When I was doing research for our parish history back in 2017, I embarked on a special mission of doing photographic documentation of a not-so-familiar location in our town. The place was in a river delta, and it was difficult to access the site by land because of thick mangroves. I, therefore, rented a boat to bring me to the site by sea.

As we were moving across the delta, the boat suddenly stopped moving. To the great dismay of the boatman, he realized we had lost our boat's propeller. It fell somewhere along our route. He told us that we must go back and retrace our way to find it, or we will be stranded. I looked around and wondered how in the world would we find that stainless propeller in the middle of the murky sea waters. We then decided to get out of the boat and soaked in the waist-high waters to look for it. Looking at the vast area of sea around us, I have given up any hope that we could still find the thing. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack! To alleviate the anxiety of the boatman, I just pretended searching for it.

After an hour of tiresome searching, I prayed silently: "Lord please po, kawawa naman kami. Di kami makaalis. Gutom na po kami. Kawawa naman si Kuya, di makakapangisda bukas." (Lord, please have pity on us. We are stranded. We are already hungry. Poor boatman, he would not be able to go fishing tomorrow.) After some time, I heard the boatman shouting with joy: "Diyos ko, Diyos ko, salamat po!" (My God, my God, thank you!). He had accidentally stepped on something in the muddy waters. Lo and behold, it was the propeller!

I felt the hand of God right there and then. Finding a piece of metal in the vast waters is no impossible feat for God even when I had approached Him with weak faith. Miracles, even with an imperfect faith like mine, do happen. If God could work even on just a hint of faith like mine, how much more on faith other than the size of a mustard seed.

By: Sem. Tristan Ralf Q. Pacheco

Today's Gospel

Mt 17:14-20

A man came up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said,
"Lord, have pity on my son, who is a lunatic and suffers severely;
often he falls into fire, and often into water.
I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him."
Jesus said in reply,
"O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you?
How long will I endure you?
Bring the boy here to me."
Jesus rebuked him and the demon came out of him,
and from that hour the boy was cured.
Then the disciples approached Jesus in private and said,
"Why could we not drive it out?"
He said to them, "Because of your little faith.
Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you will say to this mountain,
'Move from here to there,' and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you."