Jul 7 Sun
How can I persevere in the faith?
Jesus is the prophet; he reveals the truth to those with whom he speaks and who are willing to listen. His townspeople, in large part, rejected him. They began to demand miracles from him.
We can lose our faith by doing evil. As St. Paul puts it, “By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith.” By conscience, St. Paul means “a right good conscience.”
Today, many lose their faith in God, not because it is difficult to believe in Him, but because they do not live the virtue of chastity.
Recall that the conversion of the heart precedes the enlightenment of the mind. This is because when we sin, we tell ourselves, “It’s not a sin" or “I didn’t sin" or “It was justified." That is a hardness of the heart that causes hardness of the head!
Thus, we must nourish our faith “with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; our faith must be ‘working through charity,’ abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church.”
We can guard our faith and make it grow by constant spirit of prayer, by reading the Sacred Scriptures; asking God to increase our faith; offering sacrifices and doing good for others; making acts of hope rather than giving into sadness; and by holding to all the doctrines of faith and morals that the Church teaches.
Jesus Christ is the supreme prophet. We share in Christ’s prophetic office because of our baptismal vocation. So, we, too, have the call to witness to the truth by our words and lives.
However, when we begin to embrace our vocation as witnesses to the truth, we will find obstacles. The obstacles are our participation in God’s seeming inability to reach people who are indifferent to him or who reject him.
Christ did not force his townsmen to have faith in him.
Our faith, together with our weakness, reveal to us the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power. This seemingly imperfect faith, lived with humility, moves Jesus to lend us his power. The Virgin Mary is the supreme model of this faith, for she believed that ‘nothing will be impossible with God,’ and was able to magnify the Lord: ‘For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
Our inability makes room for Christ’s ability.
There is also a hidden bonus in our weakness. As St. Paul heard from the Lord, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ The sufferings he had to endure meant that in his flesh he had to complete what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His Body, that is, the Church. Thus, our inability and limitations are what make us co-redeemers with Christ. This is why St. Paul was content with “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints.”