By Bob Sullivan
We have now completed a four-part series called The Types of Faith. Hopefully you have not only enjoyed the series, but it has caused you to think more deeply about your own trust in the teachings of the Church (the content of revealed truths), but even more, it has caused you to examine and pray for your virtue of faith when you pray the rosary (hopefully each day), and at Mass.
As Catholics, we are not called to a blind faith. We have many gifts which include the ability to reason, think, understand, and grow in wisdom. However, there are many teachings which we do not fully understand. Having trust in something we understand is easy. Our virtue of faith is challenged when we arrive at a teaching we do not like.
A quote about the Bible attributed to Mark Twain, and which seems appropriate for this column about the teachings of the Church, goes like this:
“I am not troubled by the things in the Bible which I do not understand, but I am troubled by those things which I do understand and which I find very difficult to measure up to.”
Then there is the quote from St. John Henry Newman:
“Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”
In many cases, teachings of the Church have been around for 2,000 years, and are often rooted in the Old Testament and the Jewish faith, which predates the Christian Church by thousands more years. It is in these teachings where the theological virtue of faith is essential. We can have no faith, a little faith, a lot of faith, or maybe even an extreme abundance of faith. Regardless, we always need more and we get it through grace and humility.
In Hebrews 11:1, the Bible describes the virtue of faith as follows: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
As a Catholic, you can rest assured that the longstanding teachings of the Church are trustworthy and true. We can rest in this assurance for many reasons. Included in the reasons is the fact that these truths have been revealed to us through Christ.
Divine revelation is the most important reason, but we can also rest assured because these truths have been consistently taught, believed, and lived by Christians since the time of Christ. On top of that, the teachings are good and beautiful. Among many more reasons is the good fruit which comes forth when we trust the teachings, and here I am speaking specifically about love.
When we are assured of the trustworthiness of the Church’s teachings, we naturally turn our minds and hearts toward the invisible, mysterious or supernatural, and there we find our conviction in things not seen, which include heaven, eternity, and the one unfathomable Triune God.
Lack of trust, also known as an incomplete virtue of faith, is like a cancer. It forces us to focus on the world around us. We can get distracted by all the problems around us such as poverty, suffering, disease, death, broken homes, homelessness, injustice, etc.
If we lack in the virtue of faith, man becomes the solution to these problems through politics, laws, force, secular work, etc. Psalm 146 3-6 reads:
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
While “princes” can certainly assist in building the kingdom of God, nothing good comes from attempting to do so without hope and trust in the Lord. Psalm 146 is an excellent verse on which to end this series on types of faith, because it points out that God keeps faith forever. When our virtue of faith matches up with His, God’s “will is done,” as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer.
You have probably heard and read about St. John Paul II’s emphasis on avoiding fear (“be not afraid”) throughout his pontificate and in his life before he became pope. Sometimes people think courage is the opposite of fear, but in matters of the supernatural, the opposite of fear is trust, also known as faith.
The Divine Mercy image, St. Faustina’s visions and locutions, and the message “Jesus, I Trust In You” have become so prominent in the Church today because the combination of the Polish pope and Divine Mercy, gives us a message of trust in a world which scoffs at trust.
While St. John Paul II was telling us to have no fear, he was also canonizing the saint which taught us to pray the words, “Jesus, I Trust In You.”
If we truly trust Jesus, we have faith in His Church, because Jesus not only started the Church, He put humans in charge of the day to day affairs, under the guidance and protection of the Holy Spirit. By placing our trust in the Church’s teachings, we are not putting our trust in mere mortals, but mortals who for twenty centuries, have been guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit (John 16:13).
All Catholics have different types of faith, meaning that we are all at different stages along the path of discipleship. Our goal is eternal salvation, but none of us are there yet (otherwise you would not be reading this). Whether you or a loved one struggles with some of the teachings of the Church or whether the teachings are all accepted as true, we can still deepen and grow in our virtue of faith. This happens in what we think, what we say, and what we do. This is why it is essential to always pray for an increase in the theological virtue of faith.
