FAITH IS a very rich virtue. Much like the virtue of charity it has many definitions. Faith in God means to believe, to trust and to obey Him. St. Thomas Aquinas calls faith the door to spiritual life. It is the door to our relationship with God.
One of
the definitions of faith in the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that,
“Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time,
and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed.
As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs
from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly
to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to
place such faith in a creature (both humans and created things).” (CCC
150)
We
practice faith in our everyday life and oftentimes we are not aware of
it. We have faith in a jeepney driver that he would drive us safely to
our intended destination. We have faith in a restaurant where we eat,
that the food served is safe to consume. We have faith in our barber or
hairdresser, that he or she would cut our hair according to our
instructions. Faith is important in our dealings with others otherwise we
would not interact with anyone nor go out of the house anymore because we trust
no one.
Faith
in God is not just a belief that He exists because even the demons do
that. “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons
believe that—and shudder.” (James 2:19) But it is also trusting in
God’s goodness who has previously shown love and care for us on many
occasions.
And it
is continually trusting in Him even at times we could not understand what He
does in our lives especially when we suffer because we trust that it is for our
good (see Romans 8:28). Even without the Bible telling us that God
is someone who is good, we could ascertain it from the way the universe was created.
The
universe was made with order, beauty and with provisions to live in it, such as
water, the air we breathe, sources of food, etc. If someone gives
you a nice gift or provides you with the basic needs in life you can conclude
that this person is good and that he or she loves you and cares for
you.
After
having trusted God as a Person, it will simply follow that we should also trust
His teachings. Belief in God’s teachings through the Word of
God or the Bible for example does not mean we don’t use our intelligence
anymore and just accept all His teachings by heart.
An
example would be God revealing to us that He is a Being composed of Three
Persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit which is something
we can analyze, appreciate and later on decide to believe or make an act of
faith to believe. Or God’s teachings on the afterlife of Heaven, Hell and
Purgatory that we would have not known unless God revealed these to
us.
These
teachings are not contrary to reason because they appeal to our intellect
precisely because they are reasonable or they make sense and because God is the
God of Truth or even more accurately, He is Truth Himself (John 14:6).
Nevertheless, it would also mean that we could not totally understand these teachings
in complete detail in this life because these are mysteries, and can only be
fully understood in the next life. Faith comes when we trust what we
can’t fully know.
Lastly,
faith in God also means obedience to Him and to His
commandments. Obedience means our faith is not just in words but
most importantly in deeds.
“As the
body without spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” (James
2:26) God’s Ten Commandments and The Beatitudes are an expression of His
character. God’s nature is goodness, kindness, love, justice, mercy,
humility, generosity, chastity, etc. The goal is to become like God
through obedience (imitating Christ’s obedience to the Father) so as to share
in God’s Divine Life partially here on earth and fully later on in heaven. “Now
faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
No comments:
Post a Comment