Entering The Door Of Faith: A Lenten Reflection

There are two Catholic traditions about observing Lent, the season we enter today. The first is “to give something up”—candy, or desserts, or maybe watching television, cutting down internet or Facebook use: things like that. The second way is “to do something more”—attend daily Mass, or spend more time in prayer, or to engage in some kind of special practice like reading a spiritual book, or maybe even doing some kind of charitable activity like working in a soup kitchen. Either tradition is a good one, and following either one is a good way to observe the season of Lent. Either way helps us sharpen our spiritual sense, so that we might really enter into the time of Holy Week, especially the “Easter Triduum” of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil on Saturday.

Those of us on the staff of Catholics on Call this year are proposing that you might want to consider participating in the second tradition of “doing something more” for Lent. As we have for the past several years, we are offering some weekly reflections that will help you in your spiritual life and ongoing discernment practice.

Since this year has been designated the “Year of Faith” by Pope Benedict XVI, we thought that some reflections on the nature of our faith might be an appropriate Lenten practice. What we’re going to offer in the six weeks of Lent—posting them every Saturday before the various Sundays of Lent—are excerpts from an article that Steve Bevans wrote called “Entering the Door of Faith.” This is the text of the talk he gave at the recent CoC Alumni Reunion here at CTU on January 26. (You can listen to a podcast of his presentation here.)

We really hope that you will take the time to read the weekly excerpt, and then reflect on the questions that we pose for reflection. Today, on Ash Wednesday, we present Steve’s initial definition of faith, and begin to reflect on the first four lines. So here is the beginning of Steve’s article. Have a Blessed Lent!

A Definition of Faith

This is how I think we should define faith:

Faith is an ACT

By which human beings ACCEPT God’s offer of friendship and communion in Revelation

INITIALLY and CONTINUALLY

By accepting that REVELATION as TRUE (factual or meaningful)

As a symbol of God’s personal GIFT OF SELF

And as an invitation to GROWTH and TRANSFORMATION

Faith as an ACT

First of all, I would stress that faith is first and foremost an ACT, an activity, a verb rather than a noun or a content. Faith is something we do. It is a stance, an attitude that we take toward God and toward the world. As we will see below, it is not something static, but dynamic, always growing, always changing, always challenging.

Faith as a RESPONSE

Faith is an act of acceptance, an act of response. We never take the initiative in faith. God is always there before us, offering us friendship and relationship in the act of Revelation. Often we think of Revelation as a list of truths, or facts, or events. It is that, of course, but these truths, facts, and events are really means rather than ends. By them—God revealing God’s oneness, God creating the world, God freeing Israel from slavery in Egypt—God offers to women and men a relationship with God’s very selfˆ, God’s very Mystery. The clearest expression of this is in the person of Jesus—a person like us who invites us into an intimate personal relationship with God. The Second Vatican Council, in its document on Divine Revelation, puts it this way: “By this revelation, then, the invisible God, from the fullness of divine love, addresses men and women as friends and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into God’s own company” (Paragraph 4).

The end of Revelation is not knowledge, but relationship and friendship. Ultimately we know God not just with our minds, but with our whole persons. And so in Revelation God offers Godself to us, and in Faith we offer ourselves to God. In this way, as we enter the Door of Faith, we enter into a relationship with God,. We become God’s friends. Or, as St. Paul put it, we become God’s adopted sons and daughters.

Faith as a LIFETIME JOURNEY

As an act that opens us up to God’s friendship, the act of faith is not something we do once and forget about it. Faith is an act that we have to make every day, sometimes many times during a day, and in every situation. Right at the beginning of his Apostolic Letter Pope Benedict emphasizes this. “To enter through [the door of faith] is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime” (paragraph 1). Our faith is different when we are children. It is something that is challenged and tested when we move into adolescence. As adults, when we meet various situations at work, or suffering due to illness, our faith needs to renewed and strengthened. Just as God’s offer of relationship in Revelation has been given once-and-for-all in Christ, and yet God continues to reveal the meaning of that in new and varied ways in our lives, so our response in faith must be made time and again.

Pope Benedict points out how our continual response to God in faith slowly transforms and perfects our whole life in a process that is never completely finished. As a backup for this, the pope quotes the words of St. Augustine, who said that believers “strengthen themselves by believing.” This is the meaning, I think, of another famous line of Augustine: “I believe in order to understand; I understand in order to believe.”

Questions for Reflection

1. When do you remember making the act of faith? Have you always believed? Or was there a time that you made a clear act of faith?
2. Do you understand faith as a relationship with God?
3. Why do you think it is important to understand faith as something we do?

Click here to sign up for weekly emails during the season of Lent (choose "CoC Seasonal Reflections" from the list).

Week 1: The "Intellectual Dimension" of Faith

Week 2: The "Trust Dimension" of Faith

Week 3: The "Commitment Aspect" of Faith

Week 4: Faith as a GIFT

Week 5: Faith and DOUBT

Picture: Holy Spirit Seminary in Hong Kong. By Steve Bevans, SVD, all rights reserved.