Faith and presence

Let it be done for you according to your faith.

They are Jesus' words to the blind men who cried out to him, "Son of David, have pity on us!"

And it took me a while for it to hit me ... according to your faith. Really? It should come as no surprise -- Jesus was constantly telling the recipients of his miraculous healings, etc. "Your faith has saved you" or something to that effect. But for some reason, today it really *hit* me. According to my faith. Let it be done according to your faith. It makes me wonder, is my faith strong enough? I realize everything doesn't hinge on whether or not my faith is strong or weak -- Jesus died for us and my salvation is in his hands, his mercy infinite. But it did make me wonder, if Jesus stood before me now and I asked him to heal me, would my faith be enough to save me?

As today's Advent meditation in Magnificat discusses, it's not like magic from a genie in a bottle. It's a matter of aligning your will to God's will and desiring what God desires for you. This has been a recurring theme for me for about the last year or longer -- we humans always think we know what to pray for, we always think we know what we need. Nothing could be more wrong. Our vision is so flawed and so near-sighted!

"For all who in blindness cry out to be healed to see, the birth of Jesus is God's answer to desires adjusted to God's desire. Christmas is God's Fiat to our deepest desire: 'Let it be done according to your faith.'" (Douglas Bushman)

All this being said, this Advent so far has been particularly challenging. I usually have a tough time tampering my desire to start celebrating Christmas righthisminute, and that's mostly because I want to keep that "holiday" feeling going for as long as humanly possible. Which is a great part of being Catholic -- I can celebrate for a whole month after! Take that! But this year, anxiety has crept into my life in a way unlike anything I've experienced before. Thankfully, my support system is deep and well-acquainted with anxiety issues. But its presence has kind of knocked me off-balance. Just trying to be cheerful is a chore. Heck, just relaxing is a chore. Not to mention nearly impossible. The closest I come is adoration and Mass, speaking of presence, and as much as I'd like I can't move into the chapel or onto church grounds. I haven't tried yet, but I'm pretty sure I'd be missed at home.

In all honesty, I can't wait for my oldest boy's Christmas vacation from school. There's a chance I won't have to work that week (hooray!) but even if I do, I'm looking forward to being able to let go of our schooltime schedule for a while. That's really what I loved about homeschooling -- making our own schedule. It was awesome. But alas, it's not to be, at least right now. Which brings me back to aligning my will to God's... so much easier said than done. But the Lord knows I'm trying, and I'm confident that counts for something. I'm seeking to remember His presence in me and with me, to be ever-mindful of His presence. Which makes Christmas the best present ever.

Jesus, period.

I never intended for this blog to be so Catholic, but it does seem inevitable if I'm to be a honest blogger, as I strive to be. So, let it be.

There are some days I just can't leave for work on time. Some days are my fault, some days are because of the kids, other days it's no one's fault, it just happens. Today was one of those days. And I think it happened because one of my favorite preachers was celebrating Mass on EWTN this morning.

Father Wade Menezes, I'm making a public confession: I am a fangirl. You bring home the faith like no other priest I've heard, aside from my very own Father Jim. You're a riveting public speaker and a white-hot conduit of the Holy Spirit.

Okay. I feel better now.

Click here to see/hear this morning's homily.


Hearing him speak about our need for trust in Jesus and nothing more made me realize just how self-involved I've been lately. You see, I got braces on Thursday. Yeah. Because of my jaw/bite issues, I've been needing them for a while but talked myself out of them for many reasons -- cost, vanity, pain. But the jaw pain in the last several months has gotten so crazy that I figured with summer daycare costs out of the way, now's the time.

So I took the plunge and got spacers in week before last and braces on last Thursday. And they suck. And they hurt. And I look quite different with them and have a wicked lisp. And oh yeah. They're expensive too.
So anyway, here we are, I'm listening to Father Wade talk about "Jesus plus a good job, Jesus plus money in the bank"and I realize I've been withholding my trust in Jesus alone and trying to figure out how to fix everything. Again.

I really don't know how many times I'm going to be hit with that same anvil. I mean, really.

Faith ... what it is

This is the talk I gave to the RCIA class at St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church on Sat., Sept. 29. I've edited it a bit for privacy's sake. 

I want to share something with you today that I wish I’d known when I was where you are today in the RCIA process and it is this – faith is not something you find, it is not something given to you.

Faith is a deliberate movement of the will. It is moving your will to align with God’s will. This is a continuous, deliberate and conscious choice that you make.

Faith also requires several things of us. First, it requires revelation, which you each have experienced in different ways, or you wouldn’t be here. And God willing, that revelation will continue throughout your life in what I like to call your faith journey.

142 By his Revelation, "the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company."1The adequate response to this invitation is faith.

Second, it requires submission of the intellect and will to God. Again, faith is a deliberate movement of the will.

143 By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God.2 With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, "the obedience of faith".3

Next, faith requires obedience. Now, obedience is a word we don’t like to hear these days and in this world. Obedience has become synonymous with following rules and being told what you can and cannot do. However, true obedience is a product of love, not coercion. Think about the things you have faith in – for most of us, we have (or at least had) faith in the love of our parents or other family members. We couldn’t prove it – couldn’t put our finger on it or hold it in your hand, but you just knew. You knew those people loved you. I think about this with my kids – even my son with autism who has a real hard time with understanding emotions, even he knows I love him even though he doesn’t know why. The same is vice verse. They may not always act like it, but I freely submit to the truth of their love for me.

144 To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.

Lastly, faith requires trust. Trust is another word that is loaded with meaning in this world. Some of us are actually taught to not trust anyone else, to trust only yourself. Not only is this no way to live, you can’t have faith in God without trust in God.

Let me share with you a little about my life and faith journey. I was raised Catholic, Catholic in name only that is. I was baptized but that was really it. My parents are a product of the ‘60s and reflect the disillusionment that happened to many young people during that time. They raised my sister and I to follow our feelings, to question authority and to trust no one but yourself. It was a very relativistic mindset. 

I was told to find my place in this world and I spent years and years looking for it. Deep in my heart was a yearning for faith, so I looked everywhere – the Baptist church, Methodist church, a little of the occult – but I couldn’t find the answer to my searching.

Finally by the time I was in my late 20s, I thought I’d found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and when that didn’t work out I was crushed physically and mentally and I absolutely refused to let it go.So, we were “just friends” for a while and during the entire course of our relationship he actually helped me a lot. 

He was a non-Christian, and I was fascinated by his faith and how it formed and shaped his days and life in general. It was he who told me to start my faith foundation with what I knew, with where it began as a child. So I did.

I joined RCIA, and it was great. But I still struggled the whole time with what this meant for my life. Where was I supposed to go from here? No one else I knew was Catholic, let alone faithful. And, well, the answer came in the form of the greatest gift from God – my son.

I offer this somewhat cautionary tale to help you understand that your faith life, your faith, will only happen and grow when you submit your will to God’s. And you’re already doing that by being here. Just remember that faith is a continual process, not something you have once and that’s that. It is ever-growing expression of God’s revelation, God’s will, obedience to that will and trust in God.

Italicized text from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

Copyright me 2012 — Don't plagiarize, for the Lord is just even if you're not.