Just what my mom always told me

She always said to not expect praise for just doing what you were supposed to do.

And that's pretty much what Our Lord told his disciples in yesterday's Gospel. First, they said, "Lord, increase our faith", and he replied: "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,you would say to this mulberry tree,'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you."

I believe the contrapositive would then be, "If you can't make that tree uproot itself into the ocean, then you don't have faith even as big as a mustard seed."

Certainly, Jesus was using hyperbole. But still, this tells me how incredibly small my faith is; trees definitely don't uproot themselves on my command.

But in this Gospel, Jesus seems to be saying that it doesn't matter. We don't need faith so powerful that we could make trees jump up and down at our command; we don't need to make His creation serve us. The only thing we must do is to serve and obey Our Lord. If we keep on faithfully serving, obeying, forgiving, and loving, then that is faith enough. We don't need more faith; we just need to live out the faith that we do have.

And then, Jesus says, we oughtn't to expect all kinds of rewards and accolades just for doing what we should.

Just like my mom always told me.