Do you realize how often our Scripture readings tell us about the utter importance of faith? “It is your faith that has saved you.” Or: “We are saved by faith, not by works.” Or: Jesus, looking at the 4 men carrying the paralytic on a pallet, “saw their faith and said to the man, your sins are forgiven.” Today we heard, “Through faith all of you are children of God in Christ Jesus.” And we heard Peter’s solemn profession of faith when he answers Jesus’ question, Who do you say that I am? Peter’s profession of faith is, “You are the Christ of God.”
Faith. What is it? What does the Church teach about faith?
First of all, let’s look at what faith is not. Faith in Catholic teaching is not my opinion, or your opinion, on any particular topic. Faith in Catholic teaching is not one idea among a marketplace of ideas. Faith in Catholic teaching is not an ideology competing among other ideologies.
So, what is faith? Faith in Catholic teaching is a response to God’s invitation in Jesus to know that God addresses us as friends and wants us to be in His own company, to abide in Him, to know Him and to know His love.
Faith in Catholic teaching is being in such a relationship with God that we want to submit our intellect and our will to God. God will never force this relationship on anyone; that’s why every person must come to the point of decision about where they stand with God. Once that decision is made in the affirmative, then the believer freely submits to the Word of God and the teachings of His Church in what is called “the obedience of faith.” The pivotal turning point for freely submitting one’s intellect and will is the decision one makes that the Word that has been heard is the truth, guaranteed by God Himself to be the truth, because God is Truth itself. This relationship with God that we call faith cannot be separated from believing in the One He has sent, His Beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased, and who won for us our salvation, and who defined Himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life.
This decision to believe, to truly and deeply believe is a most authentic human act. It is not contrary to reason and human freedom to trust in God and to cling to the truths He has revealed, no more than a husband and wife will believe in each other and trust each other. But our submission in faith of necessity seeks understanding. Humbly we stand before God and submit to the Truth He reveals in Jesus Christ, but it is intrinsic to faith that believers will desire to know better the One in whom they have put their trust. Faith in Catholic teaching necessarily includes the desire to understand better what God has revealed in Christ so that a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love.
Aye-ya-yai! Here’s where people either never mature in their faith or even lose their faith: by not responding to the invitation. Other things occupy the mind and heart and soul so they put off entering into such a relationship with God so that they cannot submit their intellect and will to God. Remember the parable of Jesus about the sower and the seed. Some of the seed falls on hard ground. Some falls on rocky soil and has no depth. And some falls among thorns and gets choked off as it grows. And some seed falls into good soil and produces quite the harvest.
I want to close with a most important, essential fact about faith in Catholic teaching: it’s this, and I quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that “believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent Him for our salvation, is necessary for obtaining that salvation.” We all know people, and maybe sometimes even we ourselves, who are tested in faith, weak in faith; but it is a priceless gift; and we can lose this priceless gift. It causes me great grief, even to the point of tears, to hear of how lightly some take this gift of faith, or rarely practice it, or sometimes even seem to despise it. To live and grow and persevere in the faith until our last breath, we must nourish it with the Word of God, by a lively prayer life, and by the weekly sustenance of the Holy Eucharist.
To lose our faith would be our worst nightmare; but to persevere in our faith to our last breath is . . . heaven!
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