Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius December 11, 2016 Spiritual Ponderings Reflecting on the Gift of Faith
Being open to the gift of faith.
1. Keep It Simple – It is About Relationship One afternoon I was having lunch with my niece who was in the third grade. I decided to have a little fun with her and so I asked her “what sound does a dog make?”
She gave me a look that let me know that she knew the answer to my question but at the same time did not quite trust me. She responded “woof,” and I congratulated her for getting the first question correct.
I then asked her what sound did a cat make and she responded “meow.” I again congratulated her for getting two questions right in a row.
I next asked her what sound did a duck make and she responded promptly “quack.”
Finally after another moment of congratulating her for getting three questions right in a row, I asked her to tell me what sound a mouse makes. Without hesitating my niece responded “squeak.” I then informed her that she was wrong and that a mouse does not say “squeak” but rather “click.” She paused for a moment and began to laugh as a look of comprehension came over her face. She realized that I went from talking about a “mouse” as an animal to talking about a “mouse” as a piece of computer hardware. I enjoyed watching my niece come to the understanding that I had shifted paradigms from animals to computer hardware.
In a similar way Jesus Christ came to change the way we think about our relationship with God. Before the coming of Jesus religion and faith was about pleasing the gods and goddesses in order to keep them happy because if they were happy they might in return reward a person with what that person asked or begged for them to give that person. If a person did not do a good job in keeping the gods and goddesses happy then they might choose to leave that person or worse decide to punish a person. This is the basic plot behind most of the Heracles stories, the Odyssey, the Iliad, and other great works of Greek and Roman mythology. The gods and goddesses of the nations and cultures that surrounded the nation of Israel worked in a very similar fashion. If they were happy then a person might receive a blessing but heaven help a person if their gods and goddesses were not happy and decided to take their wrath out upon a person.
Jesus brings with Him a monumental paradigm shift that most people over look. Our God, the one true God, is a loving Father who loves us and desires to be with us. We do not have to earn God’s love but instead Jesus tells us that we must remain in God’s love (John 8 and John 15:5). This is truly Good News because love that is earned is not love at all. We can thus refocus our energy and attention away from the idea of trying to get God to like us and instead focus on deepening our relationship with God.
How does one go about deepening one’s relationship with God? It is not as complicated as one might think. If you wanted to meet someone new, the first thing you might do is go up and talk to that person. The more you share and discuss things with the person the more you learn about him or her. The same is true about God but instead of talking with God we pray to God. The content is the same.
The second thing a person might do to get to know another person is to read a book about him or her. As Catholics we are blest to have the ultimate book about God the Sacred Scriptures a.k.a. the Bible. Catholics believe that God in an amazing way inspired the Bible to come into being. This was not done in Catholic opinion through divine dictation but rather through the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit over centuries. The Bible is in a sense a love letter from God to us His people. By learning more about God’s writings and what they contain we get to know about God’s personality, His likes and dislikes, etc.
The third thing we might do to get to know someone new is do an activity with that person. So what type of activities does God do? When John the Baptist was beginning to doubt whether Jesus was the messiah or not he sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the messiah. Jesus’ response is not to simply say “yes” or “no” but rather He describes His daily routine to John’s disciples: “
Jesus said to them in reply, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.
And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me” (Matthew 11:4b-6). So what is God doing all day? He is serving others and this is why service is always an important part of the Catholic Faith.
The next thing a person might do in order to get to know someone better is to have a meal with them and their family. God invites us to join Him for a family meal every week when He requests our present each week at Sunday Mass. We can learn a lot about God by learning a lot about the different people that He calls family.
Faith therefore is about deepening our relationship with God through prayer, reading Scripture, acts of service and participating in God’s family meals. If a person commits to doing the preceding four things one is will discover him or herself to be well on their way to not only being open to receiving the gift of faith from God but also to nurturing that same gift.