Fr. Michael Williams

At the priests conference I attended recently one of the speakers, an exorcist, gave a talk entitled ‘Decrease in Faith Increase in Occultism’. He said in societies where faith in God has decreased (and ours is one of them) there is an increase in superstitious practices, such as witchcraft, tarot cards, séances, rieke. The priest told us because of people turning to these practices his workload and the workload of his colleagues has increased dramatically as people seek to be delivered from the superstitions they have been tricked into taking up.

This fits in with one of GK Chesterton’s famous quotes: ‘When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything’. People who turn away from God always turn to something else to try and replace Him with; but nothing can replace God for He has made us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him (St. Augustine).

As believers we have to be constantly on our guard to ensure that our faith does not decrease. In fact like those first Apostles we need to ask the Lord constantly, ‘Increase our faith’. If our Faith is not increasing it is decreasing. Faith cannot stand still. By being given our Faith ‘we have been trusted to look after something precious’.

It’s consoling for us to know that the Lord’s first apostles said to the Lord: ‘Increase our faith’. Many times the Apostles had struggled to understand what the ways of faith in the Lord entailed. They suffered trials and tribulations and ridicule. So did the prophet Habbakuk whom we heard say today, ‘How long, Lord, am I to cry for help’. Trials can be times when our faith gets stronger and purer. If we turn to the Lord in a trial our faith can become stronger.

Ultimately, our Faith is ‘growing in friendship with God’ as Pope Benedict recently told the young people at St Mary’s College, Twickenam. He said: ‘As you come to know God better, you find you want to reflect something of His infinite goodness in your own life...You begin to feel compassion for people in difficulties and you are eager to do something to help them’. An increase in Faith is an increase in friendship with God. The saints are often called the friends of God and so they are. We too are friends of God that is why we are here today.

So let’s pray that the Lord will increase our Faith, and thus deepen our friendship with Him.