Growing in Faith

Last updated on: August 20, 2011 at 10:54 am by Father Pablo Migone

Growing in Faith 2011-08-20T10:54:00-05:00 Father Pablo Migone

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Saint Paul meditates on the greatness of God in today’s second reading from his letter to the Romans. “How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?”

From these words, it seems almost impossible for us to know God. How will we ever come to understand his inscrutable judgments and come to know his unsearchable ways? To add to this feeling of “otherness”, God said through the prophet Isaiah, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”

If God is so unlike us, how can we even begin to grasp who He is? How can we come to know him in order to answer the question Jesus asks in the Gospel, “who do you say that I am?”

Our mind alone on its own accord, can understand many things about God, but not everything because our minds are limited.

We gain access into the thoughts and ways of God through faith. Faith is true and certain knowledge which God gives us so that we may come to know Him and believe in Him.

We see faith at play in today’s Gospel. Jesus tells Peter that flesh and blood have not revealed to him that He is the Son of the Living God, but rather, that His heavenly Father has given him this knowledge. Left alone, Peter would not be able to recognize Jesus as the Son of the Living God. God reveals this to Peter. This is faith.

Faith never contradicts reason. The God who created our minds is the same God who reveals Himself to us through faith, so faith and reason always go together. Faith goes beyond the limits of our mind, helping us to get a glimpse of God, helping us to experience the mystery of God.

Many people heard Jesus preach and teach, but did not believe while others did. Why some and not others? Some were open to and received the gift of faith, others did not. The same happens today: some hear the Gospel and believe because their hearts are open. Others hear the Gospel but do not believe. The message remains mere knowledge and it does not kindle faith in the soul.

Faith allows us to believe in Jesus Christ and all He has revealed to us. Through faith we can take a peek into God’s inscrutable judgments and unsearchable ways.

How can we grow in faith?

1. Precisely because faith is a gift, we can pray to God to increase our faith. When we want to get to know someone better, when we want to know if we can trust a person, we arrange to meet and spend time with that person. It’s the same with Jesus. To know Him better, to grow in faith, we must arrange to meet and spend time with Him. This happens in prayer: it is time we dedicate to spend in the presence of the Lord, in conversation with him.

2. Reading Scripture. Saint Jerome said that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. Pray with Scripture, in particular the Gospels, to grow in faith.

3. We grow in faith also by listening attentively to the Church’s teaching and guidance. Jesus founded a Church – a community of believers, and entrusted His Church to Peter while assuring him that not even the gates of hell would prevail against the Church. This one Church founded by Christ and entrusted to Peter exists today in the Catholic Church.

The Church is made of both saints and sinners, and throughout history there have been rough moments for the Church, but the promise of Jesus always remains: He is with us until the end of time. Jesus cannot abandon the Church because the Church is His Body, the Body of Christ. Jesus is truly present and active in the Church despite our imperfections.

We grow in faith by listening to and following the teachings of the church, by participating in the sacraments and the church’s liturgy, by studying her history, heeding her wisdom, and listening to the voices of the past. The Church leads us to Christ and strengthens our faith.

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