A friend of mine some years ago received the diagnosis that she had cancer of the stomach. The doctor was amazed at the calm way she received this scary diagnosis, and asked her the reason. My friend said “I believe that God will see me through this“, to which the doctor said “Well, I guess your God let you down this time, didn’t he?” My friend denied vehemently that this was the case. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when my friend, having survived the cancer surgery very well, returned to meet her doctor!
The last couple of weeks, the readings at Sunday Mass have all reflected on the gift of Faith, faith in a loving Creator God, faith in Jesus, His only-begotten Son, faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection, faith in the Holy Spirit , faith in eternal life, in heaven and hell. We have learned that faith, genuine, fervent faith must be received as a gift from God, but has also got to be fought for, to be held onto, to be lived out. Last week, St Paul was urging us in the second reading, to “fight the good fight of the faith”, and to “pursue faith”, and today, he tells us that we must “Hold fast to the standard of sound teaching” about the faith. In our time, just as in Paul’s time, there are currents of teaching, even within the Catholic Church, that are being advanced, even by bishops and priests, that are false teachings, contrary to the orthodox truth of the Church and Scripture. Anyone who has been following the conclusions of the recent German synod will know what I am talking about. Again and again, the true faith of Christ and his Church have to be fought for, held onto fast, maintained and lived out. To be sustained, the true gospel faith has to be pursued especially at times of great difficulty, such as persecution, scandal, false witness and, as with my friend, at a time of bad news.
Faith, as I said last week, is not for spiritual wimps!
St Paul reminds us, in 2 Corinthians 5: 7, that, while we are in this world, “we walk by faith, and not by sight”. Faith is not knowledge, it is trust in the revelation of God the Father, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is not simply agreeing intellectually with certain propositions, such as that God exists, that he sent his Son into the world to be its Savior, that Jesus rose from the dead, that there is a heaven and a hell, and so on. We don’t know these things for an absolute certainty, we cannot prove them scientifically, though each of these propositions do rest on sound, rational principles and there are scientific discoveries that give convincing evidence of the truth of these doctrines of the faith. But faith is not absolute knowledge; however, the book of Hebrews defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Ultimately, it is a commitment of mind, heart and will to a Person, in fact, three such Persons, in one Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As I have said before, the main reason why people turn aside from a childhood faith passed on to them by their parents and teachers and clergy, is because they have never gotten behind their faith and had a personal encounter and relationship with Jesus Christ, an encounter brought about by surrendering to the Holy Spirit, and one which leads to the ultimate relationship, with God the Father. From that encounter, one reaches a moment of conversion for one’s whole life, in which one decides that what Jesus says is true, and one makes a commitment, one signs up as a disciple of Jesus, and one walks one’s whole life thereafter, following in the footsteps of Christ.
Last week, just before we stood to proclaim the Apostles’ Creed, I challenged you to examine the number of statements in that Creed that we were saying we believe in, and to ask yourselves: ”Do I really, truly believe this stuff?” I don’t know how many, if any, responded to that challenge, and took the time to have a real good look at the truths of their faith as Catholic Christians. When I was at university, I ran into a group of committed non-Catholic Christians who challenged me on a number of Catholic positions that they felt were against Bible teaching. They asked questions such as “Why do Catholics worship Mary?” “Why do you accept everything the Pope tells you?”, and “Where does it mention Purgatory in the Bible ?”. Well, I was pretty naïve in my understanding of my faith, I didn’t know the answer s to all these questions, I went to the Catholic chaplain at the university and asked him, and he gave me the best advice he could have given me. He said: ”I could tell you the answers, but it will be much better for you and your faith if you go and find out the answers yourselves, and work through the reasoning to see if you believe them”. Which I did. I found out that Catholics do not, in fact, worship Mary – they venerate and honor her, which is very different. I found out that Catholics do not have to accept every thing the Pope says, but has to measure it against what the Bible says, and what the orthodox teaching of the Church has been over the generations. If the Pope was to say one day, for instance, that only Argentinians were going to heaven, we don’t have to accept it, because it is contrary to what our faith has always taught. I found out that the Catholic teachings are much more backed up by the Bible than many Protestants, or, for that matter, many Catholics, know.
I came out of that whole challenge with a firmer grasp on the reasoning and foundation for what the Catholic Church teaches, and a stronger hold on my Catholic faith as a whole. I also had grown in a greater personal relationship with Jesus than ever before as well. So when my Protestant friends tried to tell me that I had to leave the Catholic Church or go to hell, I was able to “fight the good fight of the faith”, “hold fast to the standard of sound teaching” and “guard the good treasure “ of the faith that God had given me, but always “relying on the power of God” and with “the help of the Holy Spirit” living in me, as St Paul urges us all to do in our second reading today.
What concerns me is that many, many Catholics do not bother to do the same thing with their faith, to pursue it and fight for it, and seek to put their understanding of what they are supposed to believe on stronger foundations. Nobody these days would think of pursuing a profession or career in the world without seeking to learn the basics of that profession or career, and to always be updating their knowledge and familiarity with their chosen sphere in life. Our Catholic Christian faith has to be of a bigger priority than any job or career we are pursuing, if only because our whole eternal destiny, heaven or hell, is wrapped up intimately and profoundly with our faith, and no earthly profession can say that .
Because when the crunch comes, and come it will, either when we are told by our government or by our bosses that we must renounce or deny a particular truth of our faith if we want to continue to be employed, or when we are faced with an awful medical diagnosis, which can be terminal or life -threatening, or when we face expulsion from a group or organization, even by our family or friends , because of a religious stance we feel in all conscience we must take, when the crunch comes, in the words of St Paul to the Corinthians: ”if we are not standing firmly on our faith, we will not stand at all”.
Fortunately, as St Paul reminds us in our second reading today, we do have the help of the Holy Spirit, to strengthen our faith foundation, which is why he urges us to “rekindle that gift …for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice or timidity, but rather the Spirit of power and of love and self-discipline“. So let us ask for a fresh renewal of the gift of the Spirit that we may always be able to fight the good fight of the faith, no matter what the circumstances.