Daily Gospel Reflection
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February 25, 2019
As Jesus came down from the mountain with Peter, James, John
and approached the other disciples,
they saw a large crowd around them and scribes arguing with them.
Immediately on seeing him,
the whole crowd was utterly amazed.
They ran up to him and greeted him.
He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?”
Someone from the crowd answered him,
“Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit.
Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down;
he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid.
I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.”
He said to them in reply,
“O faithless generation, how long will I be with you?
How long will I endure you? Bring him to me.”
They brought the boy to him.
And when he saw him,
the spirit immediately threw the boy into convulsions.
As he fell to the ground, he began to roll around
and foam at the mouth.
Then he questioned his father,
“How long has this been happening to him?”
He replied, “Since childhood.
It has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him.
But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
Jesus said to him,
“‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.”
Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!”
Jesus, on seeing a crowd rapidly gathering,
rebuked the unclean spirit and said to it,
“Mute and deaf spirit, I command you:
come out of him and never enter him again!”
Shouting and throwing the boy into convulsions, it came out.
He became like a corpse, which caused many to say, “He is dead!”
But Jesus took him by the hand, raised him, and he stood up.
When he entered the house, his disciples asked him in private,
“Why could we not drive the spirit out?”
He said to them, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”
“I do believe, help my unbelief!” How powerful and profound are those six words? They can form the basis of an entire prayer. Indeed, I’ve prayed those words many times in my own life. For me, they are said most often when something has happened in my life that is no doubt part of God’s plan, but maybe wasn’t part of my plan. The prayer usually goes something like “God, I do believe in you…but things didn’t go like I planned. Help my unbelief in your greater plan.”
Today’s Gospel reminds me of a great scene from the movie we all know and love, Rudy. Rudy is praying in the Basilica before learning whether his last-chance application for admission to Notre Dame was accepted, and Father Cavanaugh walks up and sits down with him. Rudy comments to Fr. Cavanaugh, “Maybe I haven’t prayed enough.” Fr. Cavanaugh laughs and says, “I’m sure that’s not the problem. Praying is something we do in our time. The answers come in God’s time.” Like Rudy in this scene, I believe in God, I pray to him daily and I believe God is guiding me in my life. But often, my “unbelief” creeps in, and I need help accepting God’s plan, especially if the answers I am seeking come in God’s time, and not necessarily in my time.
There are those among us that cannot even begin like the father in today’s Gospel by saying: “I do believe…” because they don’t believe. Yet our actions can sometimes show that we are believers, even if we do not confess our beliefs. Our acts of charity, of kindness, cry out: “Help my unbelief!” As we know, God offers his love and help to all of us, we just need to accept it
God, we do believe in you, but in times of doubt and despair, help our unbelief!
Prayer
Lord of life, through sin and lack of faith we become cold and lifeless. Help our faith to grow ever stronger, believing that Jesus, who is the resurrection, will raise us up from the death of sin to new and vibrant life.
Saint of the Day
Venerable Augustus Tolton is a remarkable example of a man who overcame great odds and institutional racism to become a priest. Fr. Augustus Tolton is one of six Black Americans, including Julia Greeley, Thea Bowman and Pierre Toussaint, who are on the path towards officially being recognized as saints in the Roman Catholic Church. Fr. Augustus does not yet have an official feast day, so he is featured today in celebration of Black History Month.
Augustus was born to Catholic parents in 1854 in Missouri, which was then a slave state. During the Civil War, Augustus' father escaped into the Union Army and fought for freedom. Augustus' mother fled with her children, crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois, which was a free state.
Augustus and his family settled in Quincy, Illinois, which had a substantial Catholic population. Fr. Peter McGirr, an Irish priest, enrolled Augustus in the local Catholic school during the winter. Even in this abolitionist town, many of the parishioners objected to Fr. McGirr's inclusion of a black child in the predominantly white school. Fr. McGirr and Augustus were undeterred, however, and Fr. McGirr instructed Augustus at the school and tutored him individually, preparing him for seminary.
With McGirr's support, Augustus studied at the Franciscan Quincy University. He was rejected from every American seminary. But Augustus worked at becoming fluent in Italian and attended the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome. In Rome, Augustus was finally ordained a priest in 1886, when he was thirty-one. His first Mass was said at St. Peter's Basilica on Easter Sunday 1886. Augustus expected to be sent to Africa, but he was sent back to America, to his hometown of Quincy.
Soon, Fr. Augustus was sent to Chicago, where he developed the "national parish" of Black American Catholics, St. Monica's Catholic Church, on the South Side of Chicago. St. Katharine Drexel was one of the philanthropists who contributed to its construction. From thirty founding parishioners, in 1889, who met before the church even had its own building, St. Monica's grew rapidly after its opening in 1891 to a bustling urban church with over 600 parishioners. On July 8, 1897, at the young age of forty-three, Fr. Augustus collapsed and died as a result of the Chicago heat wave. Fr. Augustus was lovingly buried in the priest's lot of St. Peter's, back in his hometown of Quincy.
In 2010, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago announced that he was beginning an official process to open Tolton's cause for canonization. On February 13, 2012, the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints granted Tolton the title "Servant of God." On June 12, 2019 Pope Francis advanced his cause with a "Decree of Heroic Virtue," granting him the title of "Venerable." The next step in his canonization would be beatification, which would grant him the title of "Blessed."
Venerable Augustus Tolton, the first black Roman Catholic priest of the United States—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of Venerable Augustus Tolton is in the public domain. Last accessed December 5, 2024 on Wikimedia Commons.
