Blog # 250 Faith

Blog #   250       Faith

 To have faith is a very valuable and rich experience.  It is always a gift.  It is one of two ways we have of arriving at truth.  The other is experience.  Experience is an achievement rather than a gift. We are under the control of our experience. In our faith we are free.    Faith reaches out to a truth that lies beyond  our grasp, beyond our experience. It is arriving at a truth that belongs to another by experience and is shared with us as a gift  through some form of revelation.  I used to illustrate this years ago with the help of my printer.  My printer, as printers generally went in those days,  was not capable of producing  images in color but only black and white.  What it produced however  could receive color when by hand I used colored ink to fill in the black and white images it  had produced. Faith offers to do something like this with our human experience.

Applying the term faith in this way, to have faith would mean to take something as true on the word of another.  Applying the term in another way, to have faith would emphasize  trusting in another person as being reliable or trustworthy.   The first application, taking something as true on the word of another, is based upon our confidence and conviction the person revealing the truth is reliable or trustworthy. In other words they work together  hand in hand.
  
Jesus applied  the term faith  in both ways, appealing to people to have trust in Him,(Jn 5: 24;Jn 6: 29.35.36.40.47),  praising those who had confidence  in Him and trusted Him (Mat 8:10; Lk 7: 9),  and also in reference to truth itself in His command to the Apostles  to go throughout the world and make disciples of all the nations, teaching the good news they had received from Him as  true (Mat. 28: 19,20). 

Here are a few rerminders of the function and value, meaning and richness of the gift of faith.  This past week we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus from Jerusalem to Heaven. Throughout the Liturgical Year we celebrate and experience by faith the entire life death resurrection and  ascension of Jesus two thousand years ago and currently in our liturgies.   Without going to  Bethlehem  Bethany Jericho or Jerusalem  physically, we go there in faith so that Jesus can come to us in love.

Without faith Jesus would not be real for us. We would not know what Jesus said and did. Without knowing what He said and did we would not know that He loved us and how much He loved us long ago and now.

Without faith we would not know that He claimed to be and is God. Without faith He could not forgive our sins and lead us to the eternal happiness He promised to those who do the Father's will.

Father, Thank You for the gift of faith, won for me by Jesus and offered to me in the love of the Holy Spirit. Help me to realize how precious this gift is by realizing that without it I could no more hope to know and love You as You wanted to be known and loved than I could hope to cast a shadow on the earth in the dark.