Blog # 151 Amazing Power of Faith!

Blog # 151 Amazing Power of Faith ! In the light of some of the thoughts I was hoping to share in a couple of my most recent blogs in reference to the Ascension, I found several places in the official texts of the Eucharistic Canons that were enriched for me. First I tried to keep myself more consciously aware of our Cathoic faith in the identity of the Eternal Word of God and the historical Jesus as a single 'person'.I reviewed some early Church history and refreshed my mind as to the difficulty over a long period of time our Catholic forebears in the faith experienced in grasping the content and implications of this revealed doctrine. Some participants in the early disputes overemphasized the humanity of Jesus. Others overemphasized his divinity. Further problems and even heresies evolved. The definitive solution came when the Church infallibly proclaimed the Word of God Incarnate and the historical Jesus as one 'person' in two 'natures', one human, one divine. From this faith conviction we could conclude that,in Jesus, God actually died for us in an act of love Jesus identified as the greatest possible, laying down His life for us. In Jesus God could rejoice with us as we do among ourselves. He could taste hunger and solitude, rejection and praise,as we do. Jesus could experience being tempted away from His mission and taste the victory of obedience to the Father as we can do. At the Incarnation the Word did not cease to be God ever equal to the Father and one with the Father. At the Ascension of Jesus, now resurrected from the dead,into Heaven, Jesus did not cease to be the Person of Jesus who walked from Jerusalem to Jericho, wept at the death of His friend Lazarus and then raised Lazarus from death to life when all of that was the Father's will for him. With these divinely revealed truths in mind, and reflecting further upon the fact that the Word of God was sent to earth as Jesus for our salvation as well as for the glory of God I came to a deeper and joyful confidence both in the effectiveness of the ministry of Jesus and in the confidence in ourselves which we are called to have in the matter of working out our personal and communitarian salvation in obedience to the love of God in us. The essential element of trust, in Jesus and in ourselves clearly emerged as a single gift of blessing upon our faith. (These blogs stemming from our celebration of the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord have become long and somewhat requiring close attention, so I am going to conclude this one here and hopefully come up with the final one in the series with thoughts that came to me this morniing at 3 AM when I woke up briefly with them on my mind. I'll try to get them into a blog by this afternoon. If you are still there, thanks for your patience and trust in me! )