Foundations of Faith 12 - OUR ADEQUATE RESPONSE

 Notes summarised from

1. The Study: "Foundations of Faith : A Journey Through the Catechism of the Catholic Church" (Core Message video - Session 2)
2. Notes from "Overview of Catholic Theology", Rev Fr Michael Chan

 FAITH IS OUR ADEQUATE RESPONSE

God has taken pains to reveal himself fully to us, to the extent of coming literally in flesh to meet us.

Faith is our adequate response to the priceless invitation from God to know him.

The responsibility is ours 

• to understand revelation more deeply and 
• respond to it more faithfully 
• through diligent study, quiet contemplation and interior reflection 
• in order to love Him more and to know Him better.

THE ONLY RIGHT RESPONSE TO LOVE IS TO LOVE

When we know that we have been given the gift of love, and we experienced that love, and we become the beloved, and the only response to love is to love back. 

CCC 155 says

In faith, the human intellect and will cooperate with divine grace

St Thomas Aquinas said:

“Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.”

 

BEING ABLE TO KNOW GOD

Being able to know a God who is knowable and that he reveals himself to us is a great gift.

It is almost like a dance.

It is a dance of love where God first loves us and invites us in freedom to love him back with our response.

So it is more than an intellectual concept.  It is more than just knowing what things are.

It is relational, it is a personal knowledge, a relational knowledge that says I receive all that is good and true and beautiful from you.

That is the foundation of our response.

PLACING OUR FAITH RELATIONALLY

When we place that faith first relationally, we can accept all the intellectual difficulties, the truths of the faith, the moral law, the things that we can't get with our own reason.

We accept because of the solidified relationship that we have. 

We believe because He told us. 

We believe because the Church told us. 

And believe not by suppressing our reason. 

We believe because faith and reason work together in us.

FAITH & REASON (FIDES ET RATIO)

We believe because our reason and our intellect work together with our faith, to reveal great truths to us.  

St John Paul II said beautifully

Faith and reason are faith and reason are two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth and to beauty.

We honor both of these two.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FAITH AND REASON

CCC 157 says

Faith is certain. It's more certain than all human knowledge because it's founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. Ten Thousand difficulties, do not make one doubt. (John Henry Newman) 

So, while these are two wings, they are distinct and it is this faith that allows us to move beyond what our human mind can do. 

THE DANCE OF LOVE

Believing is this dance of love, the two wings that lead us toward truth. 

So we stand in that knowledge, in that relationship, in the communion that we have with the church, with each other, with God. 

Each of those communions is an entrustment. 

So we do not pick and choose. 

We put our whole selves as the measure of love and as sons and daughters of God, the Father, as those who believe in the Church.  

We receive all that she teaches, because before the ideas, the concepts, the abstracts, in matters of faith and reason, we believe in Christ. 

And the bridegroom gives this great gift of divine revelation and of reason to his bride. 

So when we stand together as church and say we believe, or we stand in prayer and say, I believe.

The first posture is this response in love back to the gift that God first gave us.