| Monday, November 14, 2011 St. Nicholas Tavelic, OFM, Priest, and Companions, Martyrs (Memorial) | ||
|
Luke 18:42 And Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has made you well."
I have always taken the expression "your faith has made you well" to pretty much mean that if we have faith we can do great things. In other words, if we believe it can happen, it can. Well, now that I look at his a little close I think there might be a slightly different angle. I am not convinced that if the man truly believed that he could recover his sight that he would. Other wise I think he might have done it by now. Clearly Jesus had to be part of the equation. So what does it mean to have faith then? More and more I think faith is more an expression of loyalty and dedication than it is a mental disposition. What Jesus means by "your faith" is your dedication to him. The fact that the man understood that it had to be Jesus and he would not be denied was what is meant by faith and that is what Jesus honored. It didn't make the man well because of any mental power, but because Jesus is honored by the dedication of the blind man.
So what about the woman with the issue of blood. She never asked Jesus. But, she believed it had to be through him. She thought that if she could touch his garment she would be healed. Again, though not on an intellectual level, it had to go through Jesus and it was her persistence to get to Jesus combined with the I will not be denied mentality that is honored by Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The reason it could have worked for the woman is because the Holy Spirit was quite aware of her faith even if Jesus was not.
Father, help me by your Holy Spirit to be dedicated to you and to have a "I will not be denied" mentality.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment