October 7, 2001

As a young man, Peter Gray had a overwhelming desire to play major league baseball. So strongly did he believe in himself, that he puled out all the stops to reach his goal. "I am going to make it all the way to the top!" He repeated this over and over again. His crowning ambition was to play a game at Yankee Stadium. In 1945, Peter Gray realized his ambition and goal. He played major league baseball for the St. Louis Browns. His career lasted but a year. He was not a regular and never hit a home run. Despite such meager statistics, many say he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. His achievement was nothing short of miraculous. He had but one arm!

Peter Gray is a testimony to the power of faith. He could never have accomplised what he did without a strong and deep faith in his ability to achieve an impossible dream.

A series of experiments was conducted by Harvard psychologist, Robert Rosenthal, in the mid-1960's, with a group of above average students and a group of below average students. He told the teachers of the below average achievers that their students were the cream of the crop, the best and the brightest, and definitely above average. Because these teachers believed their students to be extraordinary, they tested them accordingly, and the results at the end of the year was a classroom filled with A plus students.

It makes one wonder about the remarkable turnaround that could occur in apparently untalented people if only they had a teacher or friend or even family member who believed in them, who believed they could excel, who had faith in their ability to accomplish something perceived as beyond their reach. Just as faith in oneslef can often work miracles, so can faith in others do the same.

Jesus says in today's Gospel that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we could tell the tree to be uprooted and transplanted into the sea and it would obey. Peter Gray and those teachers in the experiment may not have transplanted the trees into the sea, but what they were able to accomplish with faith was no less extraordinary.

SO THE QUESTION: WHAT IS IT ABOUT FAITH THAT GIVES IT SUCH POWER?

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