Getting Beyond Ourselves

The “door of faith” (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace. To enter through that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime. It begins with baptism (cf. Rom 6:4), through which we can address God as Father, and it ends with the passage through death to eternal life, fruit of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, whose will it was, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, to draw those who believe in him into his own glory (cf. Jn 17:22).

To profess faith in the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is to believe in one God who is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8): the Father, who in the fullness of time sent his Son for our salvation; Jesus Christ, who in the mystery of his death and resurrection redeemed the world; the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church across the centuries as we await the Lord’s glorious return.

Porta Fidei 1

Reflection – Yesterday I started a journey through the ‘Door of Faith’, the letter of Pope Benedict announcing the Year of Faith beginning this October in honor of the 50^th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council

This first paragraph is a dense, complex, and very beautiful presentation of the essence of faith, and yesterday I started going through it line by line, so as to draw out its meaning. So let’s continue doing that:

It begins with baptism (cf. Rom 6:4), through which we can address God as Father... – Faith begins with baptism, and baptism makes us children of God. We are so accustomed in our Western European tradition to a predominantly intellectual understanding of faith – faith as intellectual assent to revealed truths – that we can forget there is something deeper going on. A baby makes no intellectual assent, yet baptism ushers this baby through the door of faith. Faith begins with an action of God, and this action of God constitutes us as his children, thus making it possible for us to formulate intellectual assent as our minds grow to that point.

...and it ends with the passage through death to eternal life, fruit of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, whose will it was, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, to draw those who believe in him into his own glory (cf. Jn 17:22). – faith is a journey with a beginning that is beyond us, only possible by the action of God, and with an end that is beyond us, too. I can no more come into eternal life by my own actions and choices than I can fly. The terminus of our life is beyond us, as is its origin. So our whole life is bound up with God and His actions, His initiatives, His choice on our behalf. This is so crucial to understanding everything about life. It’s not about us; it’s not about our ideas and understandings and capacities. We have ideas; we have abilities and disabilities; but God is always pulling us beyond, past these, into a bigger reality. The whole movement of faith, the whole life of grace is a matter of being called beyond ourselves into God’s life. It begins at baptism and ends with this explosion into eternal glory, and is wholly God’s work, to which we respond.

To profess faith in the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is to believe in one God who is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8): the Father, who in the fullness of time sent his Son for our salvation; Jesus Christ, who in the mystery of his death and resurrection redeemed the world; the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church across the centuries as we await the Lord’s glorious return. – And the response is faith. To believe is to believe that God loves us, that His love is fully expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, his words and deeds, and that this love is a living present reality in the gift of the Holy Spirit. And to believe this, to believe in the love of God, means entrusting ourselves to this love. To take the Gospel literally and put it into practice. To turn our faces and our hearts towards God continually, knowing that His love is real and our lives are meant to be permeated and transformed by this love.

This is faith – to be so convinced of God’s love for me that I look nowhere else for life, for meaning, for truth, for direction, for what is right and wrong, for fulfillment. God and God alone gives us all these things.

And this is the journey we are all on. It doesn’t matter where you are on this journey – is faith small or big in your life right now. What matters is that you and I are on the journey, and that we keep journeying. And we journey by following after Jesus, tugging on the fringe of his garment and asking him, “Give me more faith today, please! Hey, Lord, I need more faith! Thanks!” That’s what matters.