Jesus says again and again that fear is the absence of faith
and faith is the absence of fear. In fact, once the woman was healed and
realized it, she approached Jesus with “fear and trembling.” And, Jesus said
her faith had saved her, it had healed her of her long affliction.
And, when the synagogue official lost his daughter, in spite of everything that people were telling him, even telling him to no longer bother Jesus since his daughter had died, Jesus simply said: “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”
It is faith that allows the impossible to become possible, because it is faith that allows us to live and to see the world as Christ does. For, with faith we place our confidence in someone greater than ourselves, with faith we not only believe in the power of God but know His power to such a degree that we can ask or do the same things as those in our Gospel today, not with an empty hope, but with complete confidence in God.
And, when the synagogue official lost his daughter, in spite of everything that people were telling him, even telling him to no longer bother Jesus since his daughter had died, Jesus simply said: “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”
It is faith that allows the impossible to become possible, because it is faith that allows us to live and to see the world as Christ does. For, with faith we place our confidence in someone greater than ourselves, with faith we not only believe in the power of God but know His power to such a degree that we can ask or do the same things as those in our Gospel today, not with an empty hope, but with complete confidence in God.
For, faith not only allows us to believe, it allows us to
know that what we believe is true. Which is why faith is so important in our
lives, which is why faith has to be, as it is for the Church, one of the
foundational virtues upon which holiness is built.
Because, truth be told, all these people in our Gospel did
was touch a garment or ask Jesus to restore someone back to life. They had no
idea if it would have any impact upon them, they had no idea if by touching the
cloak they would be healed or by requesting life to be restored it would
happen, but they did, not because their reason told them to, not because in
their hearts they felt it was a good thing to do, no, they did so because they
believed in the power of God. They believed, with every single ounce of their
being that God could do what they asked.
That is what it means to have faith, that is why Jesus says,
your faith has saved you, because it was, indeed, only their faith that
sustained and truly gave them hope in a seemingly hopeless situation.
This is the way the saints lived, this is the way all of us
should live, because, in a world that only believes in what they can see, in a
world that only knows what they can verify, we should live as if our faith is
all we have, we should live as if our faith is our life, because truly it is
meant to be, and we don’t need to see to believe, we don’t need to know to
verify, we just need to trust and come before God confident solely in Him.
Our lives, as Catholics, whether we like it or not, will be different now, not because we hate any particular group of people, but because what we believe, as in centuries past, is no longer the same as the state believes.
What that means is that we might be persecuted for our beliefs, ridiculed for our faith, and challenged by those closest to us, even our family and friends. But the issue, as it has been from the beginning, as the bishops have made clear, is deeper than marriage, it centers on the dynamic of the very first community of believers, the first church, a church that, St. John Paul II calls the domestic church, the family.
For, you see once marriage is re-defined, so, too, is the family, and once the family is re-defined, so, too, is our understanding of the Church, and, once the Church is re-defined, so, too, are we as a people. That is why, in these days ahead, we need faith, we need not fear, but, indeed, only trust in the Divine Will of God.
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