The Smallness of Great Faith

Reflection for July 5, 2026 — Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us that God has hidden knowledge from the proud and the learned, revealing it instead to those who are meek and humble. Find today’s readings here.

My children attend Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) for their faith formation. Because of its Montessori basis, CGS atriums, which are something like classrooms, contain lots of objects made from real materials — authentic glass, wood, and ceramic.

This is a polite way of saying there are lots of breakable things in there.

So when my four-year-old entered the atrium on her first day of CGS, my whole body tensed, wondering what she would shatter first. I had to restrain myself from crying out, “Don’t touch anything!” She spotted the prayer table — the low, wooden stand which holds an open Bible, candles, a vase with flowers and a statue of the Good Shepherd. It’s the centerpiece of every atrium.

She knelt before the table. She made the sign of the cross. And she sat there, still and silent.

I stopped dead in my tracks. How had she known to come here? And where did she learn to make the sign of the cross? (Obviously we’ve tried to teach her, but she does it wrong every time!) And why was she sitting there so quietly, so expectantly, in front of a book she can’t read?

 A thought came to me so clearly: Well, Colleen, you can read that book. But can you understand it?

It is so easy for us to forget that great faith does not require great intelligence. It does not require great knowledge of the world and its workings. Great faith does not require the believer to possess any answers.

Great faith only requires the believer to know his own smallness.

©LPi