The Inconvenience of Faith: A Reflection on the Opening of the Year of Faith

            Within the life of every human, one of the things that can be said to be a universal aspect of our condition is the reality of choice.  Just think about it, each and every day we are faced with many decisions that will effect or lives.  Some of those choices may be as simple as what should I eat for breakfast? Or what should I wear today? Now these choices in and of themselves do not seem to have much bearing on the general well being of our day, but in reality the little choices such as these will effect the habits that one develops with regard to how he/she relates to the world.  For example, eating breakfast even if it is something small has great benefits to your general health as well as the amount of focus that you may have in completing your daily responsibilities.  Likewise, the way you dress for any given day may have effects on you beyond just being fashionable.  The first effect that it may have is purely practical—“Does what I wear allow me to adapt to my environment?”  Namely, is it weather appropriate?  And secondly, what you wear may have an implication on how the world responds to you.  For instance, “does what I wear allow me to be treated with dignity and respect or does my manner of dress allow others to view me as an object for their personal pleasure? 

            As you can see the little choices that we make do have an implication on one’s life, but today’s blog is mainly about the major choices and specifically the fundamental choice that all of us make in our lives.  That fundamental choice is either to be for Christ or against him.  When reflecting upon this choice and when writing this article, it is somewhat providential that I was inspired to write this article today.  The reason that I say this is because today is the day that our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has chosen to open the Year of Faith.  But why did Pope Benedict XVI choose to do this?  The main reason is because currently there is a crisis in the faith.  In his motu propio document Porta Fidei (The Door of Faith)—the document in which he chose to announce the year of faith—our Holy Father articulates this crisis by writing, “It often happens that Christians are more concerned for the social, cultural and political consequences of their commitment, continuing to think of the faith as a self-evident presupposition for life in society (§2).”  As the Holy Father puts it, this crisis is not the same type of crisis that the Church has encountered in the past.  In the past, the Church would defend the faith by speaking out against an overt heresy that was leading people away from the heart of the Church.  Now that crisis is more subtle.  Rather than overtly working against the hearts of Christians, the evil one has chosen to act by attacking our fundamental choice.  In any given parish, in the western world one common thing that is often seen is the complacency of the faith.  Rather than attending Mass to worship and adore, many find themselves there merely to meet the social obligation/expectation.  Unfortunately, in many hearts, there is a loss of the passion that once guided our fathers in the faith.  Rather than hearts on fire, we are faced with people who are inconvenienced by the Gospel.

            In order to address this reality, I would like to turn to two models of the faith and how it is that they answered the call of Christ; namely, St. Peter and Our Lady.  The first model that I wish to look to is the witness of our first pope St. Peter.  To do this lets turn to the Gospel of St. Matthew and see how the Apostle recounts St. Peter’s call:

        “As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter,

and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.  He said to them, ‘Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.’  At once they left their nets and followed him (Mt. 4:18-20).”

Due to the briefness of this call account, it is easy to miss the profoundness of the event. Just think about it, St. Peter was a fisherman.  That is what he did and that that is what he had known for his entire life and now, some guy who he hardly knew is asking him to leave everything behind and trust that his basic needs were going to be met so that he could survive.  Now, there is no way for us to know the internal dialogue that went on in St. Peter’s heart, but what we do know, as spoken by St. Matthew, is that St. Peter was willing to lay down every part of his life in order that he might be able to truly give his heart to Christ.  Modern readers would say that this is no minor inconvenience but more like and act of craziness.  You see, our society says get in line, go with the flow, get educated and get a job but the Call of the Messiah asks us to lay all down for the Glory of God even if that means leaving everything behind.

                    Our second model of faith is none other than the Blessed Virgin Mary, the

        Mother of God.  If anyone could be said to have been "inconvenienced" by the Gospel it could be her.  According to the Gospel of St. Luke, Mary was a young girl from Nazareth and suddenly, in a life altering encounter, the Archangel Gabriel appears to her and tells her that she would become the Mother of God.  In that moment, Mary’s heart was not so much concerned about the social consequences of her choice but her only response was “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word (Luke 26-38).”  In that moment, Mary was more willing to say yes than to worry about the fact that according to Jewish law she could be killed for being pregnant out of wedlock.  What bravery this woman had to be so willing to die so that “The Way, the Truth, and The Life” could become our own.

       

            As we can see, this basic commitment to the faith is something that is

livable, but just because it is doable that doesn’t mean that it will be easy, and it is precisely because of that perceived difficulty, many people have abandoned the pursuit of holiness.   As G.K. Chesterton put it, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.”  So if we want to genuinely pursue of life of holiness, we must remember that anything that is worth doing is going to be difficult.  Just imagine how hard we work at other pursuits in our life, whether that be athletic ability, the pursuit of knowledge, or the development of other musical or artistic talents.  These talents where not just developed by saying I want it therefore I can automatically win the Super Bowl.  Rather, it took many years of training and learning to develop those skills.  Well the same thing is true about our faith.  We cannot just say I want holiness and therefore I am entitled to salvation.  But as St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, the same attitude that athletes take towards training should be given to the pursuit of the Christian life.  If our hearts want to burn for Christ again we must take the pursuit of holiness seriously for the commitment is not just a onetime event but an event that begins a lifelong journey.   In order to see the truth of this reality, all we have to do is look at the history of the Church.  In that history, there have been many who have gone before us who have made that commitment.  It was that commitment that led St. Peter and the Blessed Virgin to radically change the directions that they thought their lives were heading.  It was that commitment to faith that inspired the Apostles to go and boldly profess the faith to the world.  It was that faith that inspired to hearts to be willing to lay down their lives for the Truth, and it is that faith that inspires us to do the same so that we might walk through that “Door of Faith” and become the saints of today.