Faith

In the last several posts, we have spoken of Divine Revelation, which is God's revealing of Himself to us.  There are two sources of Revelation; Sacred Scripture, and Sacred Tradition.   We devoted the last several posts to Sacred Scripture, and we may speak more of Tradition in future posts.  Tradition is basically the apostolic tradition of transmitting the faith via Christ's apostles and their successors, the Bishops, in their teaching, and in the life and worship of the Church that they preside over.

Now we have to discuss our response to that Revelation, which is called faith.   The Catechism lists several distinguishing features of faith.

1) Faith is a submission of intellect and will to God (p.143), and to all God has revealed (p.150).  It is not just belief in God, but belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit as the Third Person of the Trinity.
2) Faith is a grace (p.153).   We referred to this before when we spoke of the theological virtue of faith.  It is an infused supernatural virtue.  
3) At the same time, faith is a human act (p.154).   We have to cooperate with the grace of faith for it to have effect.
4) Faith is certain (p.157).   It is founded on God, who cannot lie. 
5) Faith seeks understanding (p.158).  This is the motto of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the patron of the college I went to.  Faith leads us to want to know God better.  One way of coming to know God better is through study and learning (which we alluded to when we spoke of ways of coming to know God in a previous post.)
6) Faith cannot contradict science (p.159).   God created the natural world, and all her systems, and also is the source and object of Divine Revelation.   It would go against His nature to contradict Himself between the two systems.
7) Faith must be free, it cannot be forced (p.160).  Faith is a free gift, thus it must be freely received.  God does not force us to believe, nor should we force others to believe.  We should invite them to believe, and show reasons by logic and the way we live our lives, but it cannot be forced. Some adherers of other religions in the world today should heed this point a lot better.
8) Faith is necessary (p.161).  One must believe in Jesus in order to be saved.   "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on them."  (John 3:36)  What if one dies without believing in Jesus?  Is he or she definitely lost?  Well, we do need to pray for them hard, absolutely, but (and these are my thoughts only) perhaps the person never heard the Gospel, or was given a bad example of what being Christian is, and so that person would have believed were circumstances different, and now that he or she sees Jesus in all His truth, love, and beauty, now accepts Him, and is saved.  Having said this, however, we should never presume we will have time to accept Jesus "later", and/or that because one or more Christians we know failed to live up to the ideal, Jesus is not real, and therefore, we do not have to believe in Him.  I'll just say this; if we make it to heaven, we will believe in Jesus, and we will believe in what the Catholic Church teaches. 
9) We must persevere in faith (p.162).   We can lose the gift of faith, contrary to what some Christian denominations teach.   We have to nourish the gift with prayer, the Sacraments, and living a good moral life.
10) Faith is the beginning of eternal life (p.163).   Through faith, we begin and grow in our relationship with the Triune God, and thus, we get a small taste of what the beatific vision is like.  In heaven, we see God "face to face".   Faith will turn to sight at that point.  Until then, though, we have the promises and blessings of that relationship, even if we cannot see or understand Him fully.
11) Faith is not an isolated act, we cannot believe alone (p.166).   We receive the gift of faith from God, but through other people.  We should hand it on and support others in their faith journey.  The Church, founded by Our Lord, believed before we did, and so the Church (the Magisterium and all her faithful) helps nourish and sustain our faith.
12) Faith is beyond formulations, but we can use them to help approach the realities they signify (p.170).   For example, the object of our faith is not the Doctrine of the Trinity, but the reality the Doctrine points to.  The Trinity is ultimately beyond human words, but the words used in the formulation of the Doctrine help us to understand, live, and celebrate it better.
13) There is only one faith (p.172).   Over the many centuries, there have been many different languages, cultures, and peoples that have confessed the faith, and there have been different ways of expressing it, as a result.  However, what is confessed is the same.  There is one Lord, one faith, and one Baptism.

In future posts, we will speak more about the rich content of the faith, expressed in its fullness in the Creed that we profess at Mass every Sunday.  For now, let us simply thank God for this gift.  God, who reveals to us things we could never know, and invites us to a destiny we could never dream of, invites us to relationship first through this gift of faith, and then opens it up more and more throughout our lives not just with this gift, but with the other infused virtues of hope and charity.

Joseph exercised the gift of faith when he believed the prophetic message of the angel, even though she was pregnant with a child not his own.   This act of faith, and others after it, led to the survival of Jesus, which led to the Paschal Mystery, which became the source of our salvation.  Let us, like Joseph and Mary, exercise this wonderful, precious gift, and become all we are destined to be in God's eyes. 

And let us share it with others!

Joseph, most faithful, pray for us.