Good day (or evening) các em, to continue from where we stopped last week (or the week before that), we were beginning to reexamine our faith in God and what we should do when we have doubt. Which by the way, if you ever needed to review what we had gone through the weeks before, all the lectures and links are now posted on the second tab of this page (we only have 16 chapters to cover so don't be intimidated by the number of weeks listed there). :)
Anyway, back to our faith journey. Ever since we were born, we have been raised as a Catholic so for a period of time, our faith was directly a reflection from our parents', and our parents' was a reflection from our grandparents' and so on. In this stage of childhood faith, we are what our parents are so if we were born in Iran to Iranian parents, we’d probably begin life as a Muslim and not a Christian or a Catholic (a Catholic is a Christian but not every Christian is a Catholic). In other words, our childhood faith is conditioned by both our cultural situation and the faith (or lack of faith) of the family into which we are born and raised.
Then when grow up, we reach the second stage of faith called the adolescent stage. This is the most critical stage because it involves making the transition from receiving the seed of faith (baptism) to confirming it by personal conviction (confirmation). This means reexamining our childhood faith with a view to reaffirming (accepting) or rejecting it. So whether we are born Muslim or Catholic or Judaism (Jews), we must eventually make the transition from a faith by culture to a faith by conviction. This might explain why the adolescent stage is also the most painful stage because our childhood faith must die before our adult faith can be born. That is, we must rid (remove) our faith of any simplistic or immature notions (ideas/definitions). It is this process that causes the pain.
So what exactly that this pain we're talking about? They are the times or moments when we are in doubt and/or feeling lost (or confused) about our faith and our life. If you've read the story at the beginning of the chapter, Tommy was experiencing that pain of doubt and emptiness while he was making the transition from childhood to adult faith. As a young person, I think you can find yourself related to this feeling at some point in your life: "I don’t know what’s going wrong. When I was in grade school, and for the first couple of years of high school I was real religious, and now I just don’t seem to care."
The death of our childhood faith can make us feel sick of heart or even guilty, but it’s part of every faith journey so it's important for us to be able to see it this way. The adolescent stage may be compared to the cutting of the umbilical cord and separating a baby from its mother. It's like when you see a baby falls, even though we wanted to help, sometimes we just have to stay still and let him or her stand up on their own. Similarly, we as "babies" must also cut the spiritual umbilical cord that binds us to our childhood faith, and begin living on our own. The pain we sometimes experience in this stage can be intense and it can confuse people to the point they sometimes even question God’s existence.
Speaking of question, the adolescent stage of our faith involves a good deal of questioning. So back to what we've read a few weeks earlier, it is complete normal that we have doubts or questions about our faith. The important note again here is that only when this questioning is done constructively, it can result in faith growth. Constructive questioning means we want to learn the truth, so we can do what is right. Many of us have childhood images of God that are simplistic and need to be clarified or explained (via mass, study and prayers). Or before our questioning, we may have prayed to God out of habit or fear; but after our questioning, we may begin praying to God out of conviction and love. In contrast, destructive questioning means we want to disprove a point, so we can do what we want.
Now shall we move to the last stage of our faith? It is called the adult stage in which we have examined both our childhood and adolescent stages faith and now moved on to living our confirmed belief. In other words, if a person ends up being an atheist, he or she denies the existence of God (or believes that there is no God). On the other hand, if a person still holds on to their faith and believes in God, he or she has chosen to be a child in God's house, and I recommend you do. :)
Every faith journey begins with a knock at the door of the heart. It may take the form of a spiritual hunger in the soul, a call to love in the heart, or some unforeseen event that turns our would upside down. Spiritual hunger is when we feel something is missing in my life, or that we're unhappy but we don’t know why. A call to love is when we see someone doing good deeds and it inspires us to follow or to become a better person. An extreme sad moment or event that turns our life upside down could be a death in family, a major accident or deadly cancer or sickness that makes us realize just how vulnerable we all are, or it's when we're going through a breakup with someone we love. All these forms of knocks make us to stop and think and give us a chance to reexamine what we're believing in or what we're living for.
Our faith journey (through the 3 stages) is the greatest adventure we will ever embark (participate) upon. This is because it takes us beyond the natural world to the supernatural. It leads us beyond material reality to spiritual reality. We begin our faith journey by placing our hand in the hand of God and allowing ourselves to be led by both the light of reason (questions by what we know) and the light of faith (answers by what we believe in, which is the safer light). To put it differently, the light of reason shows us what we should do in the difficult days ahead, while the light of faith tells us to put our trust in God's hands. And so our journey begins and moves forward toward that awesome faith encounter that brings us face to face with the mystery of the Holy Trinity. And who is the Holy Trinity? It's the Father who created us, the Son who redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit who graces us.
Throughout our lives, the Holy Spirit is the one who continues to grace and guide us every step of our faith journey. In what's called the mind level of faith, the Holy Spirit helps us to better grasp the truths of our faith and deepen our knowledge of God. It’s the conscious (aware of things) layer at which we process data through our senses. At the heart level, the Holy Spirit leads us beyond our childhood world with its focus on love of self, to an adult world which looks to love of other people (this is how we know we're growing in faith and spirit). Failure of inability to find God is often traceable to a failure or inability to open our hearts to love other people and to receive love from them. It’s the subconscious (almost conscious) layer at which we experience moods of joy, peace, love.
In the last layer which is the soul level, the Holy Spirit stays close with us and embrace us every step of the faith journey. This is the sanctuary (holy place) layer where the divine and the human meet (if we choose to accept the gift of faith). Since we're talking about soul, I think this is a good point to bring up the question How is the creation story often misunderstood? Literalists (don't look at the hidden message) say creation took place as the Bible says (which did not). And this rules out (denies) evolution or science. The truth is it does not conflict with Catholic faith so long as it does not deny “that souls are immediately created by God” (Pope Pius XII).
Back to our faith or, the gift of faith, it involves freedom on our part. Just like how we can accept or reject an offer or a present, God leaves us free to accept or reject the gift. Gift is God’s contribution and freedom is ours. Faith invites us to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus or God himself. It’s the kind of relationship we have with our best friend or our other half. We develop it the same way two people become best friends. We would spend time together and learn as much as we can about each other. And we enjoy it. ;)
So when Tommy struggled with his faith in the story, it's because he was looking for a quick fix and not for a God to love. He had not realized that LOVE is the only one word which he was missing. When he couldn’t connect with God, he decided to open his heart to his family. The act of opening to his family in love helped open himself to God. So what can we learn from Tommy? It's unless we reach out to God in love, our faith will be short-lived and our spiritual growth will stop, or die. Two remarks by Father John Powell to Tommy that we can also learn from are 1) the essential sadness is to go through life without loving, and 2) it would be almost equally sad to leave this world without ever telling those we loved that we loved them. We all need emotional love and support so it is important to show our loved ones and not just by our words but more importantly, our deeds.
The last portion of our class this week is about faith realities. Throughout our faith journey, we'll be greeted with 3 different realities or facts that we should be aware of and must be prepared to embrace which are loving trust (risk), ongoing effort (recommitment), and suffering darkness (growth times/pain).
An example of the kind of loving trust that faith requires is marriage, where there is no guarantee that each partner will remain faithful should a major crisis arise in their relationship. This is where loving trust comes in. Without it, there could be no marriage so every marriage, by its very nature, involves a dimension of risk. Faith is also something like this. It too involves loving trust, not in the sense that God might be unfaithful, but how great and how long our commitment to God is. In the end of the day, both faith and marriage are the kind of risk (or loving trust) that we can't afford NOT to take. Marriage involves the risk that our partner may be unfaithful, but we must take the risk because if we don't we’ll never marry. Similarly in faith, if we want eternal life, we must trust Jesus who promises it to those who believe in him and his Word (John 6:54).
The second fact or reality that we believers must know is that faith is an ongoing effort. A misunderstanding that some people have is the idea that once we get the faith, we don’t have to worry about it again (which is not true). We are constantly evolving and changing as persons. As a result, we must recommit ourselves to God. It's in this process of recommitment that our faith grows and matures. Looking back, we can easily see how we are so different now in our attitude, values, goals, dreams, than we were a few years ago, and it will keep changing!
The last faith reality that we probably don't want to hear is we will be suffering darkness in our journey. Our faith is like the sun, sometimes it shines brightly and beautifully. At other times, it can be cloudy and completely disappear in darkness. This darkness is often traceable to one of three sources which are human nature, ourselves, and God himself. The darkness may simply reflect the natural mood swings of our human nature when we're feeling up and down. On some days, everything goes right and life is great. On other days, everything goes wrong and life will be a drag. Besides our natural mood swings, we can also cause darkness by neglecting our faith or letting our faith grow weak from sin or lack of spiritual nourishment (mass/Eucharist). In other words, just as our body grows weak from abuse or lack of nourishment, our soul does the same thing. When it is God who's causing the darkness, it's important for us to understand that sometimes God is like a mother who really wants to help but won't do anything, to help her baby. So just as God can use our physical suffering to help us grow and mature in our faith, so can God use spiritual suffering like darkness to help our faith grow and mature.
And I think that conclude our lesson this week các em. I've saved some other details for next time because I think it's long enough but please read this little journey of John Newton below and enjoy the beautiful work from his conversion.
John Newton (1725-1807) was a British sea captain and slave trader. He left school at 11, went to sea, and lived a wild life. One night a great storm threatened his ship and his cargo of slaves. He promised to give up slave trade if his ship came through the storm. It did and he kept his promise. After his conversion, he became a minister in the village of Olney, England. There, he won renown (well known) as a preacher and hymn writer. He wrote a hymn to celebrate his conversion. A part of it reads: Amazing Grace.