"And then God said 'Let there be light' and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord swept the sea with a strong east wind through the night and so turned it into dry land" (Exodus 14:21). "Thus David overcame the Philistine with sling and stone" (1 Samuel 17:50). "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Luke 1:35). "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim" (Acts 2:4). "Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples 'I have seen the Lord'" (John 20:18).
God the Father creates something out of nothing. The Red Sea is parted by the power of God. David is made victorious by the strength of the Lord. Mary is impregnated by the power of the Spirit. The Apostles burst through the doors of the upper room with power from on high. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. These are truths we profess. These are stories we tell over and over. These are Scripture passages that are so familiar we can recount them with ease. But despite their familiarity and their frequency of retelling, we don't get it. We don't understand what these stories speak to us. We don't rest peacefully in their words. We don't cling to the faith they instill in us.
In each of these stories, throughout the entirety of Scripture, in every miracle Jesus performed, in every apparition of Mary, in every healing that has come from the intercession of the Saints, in the revelation of God to man, we experience the power of our God. We see a God who accomplishes that which our feeble human minds could not even comprehend. We see a God whose plan is so much loftier than those of our simple human desires. We see a God who does the unthinkable, the unexplainable, the unimaginable.
Yet the words "You of little faith" could be spoken to each of us. Some of us feel overcome by the storms of life--sickness, unemployment, discernment, loneliness, depression, poverty, sin, shame--and it is to you that Jesus says, "O you of little faith". As he sits in the vessel of our hearts, he asks us to trust that in his perfect timing, with his perfect love, he will "rebuke the winds and the sea" (Matthew 8:26). Some of us are still convinced that temporal things will bring us fulfillment and thus place our identity in our homes, cars, jobs, appearances and selves. But it is to us that Jesus says "You of little faith", do you not trust that I will satisfy every longing that exists within you (Matthew 6:30)? And some of us are under the impression that our sin is too great, our problems are too big, our shame is too deeply entrenched, our hearts are too wounded. And it is to us that Jesus says emphatically, "You of little faith", stop listening to the whispers of the enemy and trust in the abundance of love that I have for you, love that can do the impossible (Matthew 17:20).
"O faithless and perverse generation...if you have faith the size of a mustard seed...Nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:17, 20). Moses couldn't have prayed that the Israelites would be rescued by the parting of the Red Sea because he would have thought it impossible. David couldn't have prayed for such a victory over Goliath because he would have thought such a victory to be absurd. Mary couldn't have prayed for a child to be conceived within her while still maintaining her virginity because she would have thought it to be contrary to reason. And none of us could have prayed for our salvation to be won by Christ's victory over death. But these all happened. They were the unprayable.
"We can never have too much confidence in the good God who is so powerful and so merciful. We obtain from Him as much as we hope for" (St. Therese of Lisieux). "O you of little faith", will you believe that the Lord can accomplish the unprayable in you?
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