September 15, 2021

3 Stages of christian life: Faith - Experience - Mission

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For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!  Romans 10:13-15

Our salvation lies in invoking the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ as "My Lord and my God", like St. Thomas did (John 20:28). Whoever believes, whoever has faith, will be saved (Mark 16:16). However, to invoke Christ, one must have faith; for a person to have faith he must listen to the Word, and someone has to proclaim the Word of God to him. This someone or herald cannot be just a means of communication, nor can it be the Bible by itself.

If we were to parachute heaps of Bibles down to an isolated tribe, the fact of reading and rereading the Bible would not be enough for the natives to have faith. Someone from a Christian community has to go and proclaim the Word to them. Someone to share with them his own experience, his testimony, that is, someone who will proclaim to them what the God he believes in has done in his life.

The Bible is the Word of Life, that is why it can only be proclaimed by someone who lives it, who embodies it or strives to embody it. Faith is like a beneficial virus that passes from person to person, faith is contagious and only passes from the one who has it by contagion, that is, from the one whose faith works wonders in his life.

John 1:14 – "The Word became flesh and lived among us" – Salvation for the world came when the eternal Word of God became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Salvation for each of us is not automatic, it passes by means of faith which opens doors to the things of God; however, we only experience this salvation if we gradually incarnate this Word.

When the Word becomes flesh of our flesh, that is, when we change our heart, soul and mind in such a way that our works and our behavior in daily life and in every situation is regulated by the agenda of the Gospel. When like St. Paul we can at last say, "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20), then we can say that we are Christians, that is, another Christ on earth.
    
Preach the Gospel at all times, when necessary, use words. Saint Francis of Assisi

An authentic and genuine Christian, by the very fact of being so, is a missionary. "The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart", therefore if the mouth does not speak it is because there is no abundance in the heart. A glass when it is full of water or wine spills out; if it overflows, it is a proof that it is full, and if it does not overflow, it is a proof that it is not yet full. As St. Francis says, the Christian is already a missionary simply because he is a Christian.

The daily life of an authentic and genuine Christian is lived by being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. (Matthew 5:13-16). His living is evangelizing per se, because it shows the path of being a Christian to so many other people.

The opposite is also true: when a person claims to be a Christian but his life does not coincide at all with the Gospel, then instead of being a stepping stone to help others in the ascending Christian way of Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, he is instead a stumbling block, which in Greek is called "scandal", who causes others to fall. He is an anti-evangelizing counter witness that is like a Pharisee of Jesus' time who does not enter nor let others enter into salvation, or is not saved nor allows others to be saved.

The Incarnate Word makes a Christian authentic. This Christian becomes an announcing Word which, in turn, leads those who see and hear it incarnated to be able to incarnate it as well. The Annunciation of the angel led to the incarnation of the Word; every annunciation of someone who incarnated the Word leads to another incarnation. This movement cannot be stopped; annunciation - incarnation - annunciation - incarnation... "ad infinitum", from generation to generation till the end of the world.

The testimony of someone who has faith provokes faith in the one who hears it. This professed faith opens the door to experience, that is, it leads the listener to experience for himself the salvation presented in the testimony of the evangelizer: once he has experienced this salvation, he himself becomes an evangelizer, he himself becomes a missionary, or turns into someone who bears witness to the wonders the Lord has worked in him.

Since every disciple becomes a master or teacher, faith in someone else’s testimony leads to my own experience, to personally verify what they tell me, and when I begin to feel or experience the same thing, that is, salvation, I too become a missionary. It is like that the woman who was suffering from an ailment and took a special tea that healed her; once health was experienced (salvation means health) she went and announced to her friends and neighbours, to the four winds, the benefits of that tea.

This model or paradigm of spreading the Gospel, Faith - Experience - Mission, is already found in the Gospels themselves: in Mary, mother of the Lord, in the episode of the Samaritan woman, in Mary Magdalene, and in the disciples of Emmaus. Let us look here at the episode of the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene and the disciples of Emmaus, leaving Mary, mother of the Lord, for when we speak of the Mission. In the Gospel of John, Jesus calls Andrew who then shares his experience of having found the messiah with his brother Simon.

Andrew and John – John 1:36-42
The Church placed John the Baptist’s birth in the summer solstice, when the daylight begins to decrease, and the birth of Jesus in the winter solstice, when the daylight begins to increase. This is because John said, “He (referring to Jesus) must increase, but I must decrease." In putting this plan into practice, John gives his disciples to Jesus; the two of them, Andrew the brother of Simon Peter and John the brother of James, point out Jesus and say:

Here is the Lamb of God – This is a statement coming from a priest because John the Baptist being the son of a priest (Zechariah) was himself ipso facto a priest. As John the Evangelist says in his Gospel, John the Baptist is not the Light, he came to bear witness to the Light, so he points his finger at Jesus saying that He is the last immolated lamb, He is going to replace the sacrificial system.

Come, and see. They went and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day — Andrew and John believed in the Baptist's testimony and set out to follow Jesus, to find out where he lived, what was his doctrine, and what was his identity. Veni vidi vincit, I came, I saw, I conquered. They experienced Jesus as someone who is meek and humble of heart and whose doctrine is not like the heavy burden of the Law of Moses but like a gentle and light yoke.  

We have found the Messiah (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus – After the experience, they were so won over and so happy to have found the Messiah that they did not rest until they went to share that joy with their closest ones, in this case, Andrew's brother, Simon. There are certain joys that if a person does not share them, will burst forth. Shared sadness diminishes, shared joy increases.

The Samaritan Woman - John 4:1-41
On the road between Judea and Galilee, Jesus passed by Samaria and drank from the well of Sychar where centuries earlier, Jacob had met his beloved Rachel. There Jesus met a woman who, at that time of day, came looking for love with the excuse of coming for water. Fountains and wells have always been places of encounter between lovers, because they are ones of the few places where women can go protected under the subterfuge of fetching water.

Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty  - You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you  (St. Augustine) – Jesus plays the same game as the Samaritan woman, since his asking for water is only a subterfuge to give the Samaritan woman what her heart longs for: the love of God, a faithful love, an everlasting love that frees her from coming obsessively over and over again to draw water from the well, that is, that frees her to going from lover to lover, breaking her heart over and over again.

Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water - The Samaritan woman found in Jesus the source of divine love, a water that flows from within towards eternal life. Human love fills our hearts, but not totally; on the other hand, it makes us dependent on the other. Divine love fills our hearts completely, it does not make us dependent, but free. "Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you, all things are passing, God is unchanging. Patience gains all; nothing is lacking to those who have God: God alone is sufficient." (St. Teresa of Avila)

Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?  – As she undergoes the experience of divine love, by feeling within her heart the love of God, the Samaritan woman is so happy that she cannot fail to transmit to her countrymen the testimony of such a sublime experience. The proof that she did not come to draw water in the first place lies in the fact that she left her pitcher at the well, which also proves that her thirst was, once and for all, satisfied.

Many Samaritans from that city believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done. – Jesus gave the Samaritan woman a reading of her past in the light of the present, of the experience of God's love. The Samaritan woman no longer had to hide her past or be ashamed of it, because it was revealed to her in a new light, as stages in the process of coming to know true love.

It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world
– All that I do is to sit on this bank and sell water from the river, said an evangelizer; the business thrives because buyers do not see the river; from the moment they see the river for themselves, they no longer need me to sell water to them, they can come here to get it themselves. The Samaritans no longer need to believe in the testimony of their countrywoman, they do not need to have faith since they met Jesus themselves and experienced firsthand Jesus' salvation.

Mary Magdalene - John 20:1-18
Mary Magdalene, the leader of Jesus' female disciples, like Peter was of the male disciples, is the apostle of the apostles because the male group did not show any empathy for the Master while he was sweating blood and shedding tears of anguish, and they fell asleep even though he asked them to keep him company. Mary Magdalene stood at the foot of the cross of her Master without him asking her to, while among the male disciples, the administrator of the group, Judas, sold Him out, the president Peter cowardly denied Him and the rest fled like frightened chickens.

Mary Magdalene witnessed the death and burial of the Master. She was the only disciple to bear witness to this event, because Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were secret friends of Jesus, and though powerful, they never did anything for Jesus while he was alive; gnawed by their conscience for having being part of the silent majority of Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus, they wanted to at least give him a burial.

In the end, despite the male disciples having behaved so poorly towards the Master, Mary Magdalene went to them when she did not find the Master’s body after having gone to the tomb to pay homage to him early in the morning. If it were not for her, they would never have known that the tomb was empty; she is the herald of the pre-Resurrection, that is, of the empty tomb which for the beloved disciple was sufficient, because on leaning over the empty tomb, he believed that Jesus had risen and not because someone had stolen his body.

Jesus said to her, ‘Mary! She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabouni! (which means Master). – Seeing, I had seen; it was that particular voice by the way he pronounced her name that revealed to Mary Magdalene that He was not the gardener, but her Master or Teacher.

Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father – The natural temptation is to hold onto the feet of the Master and weep over them tears of joy after having exhausted tears of sorrow. But Jesus cannot be stopped as he no longer belongs to this world. And she, having experienced the Risen Christ, cannot be stop either as she must go and proclaim to the apostles that the Master is alive after all.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her – Mary Magdalene runs, now for the second time, to the apostles; this time not to tell them that they had stolen the body of the Lord, but that he has risen from the dead and thus confirming the faith the beloved disciple had manifested before the empty tomb.

Disciples of Emmaus – Luke 24:13-35
Cleofas and his wife were leaving Jerusalem much disillusioned, there was nothing left in this city that caught their attention. Jesus of Nazareth had been up to that point, the reason for their living. They had no doubt that he was a great prophet, mighty in word and deed, as even the crowd knew and could bear witness; they, however, had hoped that he would be more than a prophet, that he would be the long-awaited one of the nations, the Messiah in person.

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures – Jesus helps the disciples of Emmaus to contextualize his death, that is, to read his death in the context of the scriptures. That he was indeed the Messiah as they had hoped, but a different type of messiah, one who comes to overcome not only the evil that affects Israel, but the evil that affects the entire world; the one who comes to deliver not only Israel from the Romans, but to give true freedom to every creature.

‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them – As their hearts were burning, as they begin to understand the scriptures in a new enlightened and revealing light, as their joy was growing, they wanted to know more and did not want to lose his company, therefore they invited the stranger to stay with them.

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him (…) ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ – Jesus reveals himself in the breaking of the bread, a gesture so characteristic of Jesus as they had experienced it so many times before. The way Jesus broke the bread was unusual, as unusual as it had been on the morning of that day, the way Jesus had pronounced the name of Mary Magdalene. We have reached the height of the revelation, the Eucharist was completed with the communion with the Master, preceded by the Liturgy of the Word carried out as they were walking.

That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem
– "Ite, missa est" (go, the Mass is ended), said the priest when the Mass was in Latin, which really means that the Mass has ended, now the Mission begins. The life of the Christian takes place between Mass and Mission; it is a coming and going between the community expression of our faith and living it in life; a coming and going between communion with God in Mass and communion with our brothers and sisters in life. "Ite, missa est" means both that the "Mass is over" and "you are on a mission".

FAITH
Many heard St. Paul’s preaching at the Areopagus in Athens. Most did not believe, but there were some who did. Surely everyone heard the same words of St. Paul, his testimony, yet some believed and others did not. Faith as a gift from God is given to all, but not everyone accepts this gift, some choose not to accept it.

Faith as an option
We often refer to faith as a gift from God. Saint Paul says, it is the Spirit within us who cries out, “Abba, Father!” (Rom. 8:15). Jesus says that it was He who chose us and not us Him (John 15:16). If faith is a gift from God, then why do some have it and others do not? Is it a case of an unjust God who gives faith to some and not to others? So is faith a gift or an option? Or is it both?

Everything starts from God, the initiative is from Him, therefore faith is a gift; but the gift has no effect without our response, without our assent, and therefore faith is also an option. We are saved freely by the grace of God, through faith. Faith is our answer to God's saving grace.

In this sense, faith is a round-trip ticket; it is like a letter that God sends us, registered and with acknowledgement of receipt: it is necessary that I accept the letter and sign the accompanying document. Faith is like a blank check that God signs and sends to me; for this check to have value or to serve me, I have to write on it an amount of money.

Salvation is a free gift from God, faith in God’s salvation is a free choice of man. Someone said that God feeds the birds of the sky, but He does not put the food in their nests, they have to go out and get it.

On Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and the apostle John saw the empty tomb; the first saw and thought that they had stolen the Lord's body, the second saw and believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Jesus reproaches and points the finger at the lack of faith of the people of his generation (Matthew 17:17, Mark 6:6, Luke 24:25), as well as of his disciples (Mark 16:14). If faith were not an option, and it were only a gift from God, there would be no reason for such rebuke.

Jesus, bitter because the Pharisees did not want to believe, neither in John the Baptist nor in Himself, weeps over Jerusalem and condemns the cities, where more miracles were done and still they did not believe. In the end he praises children and the humble ones, because unlike the wise, they believed and accepted his message (Matthew 11:16-24).

When we discover faith, we realize that it is a gift from God. However, it is first the option that we make before the testimony of someone who is happy because he believed, like Elizabeth said to her cousin Mary at the Visitation.

I cannot believe
Faith that does not come from reason must be called into question, and the reason that does not lead to faith must be feared.   Mr. Campbell Morgan

To believe is to give the heart. Christian Bobin

Faced with an existence of God that cannot be proved or disproved unequivocally, it is up to us to decide, that is, to choose. Both theism and atheism are options, while agnosticism chooses not to choose. Several agnostics have told me "I cannot believe". In psychotherapy, when someone says "I cannot", the therapist translates it as "I do not want to".

For example, let us suppose the patient says, "I can't quit smoking"; the therapist asks, "Is quitting smoking impossible?" to which the patient replies "No, others have quit", and the therapist concludes "You do not want to quit smoking, because if you really wanted to, you would quit, because as the people say, "Where there is a will there is a way".

The same can be said of the agnostic or atheist who says "I cannot believe". To believe is not impossible: many believe, if you do not believe it is because you do not want to believe or because this attitude of not believing is more convenient to you. I have encountered many who are agnostics because this is in fashion and because they are full of prejudices about faith, religion, the Church and those who are religious.

(...) choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord
Joshua 24:15

Faith is not an object of science, nor is science an object of faith. Scientific knowledge convinces us, satisfies our rationality completely without room for doubt; faith is not like that. Reason helps us with faith, but not in a rational or reasonable way.

Reason is not able to rationalize faith completely, it can only make it reasonable; the rest comes from it being our gift. That is why it is said that faith is a reasonable gift, because reason takes us to a certain point, then we are on our own: either we take the leap or do not leap, we open the door or do not open, we trust or do not trust, we give in or do not give in, we surrender or do not surrender. Faith is therefore an option.

‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?’
Luke 16:10-11

Whoever has lost faith, can no longer lose anything else
. Publilius Syrus

"The thief assumes that everyone is like him" – Whoever does not trust is not trustworthy, since he is not trustworthy, he is not to be trusted. Because he judges others as he judges himself, and since he is a thief, he thinks everyone is a thief like him, he does not believe that anyone can be different.

Faith is in the spiritual sphere what money is in the commercial sphere.  Anonymous

Faith is lived not only in religion, nor is reason lived only in science. Faith and reason are parts of a whole and we need them in our daily lives. Practically every act contains a bit of reason and a bit of faith. In our lives, reason analyzes and faith decides; without reason we would decide prematurely and make more mistakes than we already do; without faith we would never decide, never risk a solution to our problems, because we would always think that something may have escaped our analysis and we become paralyzed.

When I accept a check for a service rendered, I trust that it will not bounce. It would be impolite and I could lose a friend if had I refused it in the first place. When I get on a plane, I trust that the security personnel did a good job in preventing someone from putting a bomb in his luggage, and I believe that the pilots are highly skilled and with good intent. When I sit down to eat in a restaurant, I trust that the food is in good condition and I do not to have it analyzed in the laboratory before consuming it; it is the lack of faith and the fear of poisoning that people make the cooks in Ethiopia always taste the food in front of the guests.

When I join a woman in marriage, I believe it will work out, that it will be for life. When I apply for a bank loan, no matter how much the bank analyzes my financial situation, if they eventually grant me the requested loan, it is because they believe that one day I will pay it back with interest. The credit card is, at the end of the day, a faith card, and it works based on it; we speak of faith in the markets as we speak of faith in God. In short, faith is not only the exchange currency between us and God, but it is also the exchange currency among humans.

Since man is not an object of science, in everyday life there are no certainties, only probabilities. Like reason, faith is essential in human relationships for understanding between people. It is based on the trust that people have of each other, that promises and commitments are made and honored. Since the one who does not trust is not faithful, to be faithful one must believe, one must have faith.

Original trust or distrust
“The meek lamb sucks milk from its mother and from somebody else’s mother, the big-headed lamb however is restless and suspicious even when it is sucking milk from its own mother”. Portuguese Proverb

Many of our positions, choices and ideas regarding God, others and life, for as much as it pains us to admit it, have more to do with our vital and existential experience than with our discernment and intellectual research.

Used to seeing babies nursing peacefully at their mothers' breasts, I found it anecdotal when I saw some babies in Ethiopia suckle on one breast, while putting their hand on the other, as if to say "I am not done with this one, the other one is mine too, nobody takes it away from me while I am suckling on this one."

Psychologist Erik Erikson speaks of the original trust or distrust that the baby receives from conception to birth and during the first years of his life. When the baby is born, he already knows instinctively what awaits him, because he already was or was not accepted while growing inside of his mother's womb.

Primary trust, that is, faith, acquired in the mother's womb and not defrauded during the first years of life is a fundamental condition for an authentic, successful and happy human life. The lack of this original trust can be the basis for the choice of agnosticism, atheism, for lack of faith in general and mistrust of others, and the attitude of always having one foot behind.  

Cultivating faith
Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able! – All things can be done for the one who believes.’ Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’  Mark 9:23-24

‘(...) if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’ Matthew 17:20

Faith increases by prayer, is strengthened by the study of the Word, and is fulfilled when we submit daily to the Lord Jesus. J. Charles Stern

It is clear from the Bible that faith is not a static and unchanging gift from God. There is certainly a component of faith that is God’s gift and as such, is common to all his children, but then there is the possibility of growing in this gift or letting it diminish and losing it completely. Everything in life is dynamic and faith is no exception. God also assists us in the growth of this gift, but there must be an effort on our part; God does not help lazy people.

Growing through prayer – Through prayer we communicate with God and put ourselves in a dynamic of increasing our knowledge of God, and at the same time increasing our love for Him. As in human relationships, God only reveals himself to those who love him; therefore, the more knowledge the more love, the more love the more knowledge.

Study – Basically, the encounter with the Word of God, the Scriptures, grows in those who read them with an attitude of meditation, to find in them the food for each day. Every Christian is free to interpret the Scriptures for himself with the help of the Holy Spirit.

In our reading, it is appropriate to take into account the interpretation that the Holy Church makes of the Scriptures as described in the tradition of the Church in her two centuries of following the Master. The Magisterium is the authorized word on the Scripture, we can interpret it in our own way, but never against the interpretation of the Church.

We Catholics have a particular devotion to those who have preceded us in the life of faith. Our devotion and veneration of them must be translated as an imitation of their virtues and an exhortation for us to follow the Master as they did.

Practice of the sacraments
- Above all, is the need to belong to a small Christian community; "Unus christianus, nullus christianus", just as the disciples needed a master, every Christian needs to belong, to associate with a group of people who share the same faith. This group of people gradually becomes a community of life when they share the practice of faith and celebrate the memory of the Life, Death and Resurrection of the Lord.

EXPERIENCE
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us – we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ 1 John 1:1-3

The experience of Jeremiah 15:16 and Ezekiel 3:1-3
O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. He said to me, Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey. Ezekiel 3:1-3

So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll; and he said to me, “Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.’ So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. Then they said to me, ‘You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.’  Revelation 10:9-11

The prophet Jeremiah and the prophet Ezekiel, as well as the author of the book of Revelation, all have the same experience with respect to the Word of God; it is sweet to the palate, it is pleasant to hear it because it tells the truth and we are convinced that it is the truth. However, assimilating it, digesting it and above all putting it into practice is hard.

It is true that the Word of God is the only way, truth and life and only with it will we be happy and feel fulfilled, because it is the lid for our pot, it appeals to our human nature that cannot be lived otherwise. That is why the Word is the Word of Life, because only in it and through it we can have an authentic and true life.

However, our nature is weakened and made fragile by the first sin of Adam and Eve; our nature is a fallen nature and our inclination towards evil has become, like the first sin, a second nature almost as natural as the one that God gave us.

From experience to Metanoia
(…) ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’ Matthew 12:48-50

To go through the experience of Christ is to embody the Word, it is to eat it like Jeremiah did, to digest it and extract from it the food for spiritual life, like we do from vegetables, cereals, meat, fish and fruits for our physical life. To go through the experience of God is metanoia, that is, to change our mind, to change our ideas; since the mind governs our lives, when we change our mind or ideas, we also change our behavior and our deeds.
 
It is, on the other hand, to have the same experience as Mary; when we have the faith that she had, we conceive Jesus as she did, through the work and grace of the Holy Spirit, which is in fact what makes us cry out, “Abba, Father!”. Once Jesus is conceived in our womb through faith, He grows inside of us as he did inside of Mary; and when it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me, as St. Paul said, then I give birth to Christ, that is, I carry out a mission, I speak of Him, I speak of how He has changed my life.

The experience of becoming a Christian is, therefore, to conceive the Word through faith, to make it grow through prayer and the practice of the sacraments, until we fully embody the Word and it becomes the flesh of our flesh, giving it birth, that is, giving it to others in the Mission.

There are three attitudes towards Jesus: know Him - love Him - follow Him. With these three attitudes, we can always grow; know Him better to love Him more and to follow Him more closely. Let us look at examples of experience and metanoia, that is, conversion, change of mind and life.

Bartimaeus – The encounter with Jesus cured him of his blindness. He opened his eyes and began to see life differently; in one leap he left behind his previous life (symbolized by the cloak) and followed Jesus. Mark 10:46-52

Samaritan Woman – Finding in Jesus the true water, she abandoned her water jug at the well, symbol of a life made up of comings and goings, in search of a water that never quenches.

Paul of Tarsus – The encounter with Christ turned his life around; the same energy he used to fight Christ served from that moment onward to spread the good news of the Master throughout the ancient world.

Francis of Assisi – Young and the only son of a wealthy bourgeois family who could afford to pay for all his whims, found Christ and abandoned material wealth to embrace spiritual wealth.

Nuno Álvares Pereira – Young nobleman, famous hero of the battle of Aljubarrota, possessed half of Portugal and deserved, more than the Master of Avis, to be the king of Portugal, yet he abandoned everything for a greater wealth: Christ.

Teresa of Ávila – After the beatific vision she came to affirm, "I live without living in me and I expect a life so high, and that I die because I do not die". Nothing held her to this earth anymore, after experiencing Christ and still being young, she wanted to die and fly to Him. St. Paul experienced this very thing and wanted to go to Him, but he saw the convenience of still being among the young people to spread the Word to them.

Francis of Borgia - Nobleman from the great Borgia family, served with dedication the Emperor of Europe, Charles V who was married to the very beautiful Isabella of Portugal, eldest daughter of Don Manuel I. When contemplating the young and beautiful empress on her deathbed, he said, “Never again, never again will I serve a master who can die on me.”

MISSION
‘(…) for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.’ Acts 4:20

If we are authentic Christians then we are missionaries. Being a missionary is not something we propose to do, we do not need to sharpen our intelligence, motivate our willpower, and channel our strength and time to the proclamation of the Gospel. For the authentic Christian, proclaiming the Gospel is natural, it flows naturally from his life. Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel, it is as if I did not live, said St. Paul. (1 Corinthians 9:16)

Mission is to give reasons for our hope
Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you. 1 Peter 3:15

For those who believe that we come from nothing and go to nothing, and as the result, live without meaning, we must give them the reasons for our hope. And when they are very intellectual and we cannot answer their questions, simply say in all humility, "I do not have enough culture to answer your questions, but there are doctors in the Holy Mother Church who surely can answer and satisfy your thirst for the truth."

Salt of the Earth and Light of the World
The Christian is the salt of the earth and as such, he melts the ice that causes so many people to slip and fall in the winter, that is, he melts the traps that certain people set to make their peers fall. Salt preserves meat, fish and other foods. Therefore, when there is a Christian in an institution, company, school, government or factory, the social fabric that constitutes this entity does not corrupt.

Salt gives flavor to food, the Christian gives flavor and meaning to life, because life without Christ makes no sense. Salt fixes water in our body, without which we would be dehydrated, we who are made up of more than 70% water. Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and just as he gave the Samaritan woman everlasting water, he will give it to all who believes in Him.

The Christian is also the light that serves to see and reveal the truth of things, the true nature, color and character of everything, he reveals the truth of each one and each thing. Light also reveals or unveils the machinations of evil, for whoever does evil flees from light; light denounces evil, exposes the schemes of the wicked and their plans.

Above all, the Christian is the light because he is a beacon, so that when people in seeing his good works they will glorify the Father in Heaven, that is, like insects that are attracted to the light, so the Christian attracts people to Christ. When the Christian is a blown out candle, that is, when his works do not coincide with his faith, then he is a stumbling block, he is a light that kills all who are attracted to it, and a darkness in which everyone stumbles.

Mary, the missionary model
‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus’. Luke 1:30-31

Mary is the model, the paradigm of our Christian and missionary life because she was the first to walk the path in its three stages: Faith - Experience - Mission. By faith, she opened the door to God who became incarnate through the work and grace of the Holy Spirit, and grew in her womb.

Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’  Luke 1:34

Mary did not believe so just like that, without asking her questions, or without using her mind, for her faith was also a reasonable gift. The angel not only answered her inquisitive reasoning by saying that the Son of God would not come into the world by human will, but by the work and grace of the Holy Spirit, and gave her a proof of God's omnipotence by saying that her old cousin Elizabeth had conceived.

‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her. Luke 1:38

As this had never happened before and was only going to happen once, Mary might not have taken that leap of faith, the option of faith, but she did, even though the angel certainly did not answer all her questions. She trusted his Word and so her cousin will later tell her, "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (Luke 1:45)

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One as done great things for me, and holy is his name.  Luke 1:46-49

She spoke of this experience to her cousin St. Elizabeth, that is, that she was the first missionary of the people of Israel and then with the birth of her Son, gave Him to the whole world, symbolized by the three ethnicities that the human race is divided into in the magi who visited the infant Jesus. To her cousin Elizabeth, Mary opens her heart and mouth to intone her Magnificat, to bear witness to the wonders that the Lord has done in her life.

The missionary, therefore, is not primarily someone who proclaims the Gospel, the one who catechizes, who speaks "objectively" about Jesus, about his story, life and miracles, and doctrine; that would be proselytism, not mission. The missionary does not speak "objectively" about Christ, but subjectively, because it is from his experience and living of Christ that he announces the "Kerygma", that is, the Gospel.

To be a missionary is to bear witness to how Christ is my salvation, that is, how Christ brought me physical, spiritual, psychic, and moral health, and of how Christ brought me life and life in abundance — happiness. To be a missionary is to chant our Magnificat before men as Mary chanted hers before her cousin Elizabeth.

Conclusion: To be a Christian is to go through the same experience as Mary; like her, by faith, I conceive Jesus as the Word made flesh in my behavior and works; and when "it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20), I give birth to Him, that is, I announce Him to others.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC


September 1, 2021

3 Theological Virtues: Faith - Hope - Charity

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And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

The classical treatises divide virtues into two groups: human or acquired and divine or infused. Among the acquired virtues, four main ones are noted: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. Among the infused virtues are Faith, Hope and Charity; they are also called theological virtues because they are not the result of human efforts, but a gift infused by God in his children.  

In my view, however, neither the human ones are purely human, for we are always under the influence of the divine Grace, nor are the divine ones purely divine because human consent and effort are always required. In this regard, St. Augustine said that every good thing we do is by the grace of God, that is, it is a gift.

Faith – It is an attitude, conviction or belief in the existence of a Supreme Being who is both immanent and transcendent and who has historically revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth, His only son, who lived among us, died, rose again and ascended into Heaven to prepare a place for us, leaving us the Holy Spirit to guide and accompany us on our way to this place. We relate to God through Faith.

Hope – More than an attitude of reasonable trust in the face of the uncertainty of the future, our Hope has a name, it is the salvation that God promises and offers us in Jesus Christ, His son. His resurrection from the dead makes death a passage to the afterlife and not a final destination. We relate to ourselves through Hope, that is how we react to our inner restlessness.

Charity – It is the virtue that regulates our action and the way we situate ourselves in life in relation to creation and to other people. Charity regulates how much I am part of other people's lives and how much others are part of my life. We relate to others through Charity: I am worth insofar as I serve; whoever does not live to serve is not fit to live.

The virtues in the Trinity, the Trinity in the virtues
Faith in God the Father opens us to the Hope we find in the Son through his resurrection, and motivates a gift of Charity, making us see Christ in each person. And whoever sees the Son sees the Father, like Jesus told Philip. Hope is the only-begotten daughter of mother Faith, as Christ is the only begotten Son of God the Father, and just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, so Charity proceeds from Faith and Hope.

God the Father is our Faith, Creator of Heaven and Earth; Faith is our past, our historical memory, being our Father, it is He who explains our being. God the Son, historically Jesus of Nazareth, is our Hope, in him we have an older brother who lived, died and rose again, opening the gates of Heaven to us and a graceful way out of this life. The Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son is Charity that comes from Faith and Hope.

If Faith and Hope are thought and feeling, Charity is action; it is the way we occupy our place in the world during the time God has given us to live. To exercise this virtue, we need the person of God who came to stay, the Holy Spirit who dwells in us in the form of the seven gifts or talents, and who inspires, guides and encourages us in the here and now of our lives and on the way back to the Father.

Virtues and time
O time turn back / Bring me everything that I've lost / Have mercy on me and give me the life / The life I've already lived. Manuel Paião 1984

When we have already lived a few years, the past begins to be longer than the future; the memories of this past spring to our mind more than the projects of the future. I can understand the author of the song mentioned above in the sense that the recollection of the joys and pleasures of the past, causes sadness in the present; the longing of the remembrance of past pleasures is oftentimes not a joyful feeling but a sad one.

In contrast, the memory of the past sacrifices made at individual level to achieve an ideal at the community level when we dedicated ourselves to someone, when we put our lives at the service of a cause, brings us joy in the present. It is as if it is still happening: the joy of the victory of battles won in the past still resonates and makes us feel it in the present, giving a boost to our self-esteem and making us say, "It was all worth it..."

Human life is spatiotemporal, that is, we occupy a space, our place in the world, our being and how we are, our role in the whole history of humanity, for a period of time. This time is, like everything, tridimensional, that is, it is subdivided into past, present and future. These three times are interactive, that is, neither the future is only about the future, nor the past only about the past, nor the present deals only with the here and now. The three are real, the three are alive, the three influence each other and coexist.

Both the three times as well as the three virtues are interactive, as we have said. However, each virtue relates more with one time than with another. Of course Hope has to do with the future, being Faith projected into the future where its content is found. Charity must occupy our present and Faith is the virtue that inspires our past.

2 Timothy 4:7 – "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Faith comes from the past to give us self-esteem, a feeling that it was worth it and that our struggles were not in vain. Hope comes from the future to tell us "do not be afraid"; Charity arises from the present to give us the priorities that overcome our stress in saying, "strive FIRST for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well". (Matthew 6:33)

Grammatically, our existence is not defined in simple present; the present continuous does not serve us either. The grammatical time that most reflects what happens to us at the level of existence will be a mix of present perfect with present continuous. Applying this time to the quote of St. Paul would be "I have been keeping the Faith." In the present perfect, the action began in the past, continues in the present and is opened to the future.  

Faith and the past - between depression and self-esteem
A psychiatrist said that a Christian must have a poor memory of the past. I would not say that we should forget what went wrong in the past so we could live without depression and with a minimum self-esteem. What we need to have is a benevolent vision of our past, we must reconcile with it and with all the people who were part of it, including ourselves of course. The past has of course gone, but it continues to be reinterpreted in the present.

Certain facts that were part of it have already had several interpretations throughout our life. As we know more about ourselves, that is, as we have an overview of our life, it is easier to fit in a positive way each negative fact of our past life. There is an interesting Portuguese and Spanish proverb that I assume is the popular version of the “Felix Culpa” theology that says: “There are no evils from which good does not come”. On the same wavelength, another says that God writes straight on crooked lines. Human lines are crooked but God even on these lines he writes straight.

We must be able to chant our Happy Fault (Félix Culpa) about our past so that it comes to our present in a positive way, and not negative, haunting us. Like Jules Verne on his voyage to the center of the Earth, we have to travel back to our past to flood it with the light of our present (because, as a proverb has it, “where the sun does not enter, the doctor does”) and thus prevent this from invading our present in a sneaky, clandestine and negative way.

What we know about ourselves, of our past, we can control; what we don't know about ourselves, controls us. That is why this pilgrimage journey from the present to the past is necessary. By returning to the present after this journey to the past, I am able to establish Faith as the guiding thread of my life; like in a pearl necklace, this thread binds each of the facts of the past in a harmonious way that positively explains how I came to be what I am today.

This thread that binds all the facts together in a positive way is our faith in Christ, the center, origin and destination of our lives. Like the Earth revolving around the Sun, our (liturgical) year is spent around his Person and his Word, from his birth to his Ascension into Heaven, in a helical movement from the past to the future.

This makes events of every Christmas, every Easter and every Pentecost always old and always new; where I was at Christmas last year is not where I am now. Therefore, every feast is always same and always different in this helical journey around Christ towards the future.

Hope and the future - between anxiety and Hope
Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” (…) your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and is righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, (…) Today’s trouble is enough for today.  Matthew 6:31-34

From the moment we are adopted by God as his children, we should no longer worry. Children live occupied and always try to be occupied, not preoccupied. They leave the worries to their parents, who are the ones that should be worried about the well-being of the child. This must be our relationship with God our Father: we must be busy with the affairs of the Kingdom of God and leave to him our livelihood, our clothing, our future.

As we have already mentioned in other texts, the biblical man walks towards the future backwards, being guided by the past. As we walk with our back to the future, the horizons are broadened and each particular fact is seen and placed in plain sight as a piece of a puzzle. On the other hand, that same past provides me with the navigation tool for the future. At sea, both on the surface of the water and under it, submarines are not guided by sight, but by instruments; the same goes for airplanes in the air. Our past is the instrument of navigation for the future because, as much as we want to, we do not know the future; but since it is known to God, it is in him that we trust.

(...) if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.  1 Corinthians 15:14

Where we come from, where we are going and what is the meaning of our life are the questions that every human being asks himself from the moment he knows himself as a person. Only Christ is the complete answer to these questions.

In Christ we put our Hope that our death is a birth to eternal life, not the end of life, an eternal death. It is this future that gives meaning to our present, and without this future nothing of the present would make sense. If, as atheists and agnostics believe, we come from nothing and head towards nothing, if nothing is the beginning and nothing is the end, how can the middle be something of meaning? How can something have meaning when it begins in nothing and ends in nothing?

Without the future, the present is nauseating no matter how pleasant it may be. This is what Sartre experienced, Nietzsche before him and Camus after him: if you come from nothing, you have no Faith, if you go to nothing, you have no Hope, the surest thing is that you have no Charity because life lacks meaning, it is nauseating.

(…) I know the one in whom I have put my trust… 2 Timothy 1:12

We are not heading towards the sunset of our life, but towards the dawn of eternal life. Therefore, no matter how happy we are, the best is yet to come; no matter how much we suffer or how much we are decrepit, limited, sick or old, the best is to come always, it is not here in the circumstances and vicissitudes of the here and now that we put our trust in, for we know that we do not have a lasting city here, but we are looking for the city that is to come. (Hebrews 13:14)

Charity and the present - between stress and tranquility
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’  Matthew 11:28-30

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved...  Psalm 127:1-2

Our present can be invaded by the remorse of the past or by the fear, worry and anxiety of the future. In this way, we become stressed, disoriented, paralyzed, not knowing where to go and what to do, like Marta (Luke 10:38-42) who went around like a headless chicken.

The Master calls us to go to Him, to accept His yoke, His law, His way of proceeding and doing things, and then we will find rest. It is the Lord who guards the city: dawn does not last long before morning come. All we have to do is not to save for tomorrow what we can do today.

The priority is the Kingdom of God and His justice, everything else comes after. We often realize that we have been sweeping other people’s houses, and upon return, we find our own house swept clean as well. It is in helping others that we help ourselves. It is in helping to solve the problems of others that we find ours magically solved. That is why others do not come to increase our stress, they come to eliminate it. This is what it means to "strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

When you ask for a favor, ask someone who is busy, and not someone who is unoccupied, because the latter will tell you he still got a lot to do. The problem of stress is fundamentally a problem of priorities. We often self-sabotage when under a lot of stress, we do what is the least important first, putting aside and compulsively delaying what truly counts.

Trinitarian Fatima: My God I believe, I adore and I love you...
My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You. / I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, / do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You.

The seer and "evangelist" of Fatima, Lucia, told the then Cardinal Ratzinger that the "practical" aim of all the apparitions was to make the people of God grow in the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, which are present in the message since the first prayer taught by the Angel: "My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love you..."

A simple and singular prayer, that is also complete; an invitation to Christians to live the three dimensions of human time: Past - Present - Future, drawing inspiration from the three theological virtues: Faith - Hope - Charity. Human life takes place exclusively in the present; a present that, when it is full of Charity inspired by the past of our parents’ Faith, is without fear or anxiety because of the Hope that projects us into the future.

The virtue of Faith: "I Believe" – Faith is the philosopher's stone that makes us see life and reality with different eyes. Faith is a step we take beyond what is rational and yet reasonable; it is a risk, a decision, a fundamental option. It is the key that opens the door to Salvation – in other words, door to Heaven in the future, but which in the present, in the here and now, translates into peace, happiness and feeling good, physically, spiritually, psychologically and morally.

The virtue of Hope: "I hope" – The theological virtue of Hope is Faith projected into the future that gives a sense of security in the present moment. A Christian does not need anxiolytics because he has no anxiety; perfectly anchored in Faith that translates, in the present, in the here and now, into Charity to God and neighbour. "He who does not owe does not fear" says the proverb; a Christian does not fear because he is not indebted to anyone, not to God, not to men.

Faith also assures Christians that, no matter how good or how bad the present moment is, everything is fleeting and their story will have a happy ending. The end of their story is already assured in the death and Resurrection of the Lord. If we have the Faith that allows us to believe that even the hairs of our head are numbered, as the gospel says, we live in the certainty that even though the present moment may be of suffering and anguish, the best is yet to come and our story will have a happy ending. Therefore, fear and anxiety disappear and the ups and downs of our lives are lived in Hope and Faith in divine providence and not in fear.

"In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph" – It is in this Faith and in this Hope that the little shepherds of Fatima lived, especially Lucia, who would soon lose the companionship of her cousins. Realizing that she was going to be alone in the world, Lucia must have felt a great sadness, which led Our Lady to ask her, "And you suffer much for this?" Then, as a way of comfort and consolation, she said, "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God," or to heaven that had already been promised to her, Jacinta, and Francisco since the very first apparition.

The virtue of Charity: I adore... and I love you – We live only in the present, inspired by the past and confident in the future. The present of our life must be full of Charity; Charity, or Love, can only be lived in the present moment. "Don't keep for tomorrow what you can and should do today." Good intentions do not save anyone, not even ourselves. Charity cannot be a project, but an action in the present time. Charity cannot be postponed.

I adore you - The present moment must be full of love of God. Finding time and seeking a place to be with Him, like Jesus used to do and like Francisco of Fatima also used to do, isolating himself from his companions, by hiding behind a wall or in a deserted place, or spending school time in the Church of Fatima, consoling the Hidden Jesus.

I love you – When we love God as Father with all our heart, we look at the other with different set of eyes; he is no longer our enemy, our rival whom we fear or envy, but our brother whom we desire all the best in the world. In this sense, love of God does not exist without love of neighbour and vice versa, that is why for Jesus, the two are part of a single commandment of love.

Three virtues, three Popes
There are those who want to see an incarnation of the theological virtues in the lives of the last three Popes of the Church. John Paul II, who crossed the threshold of the third millennium, is the Pope of Hope; Benedict XVI, who wrote an encyclical on Faith, proclaimed the year of Faith and his whole life as a theologian defended the reasonableness of Faith, and is therefore the Pope of Faith; Pope Francis, by the name he has chosen, by his words and gestures, is the Pope of Charity.

FAITH
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (…) And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.  Hebrews 11:1, 6

We walk by faith, not by sight2 Corinthians 5:7

To have faith is to sign a blank page and let God write whatever he wants. St. Augustine

Faith - a sixth sense - transcends the intellect without contradicting it. Gandhi

The first of the three virtues is the foundation for the other two. Faith was, in Roman mythology, the goddess of trust, daughter of Saturn and Opis. To have Faith means to believe, trust, bet on, or adhere to a person or group of people or a doctrine. To believe, to credit, means the same as to rely on, but it has a different etymological root, because the concept of believing derives from ‘cor’ which in Latin means heart; to place the hand over one’s heart is a symbolic gesture that means to believe, to trust, and even to commit oneself, to be loyal, faithful.

Faith is the mental acceptance of the truth of a doctrine, an affirmation, or existence of a Supreme Being, for which there are no immediate ascertainable certainty. Similarly, the Bible, in turn, defines Faith in Hebrews 11:1 as being the firm foundation of things to be expected, and proof of things that are not seen.

Faith is a reasonable leap prepared rationally, like someone who is walking along the road and reaches a point where he has to jump over to the other side of the precipice; Faith is a leap into the future or a visible present reality starting from a hypothetical future not yet present. Faith is to navigate on the sea or in the air or under the sea without the sight of the way or route we go through. Faith is the child who throws himself into the air into the expectant arms of his father or mother.

From the point of view of knowledge, Faith does not belong neither to analysis nor to deductive logical knowledge; Faith has more to do with synthesis and intuitive knowledge. To have Faith is to intuit that something is right without all the guarantees; it is to write a blank cheque, to lend money or a book and believe that it will be returned. Faith is to bet and to risk.

Einstein's theory of general relativity was for a long time an object of Faith; it was born out of an intuition of its founder; it was only a short time ago that we began to have evidence of the veracity of this theory. The new quantum physics that admits invisible and imperishable realities contradicts and is quite different from Newton's mechanical physics, where reality seemed to function perfectly, like a Swiss clock.

Rational, irrational, reasonable
Many scientists who once looked at Faith as superstition, but with the theory of relativity and the new quantum physics, are now forced to recognize that not all scientific knowledge arises from deductive logic and are susceptible to be proven empirically in the immediate. These scientists are dualists because between the rationality of science and the irrationality of superstition, they do not recognize a reasonable, intermediate, plausible and humanly understandable concept.

Fides quaerens intellectum (Faith seeking understanding) – St. Anselmo's great maxim speaks of Faith as a form of knowledge that enables the intellect to go beyond itself, to jump over to the other side if there is no other way to get there. Faith is not irrational because it strives to understand, and since it is not immediately verifiable like science of our time, it is therefore reasonable.

The First Vatican Council, in fact, defines Faith as a reasonable gift. Reasonable is a mixture of rational and irrational. To have Faith is to read the signs of the times, unnoticeable details that indicate to us that something is about to happen. We humans only know that there is a fire when we see or smell the smoke, the jungle animals know there is a fire nearby long before they see or smell the smoke. In many other atmospheric and natural phenomena, animals are very intuitive in order to protect themselves from imminent disasters.

Faith identifies us with a past                                                                              The heritage of humanity is not only made up of historical monuments, but also of all that the human race is and has done throughout the 5 million years of its existence on this planet. All this is genetically encrypted in the DNA of every child who comes into this world, it is something like Jung's collective unconscious, and it is a part of us and defines us as such. All this is in the past.


"Libri ex libris fiunt", when I want to create something new, in any field of knowledge, I have to research what has already been done on this subject in order to add the fruit of my work. Only God has the ability to create out of nothing.

Faith in a personal God, Creator of everything and everyone, who revealed himself through the prophets and then in His Son, and who sent us the Holy Spirit, already has a history. My adherence to this Faith makes me a part of this history and gives me identity and a sense of belonging to a people and a community.

The same is true at the individual level. I know what I am and what I am capable of by looking back, seeing the performance of my talents and my shortcomings in the various circumstances that life has thrown at me throughout my personal history. It is the approval of this past that gives me the sense of self-esteem that I need to relate properly with myself, with God, with others, and with my environment. If I am trapped in my past, hostage to my past, I am not free for others or for God.

Even God who lives in eternity, outside of space and time confinement, in order to present himself to men, made use of his coexistence with them in the past, presenting himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...

HOPE
(...) because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel (…) Colossians 1:5

(…) remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.  1 Thessalonians 1:3

(…) with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, (…) Ephesians 1:18

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23

It is likely that the Lord created hope on the same day that he created spring. Bern Williams

They do not know nor dream /That dream commands life /And that as long as man dreams
The world jumps and advances /Like a colored ball /Between the hands of a child.
António Gedeão

While there is life, there's hope. Marcus Tullius

The second, of the three virtues is the daughter of Faith, just as Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of the Father and indeed it is in Him that the anchor of our Hope rests. As St. Paul stressed, "If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14); everything falls apart like a deck of cards if Christ has not risen, our whole life lacks meaning and foundation like a sand castle. Christ is the only guarantee of life beyond death because He himself passed this threshold, not as God that he was, but as the man whom he incarnated, Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus' message is not just about configuring our present and saving our past, it is also about the future since it is about something that is already here, but not yet in its entirety: the Kingdom of God. It is the project of building the Kingdom that links the past, the present and the future, which leads us to walk in an archetypical dynamic of Egypt – Desert - Promised Land.

Christian Hope is the virtue through which we desire and work for the kingdom of Heaven and eternal life. By placing our Faith in Christ and his promises, we rely on our strength but also in the complementary help of the Holy Spirit. Christian Hope is the fulfillment of all that God has promised his people since Abraham.

Hope projects us into the future
Since the stubborn donkey did not want to move, the young man tied a carrot hanging at the end of a stick, he then mounted the donkey and held the carrot two feet in front of the animal’s nostrils. Hoping to bite the carrot, the donkey kept moving forward not realizing that the carrot was moving too.

Hope is Faith on wheels; the dynamic Faith that propels us into the future. We all need a carrot to entice us to move. Dream is the engine of life; it is not in the present, but it is what inspires our present.

Martin Luther King was one of those who, projected into the future, mortgaged his life in the fight for equality between Blacks and Whites; a dream he knew would not come true in his lifetime. The day before his assassination, drawing inspiration from Moses who, after 40 years of walking through the wilderness, saw the Promised Land, which he did not enter, from the top of Mount Nebo, King said, "I am grateful to God because he has granted me to see the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."

For those who do not know where they are going, there are no favorable winds - One only lives with meaning in the present if it is imbued with the future. To live a present without the presence of a future is to drift. And when the present is painful, it is Hope for a better future that helps us to bear it.

About the Kingdom of God, theologians say that it is present, "already" among us since Christ came to us, but “not yet” in its fullness. Paraphrasing this idea, we can say that: while Faith helps us to look at the present as an “already”, Hope compels us to judge this very same present as a “not yet” in its plenitude.

Hope helps us to disengage from the present and to continue walking knowing that, regardless of how good the conditions we might be living in, this is not yet the Kingdom. The Hope that traces out for us the course of the future gives us a goal, a way to go, a knowledge of where to go.

There is no evil that always lasts, nor good that always endures - It is Hope that uninstalls us from the present when it is rosy, telling us that we have not arrived yet, and it is Hope that takes us out of despair from a present situation. Life is made up of ups and downs, just like the electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram. Hope makes us not lose our head at the top and not to despair at the bottom.
 
Not all optimists have Hope, but all who have Hope are optimists; don't look at a bottle as half empty, but as half full. Hope is the positive way of interpreting the present, of seeing it through the filters of the signs of the times, imbued with a bright future for everyone because God wants it so for everyone; He wants us to have life and have it in abundance.

CHARITY
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. James 2:14-18

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.  1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:8
Let all that you do be done in love
. 1 Corinthians 16:14

The third of the three virtues proceeds from Faith and Hope, just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; and it is indeed the Holy Spirit who sustains us in the living and practicing of this virtue. While Faith underlies, and Hope inspires and motivates, Charity acts, for it proceeds from Faith and Hope as the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

It is in Charity or by Charity that we validate Faith and Hope or that we prove that we have Faith and Hope. If there is no Charity, Faith is dead, and if Faith is dead, Hope which is its daughter was never born. The value of Faith and Hope lies in their role as the foundation of Charity and in making it possible.

Through Charity we know who has Faith and who has Hope. On the other hand, it is in Charity that Faith and Hope feed and grow. It is Charity that feeds back Faith and Hope, making them both grow. Charity leads to more Faith and Faith leads to more Charity.

Now we enter into the finest theological virtue that is the result of the previous two: if we have Faith, it means that we believe in God's revelation, and if we have Hope, it means that we have the inspiration to persevere, this also means that we have in us the values that have been given to us from God's revelation, in order to practice them.

It is here that Charity comes in — which is the visible face of Faith — it is Charity that confirms Faith and Hope, so we have as a statement: "Faith without works is dead", since it would mean that we do not adhere to God's revelation. This would imply, in other words, a denial of the commandments: to love one’s neighbour as oneself, to help the poor, to teach the needy, to evangelize, etc.

Charity is Love, just as it is a form of friendship with God. God Loves us, so we must love God, and if God loves us it means that we too must love our neighbour, therefore we have the order: love of God, of oneself and of others. If in Faith we love God above everything, it is in Charity that we love our neighbour as we love ourselves.

Charity fills our present
Obras son amores que no buenas razones... (Works are love not fancy words…) Castilian proverb

Unlike the past and the future, the present is in our hands, in it and only in it are we free to act. The present is the here and now of our life that must be full of action, of acts of Charity and Love. For the Christian, to live is to love and to love is to serve, to put oneself at the service of those who need us the most.

Considering what Mother Teresa of Calcutta did and how much there was to do in the face of so much misery and poverty, a journalist once said, "What Mother does is like a drop of water in the ocean"; to which she answered with great humility, "Yes, but if I did not do it the ocean would have one drop of water less."  

God does not ask us to revolutionize the world, or do THE best, he only asks us for OUR best. In the parable of the talents, the one who achieved more is no more praised than the one who achieved less; in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, those who worked all day received no more than those who worked only one hour; in the parable of the sower, those who produce 100% are no more exalted than those who produce 60% or those who produce only 30%.

Much or few, all the Lord asks of us, is that we bear fruit: that our life be productive and that we leave here more than what we found. Furthermore, that we are part of the solution and not part of the problem; that is, may our living and acting be a contribution to the solutions of this world’s problems and not a contribution to make them worse.

We will be judged by how much or how little we love
It is in Charity that the Love of God manifests itself in love of neighbour and vice versa. As Christ is in the poor and the needy, it is by loving the poor and the needy that we live the gospel and that we love God.

In the end we will be judged by how much or how little we have loved; according to Matthew 25 the questions in the final judgment are already there, it would be bad if we did not pass a test where questions are already known. These questions are not about Faith nor about Hope; in regards to salvation, Faith and Hope are secondary; they are worthy to the extent of whether or not they have increased Charity.

The final judgment is not about Faith, what religion or practice we had, nor about Hope, but exclusively about Charity. I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked, I was in prison, I was sick, I was a pilgrim, an outsider, a foreigner, and you gave or did not give me assistance.

The matter of final judgment is not a Shakespearean question of to be or not to be, but rather a little more positivist or pragmatic of to do or not to do. Hell is paved with good intentions, so it is by works, by fruits that we know a person, it is by how much you do that we know how much you are worth.

Since it is our doing, our working and not our being that goes on trial, we are not at an advantage over the agnostics, atheists, Muslims or the faithful of any other religion. What is important is what you have done, and on this regard, although Christianity has the fullness of truth, all religions have some truth in them, as they are all meant to guide their followers to self-realization, happiness and heaven.

Many with few means (I am referring to the faithful of other religions) have gone further in perfection than others, such as Christians despite having all the means of holiness at their disposal. Let us be aware that: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked”. (Luke 12: 48)

Conclusion - The three virtues work in our lives like a GPS. Faith connects us to God, it is our guiding star or satellite, telling us where we are and what we are, that is, sinners. Hope tells us where we want to go and what we want to be, that is, saints. Charity is the only means and the road map to attain holiness.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC