St. Volodymyr's Parish

Sunday Gospel Matthew 17, 14-23

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"If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” Jesus said these words to the apostles who couldn’t cast out a demon when the man asked them about it. But Jesus did it. They were curious about why they couldn’t: when we read the Gospel, we find that earlier Jesus gave them the authority to cast out demons and heal people. And now when the man came with his need they couldn’t do anything. Jesus explained it with very simple words, He said: "Because of your little faith”. If you will have strong, stable faith, then "nothing will be impossible to you”.

Jesus compared faith to a mustard seed. We know that the mustard seed is the smallest seed; but when we plant it and take care of it the seed grows to a big tree, where birds make their nests. The same thing happens with our faith. If we have faith and take care of it, nurture it, grow it, then it will become so big that nothing will be impossible for us.

Then Jesus said that this kind of demon is cast out just by prayer and fasting. Like showing us tools on how we can look after and strengthening our faith. Faith is a gift granted us by God. And as every gift we need to nurture it to grow something good. Prayer and fast are important steps to strengthen our faith.

Let us pay our attention on prayer. What does it mean for us?

Is a prayer just when we come to a church on Sunday and sing together "Lord, have mercy”; or is it when we are alone at home, stand before an icon and say some words; or maybe is it good works of our hands which we do for other people? Every one of these is a prayer. But what place, what position does prayer take in our life?

Look, again, over the past few Sundays: we heard in the Gospels that Jesus helps those who need it. He helped an apostle on a sea; He healed an ill man, a paralytic. He helps when people come to Him, when He sees people in need. He always has time for every one of us. God always has time for every one of us. And our prayer is that time, which we have for God.

Let us            think now… God always has time for every one of us… And how much time do we have for God?!?!?!

Unfortunately, very often in this world, we have no time at all. We hear this phrase from many people and even say it by ourselves: "We don’t have enough time”!!! We don’t have time for anything… for rest, for work, for friends, for family, for children, for many, many other things… and what can we say about time for God? That we need to find one hour on Sunday to come to church… to put a tick… but is it supposed to be like that? Is one hour a week enough to thank God for all that we have?

Church teaches us about constant prayer. It doesn’t mean that we need to be whole day at a church with a prayer-book and praying. It means that all our thoughts need to be turn to God during every moment of our life. When we say prayers we speak with God, that is why we need to do it as often as we can; not just on Sunday, not just at the morning and/or evening, but every single moment that we have chance to do so. Also when we work, do good deeds, have fun, rest, we could do it with a prayer or as a prayer, when we do it in the presence of God. He doesn’t prohibit us from doing all of these things. He wants us to rest, to have a fun, to work, to do what we’d like to do, but He wants to do all these things with us.

They say that a prayer is our conversation with God. It’s mean that the more we will talk with Him, the closer to Him we will be.

God is our loving Father… let us bring to mind our parents… how often we’d like to speak with them, to be with them? Let us bring to mind our children… how often we’d like to speak with them, to be with them? If God is our loving Father, how often we want to speak with Him, to be with Him?

So, I’d like to wish all of us to want to be with God, to use every chance to speak to and to be with Him. I’d like to wish that we never have too much prayer, because it’s never enough. I’d like to wish to be closer to God every moment of our life here on the Earth and then for ever in the Heaven. Amen.