18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
First Reading: Wis 18:6-9
Second Reading: Heb 11:1-2, 8-19
Gospel Reading: Lk 12:32-48
In our society, it can be difficult to maintain our faith in the supernatural: to continue believing that the next world is immeasurably more important than this, and to act accordingly.
“Faith” has two meanings. First, it can mean the content of what we believe, as when the priest says, “Let us stand and profess our faith”: in God the Creator, the Incarnation of God the Son, our redemption by Christ, the guardianship of the Catholic Church by the Holy Spirit, sin and its forgiveness, and the resurrection of the body. Faith in this sense is a supernatural gift from God, available to everyone who wants it.
Second, “faith” can mean the virtue, or habit, of belief.
Faith is not, as some people think, belief without evidence. When COVID struck, I saw on a church sign, “Have faith,” meaning (I presume), “Believe that God will take it away.”
There is no reason for such a belief: neither God’s promise nor his practice. To try to believe something we are utterly uncertain of is not a virtue, but stupidity and perhaps dishonesty.
By the virtue of faith, the Church means the habit of believing all that God has revealed to us, and all that his Church proposes for our belief, because God is truth itself. This is a belief that has reason behind it.
What the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls our daily “battle of faith” is not between faith on one side and reason on the other, but between faith and reason on one side and lust, terror, jealousy, boredom, or indifference on the other.
Similarly, we are told as children that a human body will float in water, and we see people floating, so we believe it. But the first time we try it, we probably panic. It is not our reason that attacks our belief (the evidence is unchanged and our reason still accepts it), but our imagination, emotions, and nerves.
The virtue of faith is the art of holding on to the supernatural things we have accepted by reason, in spite of our feelings, our moods, and the attraction of other things.
I knew someone who was drawn to the Catholic Church by its claims of authority. The individual thought it all out carefully, decided to become a Catholic, and was baptized. However, not long afterward they met and fell in love with someone who was married, leaving the Church for them. I can hardly believe that meeting and falling in love with someone changed their reasons for becoming Catholic; I think that emotions and desires overcame faith and reason.
No conviction, however strong, will end that sort of temptation against faith. Only the practice of faith, resulting in the habit of faith, will do that. Accordingly, we must nourish our faith.
We do it by participating in the Mass, where the Church states and prays what she believes; by making frequent acts of faith, hope, and love; by studying what we believe, in the Bible, in the Catechism, in papal or other Church documents (I strongly urge you to read Pope Francis’ latest, Desiderio Desideravi), or in approved Catholic books; and by making Catholic friends, perhaps by joining Catholic social groups.
Otherwise we risk losing our faith. Apostasy (the sin we commit when we give up our faith entirely) can be so gradual that it is almost imperceptible.
We might claim that in apostatizing we are merely following our honest opinions, but how have our opinions been formed? Have we simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas (like New Age) and plunged into it because it seems modern and successful? Have we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?
Once we have lost our faith, it may be honest and sincere to say that we no longer believe. But errors that are sincere in that sense are not innocent.
Father Hawkswell has now finished teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. The whole course is available in written form and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course and will remain available until the end of August. Father will teach the whole course again, with new insights, starting September 11.