faith…knowing we have enough to accomplish all things through Him. In fact…we not only have enough…we have more than enough.