Expressing faith

In Pope Francis's first encyclical Lumen Fidei*, the Pope stresses the importance of shared expressions of faith in the family for faith is first and foremost "born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals His love" "in every age of life".

 

We are invited to see and hear Him in every relationship we have - "for every man and woman represents a blessing for me" - and to use our voices and our lives to proclaim the truth of His love to everyone as faith is meant "to find expression in words and to be proclaimed".

 

In my family, the transmission of faith was always left to others and we never talked about God in my home. Hence what I learned about God was what my catechism teachers taught me and while it was foundational, it lacked a personal sense of who God, Jesus, was.

 

I learnt "Jesus loves me, yes I know, for the Bible tells me so" but, so what? It was an arid, distant sort of love I experienced. And I was good because this was the way I should be, especially if I didn't want to go to hell.

 

The adults around me could not show me who Jesus was for we never talked about Him, and their relationship with Him was probably much like what I learned about in school, a respectful but superficial one with the forbidding, sometimes benign, transcendent God I could not touch.

 

As the Pope writes: Our culture has lost its sense of God's tangible presence and activity in our world. While I never doubted God's existence, I never saw Him around much either, just occasional glimpses.

 

It was only when I saw how God touched my father during his illness, and how He spoke to my family during that period that I realized just how real Jesus was. I began to see with the light of faith and what I saw transformed me.

 

The Spirit of love was palpable in the unusual gentleness of my father's temperament and in our familial solidarity in that time of crisis.

 

He sent angels to administer to us in the form of my Second Aunt who cooked special meals for my father, my eldest cousin who visited frequently, showering love and concern on my father, my missionary cousin who was a wise and comforting spiritual guide, the hospice doctors and nurses who would advise us medically when they visited, and strangers who strengthened him with prayer.

 

In inviting Jesus to be the centre of our lives, He became an intimate of the family and showed us just how much He loved us every single day.

 

Since then, I have learned to discern just how real and solid a presence Jesus is in my life, how much He loves me and how faithful He is to flaky me.

 

Whenever I stop to reflect on the goodness of God, I am always amazed. Jesus is with me in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, through thick and thin. He is truly "my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest" as WH Auden wrote.

 

In the last ten years exploring and studying the faith of my forefathers, I have found wondrous truths reside in Mother Church who is indeed the "storehouse of memory" and the "deposit of faith".

 

Therefore I strive to give voice and form to the truths I find daily in my "profession of faith, the celebration of the sacraments, the path of the ten commandments, and prayer".

 

We are called to love beyond fear, and beyond evil, to reach out and build bonds with others, to be as one, in body and spirit, for "If faith is not one, then it is not faith".

 

It will not be an easy journey for we will be tested and persecuted, we will experience suffering, but faith will always bring hope, and enable us to fathom "what makes human life precious and unique" and find our "place in the universe".

 

As Pope Francis writes:

 

Faith is no refuge for the fainthearted but something which enhances our lives. It makes us aware of a magnificent calling, the vocation of love. It assures us that this love is trustworthy and worth embracing, for it is based on God's faithfulness which is stronger than our every weakness.

 

Be brave. Express your faith by loving the others in your life. And don't forget to share it audibly and visibly with your family today.

 

* http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html