When our Lord posed the haunting question, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”, He did not pose it as a riddle, nor merely as prophecy, but as a mirror held before our hearts. It is not faith in the abstract He seeks, as if counting theological knowledge  or measuring church attendance, but the kind of faith that breathes, wrestles, and walks with God when the world goes dim.

It is easy enough, is it not, to believe in the light when all is bright? A child believes the sun will rise, not because he’s studied astronomy, but because it always has. But the Christian faith is tested not by the sunrise but by the silence of midnight. Will we still believe when the world mocks, when prayers go unanswered, when suffering strikes without explanation?

Faith is not merely assent to a creed. Fallen angels do that, and tremble. No, the faith Christ longs to find is that defiant trust—a love-soaked loyalty—that looks full in the face of suffering and still whispers, “Jesus, I trust in you.” It is the faith of Abraham climbing Mount Moriah, of Daniel kneeling before open windows, of the Virgin Mary keeping all these things in her heart.

We must not mistake familiarity for faith. There are many who have grown up going to Mass each Sunday whose hearts remain untouched by the burning presence of God.

So, the question returns, echoing across centuries: Will He find faith?

Let us not imagine that He is asking whether we have tidy answers or triumphant ministries. He is asking whether He will find hearts—wounded perhaps, weary certainly—but still turned toward Him. Will He find men and women who have not bowed to the golden idols of ease and spectacle, who have not traded the scandal of the cross for the applause of the world?

If He finds even a mustard seed of such faith, it will be enough. For faith, in the end, is not the achievement of the strong but the desperate clinging of the weak to the One who is strong. And perhaps it is precisely in our clinging, trembling and uncertain though it may be, that Christ sees the echo of His own steadfastness in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yes, He asked the question. But it is we who must answer it with our lives. And when He comes, oh glorious terror, oh splendid hope, may He find us not with explanations, but with open hands, lifted eyes, and hearts still burning.