Faith

Faith, this lifelong theme for believers in God is rooted in a word with origins in Latin whose synonym is trust.

Many of us have grown wary in a world that, in many ways, is misleading and so adult trust is much more difficult for anyone to earn than the trust of an innocent child.

Yet, we profess belief in God who frames our relationship with Him, through his Son, as how children ought to relate to their father: by following his good example.

And here is where the obstacle lies: in order to trust, it is only human to require proof.

Humans rely on their five senses – smell, sight, hearing, touch, and taste – to convince ourselves of what is real, a bit like we did six centuries ago when relying on our sight we decided the western horizon of the Atlantic was the outer edge of the flat world from which the ocean cascaded into oblivion. (I am a fan of Owen Barfield' s "Saving the Appearances" - great read.)

But as Fr. Joe summed it up so simply and eloquently at Canadian Press photographer Tom Hanson’s funeral in March, the whole point of human life in this world is to tune our five human senses to develop our spiritual sense.

So, how exactly does one go about developing this sixth sense, the spiritual sense?

I’ve puzzled about this quite a bit and I’ve come up with a starting point that, so far, seems to me to be sound.

I start from the premise that things happen for a reason, that there are no flukes or accidents.

I am not advocating “Intelligent Design” as is espoused so enthusiastically by some evangelical Protestants in the United States (but remains a matter of debate among Catholics).

I personally believe we were created by an omnipotent and loving God who grants us and respects our freedom to choose to either trust in His concept of a good life or our own concept of a good life.

Trusting in God means setting aside our priorities to make place for His.

That is truly a leap of Faith!

But an omnipotent and loving God would not allow us to suffer in vain.

The problem of pain is the subject of another blog, but let me share an insightful quotation I read not so long ago to put human suffering in perspective:

“Jesus did not come to make life easy, but to make men great”

Sounds a lot like Mark 8:34, which says:

“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’.”

Doing exactly that is what I call an act of Faith.