“He was amazed at their lack of faith.” – Mark 6:6.
It must
take a lot for God to be amazed at something, and yet, that is what happened
when Jesus returned to his native village of Nazareth. There, he taught in the
synagogue and cured some of the sick, but the people still did not believe in
him. They did not have faith. Though they had eyes to see his miracles, they
did not understand; though they had ears to hear his preaching, they did not
listen.
We might
say that if we lived back then and actually got to see Jesus and hear Him teach
and see that he cured the sick that we would serve him unwaveringly. We might
say that it is more difficult to do so today, separated by almost 2,000 years
from the events recorded in the Gospels. We don’t actually see with our own
eyes or hear with our own ears what Jesus did in the flesh, so it’s harder to
have faith and harder to believe.
However,
evidence of God is all around us. It is found in Nature: “For from the
greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy,
is seen” (Wisdom 13:5). It can be seen in the Church founded on Peter, and the
sacraments that Jesus set up when he was on Earth, even though it was millennia
ago (cf. Matthew 16:18; Luke 22:19). God is seen in man, who is made in the
image of God, in His likeness (cf. Genesis 1:26). As the Catechism says, “the
desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and
for God” (CCC 27).
Regardless
of all this, Jesus tells us that “Blessed are those who have not seen and have
believed” (John 20:29).
Let us
echo the words of the Apostles, when they begged the Lord: “Increase our faith!”
(Luke 17:5, NIV).
(All Bible quotations, except those noted, are from the New American Bible.)
