Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius December 25, 2016 Spiritual Ponderings Reflecting on the Gift of Faith
Let us continue with our reflections on being open to receive the gift of faith.
6. Know the Difference between Magic and Miracle One of the biggest mistakes that people who are trying to grow in faith often make is that they turn faith into witchcraft. Faith, as stated before, is about entering into a relationship with a Divine Being. Witchcraft or magic on the other hand is about controlling the divine. It has an internal logic that goes something like this: if I do “A”, “B”, and “C” then God will have to respond by doing “D”. For example, a person may go to Mass each week, perform many hours of service, and other religious acts may believe that God must make their life easier or remove any hardship from their lives.
God, like any individual, cannot be controlled or manipulated. While God chooses to respect our free will, we as God’s creatures can never put God in our debt. God never owes us. On the other hand our God is a loving God and He is never out done in generosity. Faith is more about trusting in God then it is about controlling God. A person can look at the story of the Israelites travel to the Promise Land after being freed from slavery in Egypt. The Israelites continuously forget what God has done for them and so instead of responding in gratitude and trust they begin to complain over and over again. Their lives would be so much better if instead of desiring to know the future if they would just remember all that God had done for them up until that point: He led them through the Red Sea, He defeated Pharaoh’s Army for them, He gave the 10 Commandments, He gave the manna, and He even gave them water from the rock. Throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament God proves Himself to be faithful again and again. A person who wishes to be ready to receive the gift of faith needs to develop a sense of gratitude and come to the realization that everything we have is a gift from God especially the gift of life itself.
7. Be Aware of the Just World Theory Some people have problems being open to the gift of faith because on some level of their consciousness they hold onto an idea that psychologists call the “Just world theory.” It is the idea that a good person will only receive good things in his or her life and a bad person will ultimately end up with bad things happening to him or her. The idea of the “just world” harkens back in many ways to people’s desire to be in control. Personally this was a big obstacle to my being open to receiving the gift of faith because I would often think of God punishing me for the bad I did and allowing others to get off scot-free which led to me having a lot of bitterness in my heart directed toward God.
Now instead of seeing the bad things that happen to me as a punishment from God, I now realize that God does not directly cause these bad things. God allows bad things to happen because He respects human beings free will and in order to do that God must allow people to choose, the wrong, or the lesser good resulting in evil in the world. God gave human beings the gift of freewill because freewill is a key ingredient in the ability that allows human beings to love. Love would not exist if there was no free will. My faith teaches me that God though can use these negative things to mold and shape me like gold is refined fire (Isaiah 48:10). The Book of Job reminds us that even though we do understand why bad things happen to us and to our love ones God ultimately does.
8. Be Clear on Your Motives Jesus makes it very clear throughout the Gospels that being a follower of Jesus means that we need to daily pick up our cross and follow Him (Luke 9:23). He also warns His followers on multiple occasions that if people persecuted Him they will persecute us (John 15:20). This is perhaps why it is so sad to see people who were once very active in the faith fall away when the going gets tough.
Good people of faith know that there will be good time and there will be bad times. The important thing is to remain faithful to God at all times and not to be fair-weather friends.
9. Remember the Church is a Hospital for Sinners There are many excuses given by people for leaving the Catholic Faith and most of time these excuses have nothing to do with dogma, doctrine, or Church practice but with the other people in the Church. For example people say, “I used to be Catholic but I did not like what the bishop said about this or that,” or “I used to be Catholic but the nuns used to hit me with a ruler,” or “I don’t go to Church anymore because all the old ladies in the first pew are nothing but hypocrites.” It is at these moments that make the mistake of giving other people too much power over us. St. Augustine once declared that “The Church was a hospital for sinners and not a hotel for saints.” It is important to remember that by necessity we are going to run into imperfect people in the Church and thank God for if only people could come to Church many of us would not allow to be a part of the Church. Another famous Catholic saying is “The saints are just the sinners who fall down and get back up again.”
In Saint Mark’s Gospel Jesus encounters His first demoniac (person possessed bay an evil spirit) in a synagogue – a local parish community (Mark 1:21-28). For many years, when I read, reflected, and prayed over this story from Mark, I began to realize that I was assuming that the person possessed by a demon dressed or acted in such a way that would make him stand out but Mark does not gives us any clues to what the demoniac looked like. The man possessed by the demon could have been the rabbi, the person who had read from the Hebrew Scriptures, or another respected elder of the community. The important thing to realize is that we are all called to come to Church precisely because we are sinners in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
10. Realize that God is more than you can imagine Finally the last thought process or difficulty that might need to be over come in order to be ready to receive the gift of faith that God wishes to bestow upon us is that sometimes we limit God to human constructs. Many psychologists suggest that in childhood as we grow we develop an image of God that is helpful for us during our childhood years. The image might be that of God as a judge, a score keeper with a clip board, an old man on a throne, etc. This image we develop can be helpful for us in our childhood, however when we reach our adolescent and adult years we have to shed these images of God and come to realize that God is more than we could ever imagine, envision, or conceive.
There are many people who refuse the gift of faith because they see God as a judge that has set the bar too high and thus why bother to even try to live a moral or holy life. There are others who put limits on God’s mercy by thinking that God can forgive everyone’s sins but their own. Somehow their sins are just too immense for God to forgive. Many others see God as a score keeper who carries with Him a giant clipboard and they erroneously believe that in order to make God love them that they have to accomplish so many good deeds. Jesus through His teaching, death, and resurrection ultimately teaches us that God is at His heart a loving Father like the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son. God is a divine being who loves us and desires to spend eternal life with us.
Let us open our hearts so that we can prepare to receive the gift of faith and to take ownership of it.