Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 5, 2025

HBO had a 10-episode mini-series entitled The Young Pope, starring Jude Law. I’m not endorsing it, but there was one scene that I think speaks directly to today’s readings.

In an episode, the pope asks a nun why she doesn’t like going back to visit her home in India. She answers: Because all the suffering she sees there makes her question God’s existence.


…We know that suffering is a problem, not just because none of us wants it, but because it can shake our faith. 


Some experience suffering far worse than others but, all of us, whether in our own lives or on television, see enough of it to tempt us to ask the question: “Where is God?” Or, “Does God even exist?”


And, you know who may have had the strongest reasons to ask those questions but never did? Mary, the Blessed Mother. Watching her innocent Son tortured, nailed to a piece of wood, stripped and mocked in public; if anyone could have asked, “Does God even exist if this can happen,” it was her. But, again, she didn’t. As Christians, it’s not really possible to ask this either because we believe that the most innocent of all persons suffered the most painful and humiliating of deaths, and we believe that same person was God.


…That tension between faith and suffering is voiced by the prophet Habakkuk in our first reading. He doesn’t doubt God’s existence, but he does cry out at God’s apparent silence in the face of suffering. And, instead of abandoning his faith or turning away from God, he turns his grievance into a prayer: “How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?” 


…It’s amazing how those words, thousands of years old, are still so relevant today.


And, then, we hear the Apostles ask Jesus a very timely request: “Increase our faith.”


And Jesus answers with the image of the mulberry tree: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” He names the mulberry tree because its root system is virtually impossible to uproot. In other words, Jesus is saying that a tiny amount of faith can do what seems impossible.


Now, some people may hear that and wonder: Why is it that people I know who have amazing faith cannot command trees to fly into the sea? Because Jesus is speaking figuratively; he’s using hyperbole. He’s making the point that even the smallest faith, when it clings to God, is stronger than anything that roots itself against us. 


For example, many people are tempted to despair of their place in Heaven; our lack of faith in Jesus can make us think that God cannot possibly forgive us or bring us to heaven; but Jesus is saying: “If you were to only have the smallest amount of trust in Me, I can help you know that the sin you feel so ashamed of is but dried up straw thrown into a blazing furnace when you confess it to Me.” 


…The mulberry tree represents what was humanly immovable. With faith, God can uproot what we cannot: The guilt of our sins, the hopelessness of death, even the hardened roots of evil in our world. And, more than that, faith allows God to plant us in a place, Heaven, that is impossible for ourselves to reach on our own.



Scripture readings for this day: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/100525.cfm

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