119. Faith in its broadest sense is
a central reality in Filipino life. It is an everyday “natural” factor in all
our human relationships and daily actions. For example, in accepting the word
of others, we already show our faith (paniniwala)
in them. We readily obey the directions of those over us, at home, at work, in
our communities (pagsunod). We even
entrust ourselves and our welfare to others: doctors, teachers, judges, civic
leaders, not to mention cooks, jeepney drivers, etc. Without such basic human faith which includes believing
acceptance, obedient action and personal entrusting, human life would be
impossible. Faith as a human reality,
therefore, is central to our daily lives.
120. For Filipinos, this can be
seen most clearly in our family life
and friendships. We grow up, nurtured
and supported by the trust, love and fidelity of our family. We mature through
a process of forming personal friendships, first as children, then as
teenagers, finally as adults. But in each case, there is a gradual revelation
of our own inner self to our friend, and a free acceptance of our friend’s
self-revelation. If this friendship is to grow and mature, it must include a
“turning toward” the other, a conversion. We acknowledge our need and trust in
the other’s friendship by listening to and identifying with our friend.
121. Filipinos do all this
spontaneously, naturally, but not without difficulty. Sometimes we turn away,
or refuse to listen, or are rejected by the other. But genuine friendships
create mutual loving knowledge of each other. In them we experience something that
liberates us from our own narrowness, and opens us to fuller life and love. We
realize that friendship freely offered us by another, also demands our free response.
It is a response that is never just one act, but a long process of growing intimacy with our friend. Inevitably, others
among our families and associates are eventually involved. Especially God.
II. FAITH IN GOD
122. Faith in God is grounded in
God’s own revelation through his words and deeds in salvation history. It is
confirmed by the many reasons for believing that have been worked out
throughout the centuries, responding to the biblical challenge: “Always be
ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope”
(1 Pt 3:15).
A. Characteristics of Christian
Faith
Total and Absolute
123. Already the Old Testament
contrasted faith “in man in whom there is
no salvation” with faith in “the Lord who made heaven and earth . . . who shall
reign forever” (cf. Ps 146:3,5-6,10; Jer
17:5-8). Only Faith in God calls for a total and absolute adherence (cf. CCC 150). Christ himself
provides, especially in his Passion, Death and Resurrection, the best example
of this total and absolute commitment to God.
Trinitarian
124. For us Christians, Faith is our adherence to the Triune God
revealed through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is our friendship with Christ and
through Christ with the Father, in their Holy Spirit. Through Christ’s
witness to his Father in his teaching, preaching, miracles, and especially in
his Passion, Death and Resurrection, we come to believe in Christ our Savior,
in the Father, and in the Holy Spirit sent into our hearts. Our Faith as
Catholics, then, consists in our personal conviction
and belief in God our Father,
revealed by Jesus Christ, His own divine Son-made-man, and their presence to us
through the Holy Spirit, in the Church (cf.
PCP II 64; CCC 151-52).
Loving, Maturing and Missionary
125. Our Christian Faith is truly
life-giving and mature only through love, for “the man without love has known
nothing of God, for God is love” (1 Jn
4:8). And to be Christian, this love must be inseparably love of God
and love of neighbor, like Christ’s. It thus impels us to mission, to
evangelize, by bringing others the Good News (cf. 1 Cor 9:16).
Such a missionary spirit is the test of
authentic Faith because it is unthinkable that a person should believe in
Christ’s Word and Kingdom without bearing witness and proclaiming it in his
turn (cf. EN 24; PCP II 67-71, 402).
This means we are all called to share in Christ’s own three-fold mission as
priest, prophet and king (cf. PCP II
116-21; LG 10-13).
Informed and Communitarian
126. PCP
II insists that
Catholic Faith must be “informed,” that is “believing
Jesus’ words, and accepting his teachings, trusting that he has “the words of
eternal life” (cf. Jn 6:68; NCDP 147).
It must be “communitarian” since it is the Church that transmits to us
Christ’s revelation through Sacred Scripture and its living Tradition, and
alone makes possible for us an adequate faith-response (cf. PCP II 65).
Inculturated
127. This Catholic faith in God and
in Jesus Christ is never separated from the typical Filipino faith in family and
friends. On the one hand, we
live out our faith in God precisely in our daily relationships with family,
friends, fellow workers, etc. On the other
hand, each of these is radically affected by our Catholic Faith in God
our Father, in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Savior, and in their
Holy Spirit dwelling within us in grace. “This is how all will know you for my
disciples: your love for one another” (Jn
13:35; cf. PCP II 72-73,
162, 202-11).
B. The Three Essential
Dimensions of Faith
128. Vatican II explains this
faith-response as follows: “By faith man freely commits his entire self to God,
making ‘the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals,’ and
willingly assenting to the Revelation given by Him” (DV 5). Christian Faith, then, touches every part of us: our minds (believing), our wills (doing), and our hearts (trusting). Let us briefly examine each
aspect in turn.
Believing
129. Faith involves our basic
convictions as Christians. “For if you confess with your lips that
Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead; you
will be saved” (Rom 10:9). John sums
up his Gospel with: “These things have been recorded to help you believe that
Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, so that through this faith you may have
life in his name” (Jn 20: 31).
Faith, then, is knowing, but not mere
“head knowledge” of some abstract truths. It is like the deep knowledge we have
of our parents, or of anyone we love dearly. Christian Faith, then, is personal knowledge of Jesus Christ
as “my Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28). Christ solemnly assures
each of us: “Here I stand knocking at the door. If anyone hears me calling and
opens the door, I will enter his house, and have supper with him, and he with
me” (Rv 3:20).
Doing
130. But besides believing, faith
is also doing. As St. James writes:
“My brothers, what good is it to profess faith without practicing it?” (Jas 2:14).
Christ himself taught: “None of those who cry out ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the
Kingdom of God, but only the one who does
the will of my Father in heaven” (Mt
7:21). Faith, then, is a commitment to follow (obey) God’s
will for us. This we see exemplified in Mary’s “I am the servant of the Lord.
Let it be done to me as you say” (Lk 1:38).
PCP
II brings out this “doing” dimension of faith as “witnessing” through
“loving service” of our needy neighbors. In our concrete situation,
particularly urgent is the call for: 1) deeds of justice and love; and 2) for
protecting and caring for our endangered earth’s environment (cf. PCP II 78-80).
131. Of course, we realize that we
often do not do what we affirm in
faith. But this awareness of our failures emphasizes all the more the essential
place of behavior in authentic Christian Faith. It also makes us more conscious
of our need for Christ’s Spirit to live out our faith in our actions. “For
apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn
15:5). “Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God
to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who
moves the heart and converts it to God” (DV
5).
Entrusting/Worshipping
132. Beyond believing and doing,
faith is also entrusting oneself into
God’s hands. Abraham, our father in
faith, at God’s command left everything to set out for a foreign land. Against
all human odds Moses trusted Yahweh
to free the Hebrews from their slavery in Egypt. In the New Testament, Jesus worked signs and cures only with
those who trusted in him. He promised the possessed boy’s father: “Everything
is possible to a man who trusts” (Mk 9:23).
133. Faith, then, is from the
heart __ the loving,
trusting, and hoping in the Lord that comes from God’s own love flooding our
hearts. This trusting Faith “lives and grows through prayer and worship” __ personal heartfelt
conversation with God that is the opposite of mindless, mechanical repetition
of memorized formulas. Genuine personal
prayer and group prayer find both their inspirational
source and summit of perfection
in the Liturgy, the Catholic community’s official public Trinitarian
worship of the Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the Holy Spirit (cf. PCP II 74-77).
C. Faith and Three Classic
Questions
134. These three aspects of our Christian Faith __ believing,
doing, prayerful trusting __
respond to the three classical questions posed to every person in life, and to St. Augustine’s famous
triple definition of faith. To the question “What can I know?”
Christian faith responds that we can know
God as Our Father and Christ as Our Lord (credere Deum/Christum). “Know that we belong to God . . . that the
Son of God has come and has given us discernment to recognize the One who is true”
(1 Jn 5:19-20). Pagkilala
sa Ama, sa Anak at sa Espiritu Santo.
135. “What
should I do?” is answered curtly by “Keep His commandments” (1 Jn 2:3), which means to “love in deed
and truth and not merely talk about it” (1 Jn 3:18). This demands acting on
the credibility of God’s teachings in
Christ as true and dependable (credere
Deo/Christo).
136. Finally,
to the question “What may we hope for?” Christian Faith celebrates in prayer
and sacrament the unshakeable hope that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities,
neither the present nor the future, nor powers; neither height nor depth nor
any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes
to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).
In brief, this hope means to believe in God “with your whole heart, with your
whole soul, and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37), entrusting ourselves to
Him in love (credere in Deum/Christum).
D. Faith
and Salvation
137. But faith is not some “answer
box” __ it is not some
“thing” we have, keep, and own. Rather, real faith is a force within us
that by the power of Christ’s Holy Spirit
gradually works a transformation in our daily thoughts, hopes, attitudes and
values.
In religious
terms, we know that faith is necessary for salvation __ it is the “beginning of
our salvation” (cf. Trent, ND 1935; CCC
161). For “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6). From experience we realize that faith brings us fuller life which can be described by three basic values: genuine personal maturity, freedom and happiness.
Maturity
138. Faith is a growth in personal maturity because it helps us
“put childish ways aside” (1 Cor 13:11). It develops a basic
honesty in us before God and man by making us aware of the sacrifices demanded
by authentic human love. It grounds our own self-identity in the fact that we
are sons and daughters of the Father, redeemed by the Blood of Christ our
Savior, and inspired by their indwelling Holy Spirit.
Freedom
139. Faith in Christ frees us from preferring “darkness
rather than light” (Jn 3:19), “the praise of men to the
glory of God” (Jn 12:43). Without faith in God, we are at the
mercy of “carnal allurements, enticements for the eye, the life of empty show”
so that “the Father’s love has no place in us” (1 Jn 2:15-16).
As Scripture warns us: “the world with its seductions is passing away, but the
man who does God’s will endures forever” (1
Jn 2:17).
Spiritual Joy
140. In so liberating us, faith in
Christ fosters the value of spiritual
joy. So Mary proclaimed: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Lk 1:46-47).
John the Baptist was “overjoyed” to hear Christ’s voice __ “that is my joy, and it is complete” (Jn 3:29).
Christ himself taught his disciples “so that my joy may be yours, and your joy
may be complete” (Jn 15:11), a “joy no one can take from you” (Jn 16:22).
For Christian Faith is our response to Christ’s “Good News,” lived in the
Spirit whose fruits are “love, joy, peace, patience, endurance, kindness,
generosity, faith, mildness and chastity” (Gal
5:22).
III. PARADOXICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FAITH
141. Christian Faith presents us
with a number of paradoxes that help us grasp its complex reality.
A. Certain, Yet Obscure
142. The first is that Faith is both most certain yet obscure (cf. CCC 157-58, 164). In common usage
we speak of “taking things on faith” when we are not sure. We live in a secular age where “to be sure” means being
able to prove it by experiment and “scientific” means. But this is a
rationalistic illusion. We have been “brainwashed” by our own creation of
today’s scientific technology.
143. As
Filipinos, we realize that none of our major personal decisions, nor our basic
ideals and attitudes towards life, freedom, love, etc. could ever be “proven” by scientific
experiment. Our family, our friends, our community, our vocation in life __ all depend on the vision,
inspiration and strength we call “faith”. It is the most “certain” of all we
know because it is the foundation upon which we build our lives. But how are we
sure of this “faith-foundation”?
144. Such
a sure foundation could never come from ourselves, or from other limited men or
women. It could never arise from some self-evident truth, or some logical deduction that compels assent (CCC 156). All these need to be, themselves, grounded on some
unshakeable foundation. Only the very Word of God could possibly offer such a
foundation. Faith is certain because it rests on God who reveals Himself in the
person of Jesus Christ, present to us in His Spirit. We are certain of
our Faith because it is our personally
committed loving knowledge based on the convincing
signs of God revealing Himself in Jesus Christ, and present to us in His
Church through word, service, fellowship, and sacrament.
145. But this certainty of Faith does not
mean everything is clear and obvious. On the contrary, we believe God is “Mystery”, that is, He is always more than we can ever fully comprehend. St. Paul teaches us: “Now
we see indistinctly, as in a mirror” (1
Cor 13:12). “We walk
by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). But this obscurity which we
experience even in our deepest human relations does not destroy faith’s
firmness. We instinctively recognize that persons, and especially the
all-personal God, can never be reduced to being “proven” by scientific
experiment.
B. Free, Yet Morally Obliging
146. Faith’s second paradox is that it is both free and morally
obliging (cf. CCC 160). Our
Christian Faith is a free response.
No one, not even God, forces us to believe.
God calls men to serve Him in Spirit and in truth.
Consequently they are bound to Him in conscience but not coerced. God has regard for the
dignity of the human person which He
himself created: the human person is to be guided by his own judgment and to
enjoy freedom (DH 11).
We Filipinos experience this paradoxical
combination of freedom and obligation in our family relationships and
friendships. Persons who love us the most have the most claim on us, yet force
us the least. We naturally respond to them in love. God, who by loving us the
most has the greatest claim on us, leaves and keeps us most free.
C. Reasonable, Yet Beyond Natural
Reason
147. A
third paradox is that Christian Faith
is both reasonable, yet more than natural reason (cf. CCC 155-56). Christian Faith is in no conflict with our
reason. On the contrary, only rational creatures can believe. Yet faith itself
is a grace that enlightens our minds. “Unless you believe, you will not
understand” (Augustine’s quote of Is
7:9). Our faith in Christ illumines our reason because we believe him who
claims “I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall ever walk in
darkness; no, he shall possess the light of life” (Jn 8:12; cf. Vatican
I, ND 135).
D. An Act, Yet a Process
148. A fourth paradox highlights Faith as both a particular act, yet
perseverance in a life-long process that is the beginning of eternal life (cf. CCC 162-63). John’s Gospel
declares: “Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and him whom
you have sent, Jesus Christ.” (Jn 17:3).
But this faith in Christ is much more than a single, personal decision for Christ. It is an enduring way
of life within the Christian community, the Church. In fact it is the principle of our new life in Christ, which gives us a foretaste of
life-with-him in heaven. St. Paul
wrote: “The life that I now live is not my own; Christ is living in me. I still
live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me
and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). Faith as “following
Christ” must be gradually and perseveringly developed so that it comes to touch
every aspect of our lives, throughout our whole lives.
E. A Gift, Yet Our Doing
149. Faith’s fifth paradox is that it is both a gift, a grace from God,
yet something
we do (cf. PCP II 68; CCC 153-55). It is a gift because “No one
can come to me,” Jesus said, “unless the Father who sent me draws him” (Jn 6:44).
St. Paul
confirms this: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). Our Christian Faith, then,
is not merely of our own doing. It depends upon God for two things: first,
God’s free gift of revealing Himself
throughout salvation history; second, for the grace of the Holy Spirit’s interior illumination and inspiration
which “gives to all joy in assenting to the truth and believing in it” (Vat. I, DS 3010; ND 120).
150. But God’s “gift” of faith
demands our free cooperation with others.
St. Paul
explains this: “Faith, then, comes through hearing, and what is heard is the
word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). Our hearing of Christ’s word
today depends on the preaching and teaching just as it did in the time of the
Apostles (cf. Mt 28:20; Acts 2:42; 4:25). This “hearing” means not only listening to the Word of God in Scripture
and to Church teaching. It also involves discerning
God’s presence to us through events in our lives, our companions, our inner
thoughts, yearnings and fears, etc. In brief, faith is also our active response to the witness to Christ and the
Gospel given us by others. This active response is motivated and inspired by
the prayer and worship we share with our fellow members of Christ’s Church.
F. Personal, Yet Ecclesial
151. Faith’s sixth paradox is its personal yet ecclesial nature. It is
first of all the Church who believes and thus supports and nourishes our faith (cf. CCC 168-69). We received the grace
of faith when we were baptized and received into the Christian community, the
Church. Within our Christian families and our parish community, the faith
implanted in Baptism grows and matures. Through catechesis, through the
Sacrament of Confirmation, through the Word of God preached and explained, and
especially through the Eucharistic celebration of Christ’s Paschal sacrifice,
we grow in faith.
Our personal faith in Christ is supported
and intensified by our fellow members in the parish or BCC, according to God’s
own plan. For “He has willed to make men holy and save them, not as individuals
without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people” (LG 9).
152. Christian faith has many
different adherents and forms, even in our country. But a central feature of Catholic Faith is its ecclesial structure. God always revealed
Himself in the Old and New Testaments in terms of a community. Moreover, this
revelation has been handed down through the Church’s tradition to us today. It
is in the Church that we Catholics experience the power of the Risen Christ
through the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is in the Church, the body of Christ, that
the Catholic Filipino meets Christ in God’s Word in Scripture, in Church
teaching, in the liturgical, sacramental praise and worship of God, and in the
ministry of service of one another.
153. Christ is personal Savior to
Filipino Catholics not as private individuals, but as members of a community of
salvation wherein we meet Jesus and experience his saving power. Faith is never just something private or
individualistic, but a sharing in the Christian community’s faith. This
faith is in living continuity with the Apostolic Church,
as well as being united to all the Catholic communities today the world over.
Vatican II well describes the origins of this ecclesial dimension of faith:
154. “As the firstborn of many
brethren, and by the gift of his Spirit, Christ established, after his Death
and Resurrection, a new brotherly communion among all who received him in faith
and love; this is the communion of his own body, the Church, in which everyone
as members would render mutual service in the measure of the different gifts
bestowed on each” (GS 32).
IV. MARY: MODEL OF FAITH
155. Many Filipino Catholics
probably learn more about Faith from their devotion to the Virgin Mary than any
other way. This is perfectly grounded in Scripture which portrays Mary as the exemplar of faith. Through her
“Yes” at the Annunciation, Mary “becomes the model of faith” (AMB 35; cf. CCC 148). Luke stresses the
contrast between Mary’s faith and the disbelief of Zachary by Elizabeth’s greeting. “Blest is she who
trusted that Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:20, 45).
John Paul II writes that “in the expression ‘Blest are you who believed’ we can
rightly find a kind of ‘key’ which
unlocks for us the innermost reality of Mary, whom the angel hailed as ‘full of
grace’ ” (cf. RMa 19).
156. Mary perfectly exemplified the
common definitions of faith as “full submission of intellect and will” and the
“obedience of faith” (Rom 16:26; 1:5; cf. DV 5). But she
did it personally,
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