Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius December 18, 2016 Spiritual Ponderings Reflecting on the Gift of Faith
Let us continue with our reflections on being open to receive the gift of faith.
2. God’s Time I am a big fan of shopping online. The only drawback as far as I am concern is that I have to wait for the package to be delivered and the delivery driver will only tell me that he or she will be coming between this time to this time. Knowing this I must wait for the package to arrive to accept it or risk the delivery driver coming while I am not present and taking the package back with him or her. God in many ways is like the delivery driver, we only knows that God promises to give us the gift of faith and so we much be ready at all times to receive the gift of faith and the graces He wishes to bestow upon us.
Jesus warns us that God will come when we least expect Him like a thief in the night (Luke 12:39) or a bridegroom coming when we least expect Him (Matthew 25). We must therefore behave as a person of faith in the morning, evening and night no matter what day of the week or month it is.
3. Be Authentic In the Gospel of Luke when Peter meets Jesus for the first time, Jesus encourages Peter to put out into deep water and to lower his fishing nets one last time. Peter, reluctantly, lowers his fishing nets and catches a sizable load of fish. Peter, realizing that there is something more to the man standing in front of him than appears declared to Jesus that he, Peter, is a sinful person. Jesus does not respond by leaving Peter behind but rather Jesus invites Peter to be his coworker: “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” (Luke 5:10b).
To be a person of faith in the Catholic faith starts off with not a proclamation of how great we are but rather with a declaration of our need for a savior. The Church in the Liturgy of the Hours begins her prayer with the acclamation “God come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.” We start our Eucharistic celebration by acknowledging our sinfulness and praising God for His mercy in the Pentitential Rite. We have four Sacraments (Baptism, Eucharist, Reconciliation, and Anointing of the Sick) that are focused on the forgiveness of our sins.
Catholics admit that we are not angels but at the same time we are not demons. We are a unique, strange, and mysterious being. We are creatures who strive to do the good but sometimes end up doing the wrong thing. We are creatures with bodies but we also have a soul and free will. Our God desires to be with us as we grow.
4. Understand the Goal of Faith “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:16-18). Jesus came to bring about salvation which might be better understood as developing proper or right relationship with God and others.
Our world today often presents the image of heaven to us as the fulfillment of our every material desire, like all the ice-cream we can eat without getting fat, all the praise and adulations that our egos can desire, and all of our physical pleasures lasting forever.
Heaven though is about being in a place where God receives His due for being God and each of us is loved by God and others for simply being ourselves. It is a place where we do not have to worry about whether or not we are loved for we will know in a very real way that we are loved beyond measure. At the same time we will love others and ourselves with our whole being.
Catholics strive to bring about the Kingdom of God here on earth by striving to fulfill the greatest commandment: “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.’”
Another way of looking at the goal of our Catholic faith is through the eyes of St. Irenaeus of Lyon who declared: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” As Catholics we believe that God did not have to create human beings but He chose to out of love. This means that our God wants what is best for us and what is best for us is that we reach our full potential. God is like a master artist and we are His works of art. When a person praises a painting or a sculpture that same person is ultimately praising the artist who painted the painting or who sculpted the sculptor. Our God has no desire to hold us back out of jealousy because creation cannot compete with God just as a piece of art cannot compete with the artist that created it. Heaven therefore can also be described as a place where everyone has reached their fulfillment.
5. Understand the Value of Community Many Protestants ask the question “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” For Catholics there is a fundamental error in the logic of the preceding question. Instead of asking “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” Catholics should ask themselves “Have I accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior?” because Catholics believe that we are saved as a community as a Church.
One of the very first things Jesus did when He began His public ministry was call people to join Him as His disciples, in the midst of His ministry Jesus sent His disciples out two by two, and finally even the great missionary Apostle St. Paul did not go it alone. He began his ministry with Barnabas and eventually recruited others included Timothy, Titus, Luke, and others in his missionary ministry.
People who are most open to receiving the gift of faith are those who have good role models in the faith, mentors to walk with them on faith’s journey or belong to a support group of some sort. It is similar to a child who receives a multi-person board game but has no one to play with it. They will eventually lose interest in the board game.