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     Faith gives the Christian a new capacity for knowing. It enables him to attain truths about God and His creation which would be otherwise unknowable. Faith also enables us to know certain truths which are within the grasp of natural reason, but which are attained by many only with difficulty.

     Faith, as St. Thomas states, assimilates us to the divine knowing.² Through faith we share in God's vision of reality, and we view God and creation in some way as does God Himself. This vision exists on a level of knowing which surpasses the intellect's natural capacity to grasp reality. Although faith gives only a faint share in God's vision compared to the divine knowledge itself, it is still the greatest vision of reality which is possible for man in his temporal existence.

     What are some of the characteristics of Christian faith? First of all, it is at the same time both certain and obscure. Faith is certain because it is a special sharing in the knowledge of God, God who is the highest truth. The strength of my faith, then, depends not on arguments and proofs from reason. These give a rational foundation to my faith, but they are not faith itself. Rather, the strength of faith depends upon the degree to which God takes possession of the Christian in grace. As the Christian grows in grace, the various infused virtues take deeper root, and the Christian lives more and more the life of God. In regard to faith this means that the Christian is being more vitally assimilated into the divine knowing. His faith becomes more firm. This does not mean that we always correctly estimate the strength of our faith. For various reasons we can at times think that our faith is growing weaker when it is actually becoming stronger. Such an impression can be present as faith is being purified. This process of purification will be touched upon in the present chapter, but also later in the chapter on prayer and the one on the mystical life.

     If faith is certain, it also has an obscurity about it, despite the fact that faith is also light. Faith is obscure because its realities are unseen. These truths of faith will be surrounded with a full brightness only in the beatific vision. Then faith will no longer be necessary. God and His truth will then be immediately present to us. "Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect; but then I shall know as fully as I am known." (1 Co 13:12).

     Because the truths of faith are not possessed here below with the complete light of the beatific vision, temptations against faith are possible. If these do occur, we should not be unduly disturbed. Great saints, such as St. Jane Frances de Chantal and St. Teresa of Lisieux, have experienced this trial. If temptations against faith occur, how should we handle them? We should not confront the temptation directly, for this only deepens its impression. We should let the temptation pass by as calmly as possible, taking reasonable means to occupy our attention with something positive. If we react correctly to the temptation, our faith will be strengthened and purified. Faith certainly can be purified in other ways. Consequently, we should not think it necessary to experience these temptations to achieve faith's purification. It is merely a question of properly benefiting from such an experience if it does arise.

     Some seem to speak of temptations against faith in the same way as they do concerning difficulties about the truths of faith. We prefer to make a distinction. Although difficulties concerning faith can certainly lead to temptations to disbelief, it seems that such difficulties can be present without actual temptation against faith. This kind of difficulty or questioning can actually be a desire to understand more perfectly the mysteries of faith. Such questioning, as opposed to temptation to disbelief, can be handled directly through study, reflection and dialogue with persons competent in theology.

     We are presently discussing some of the characteristics of faith. We have said that it is both certain and obscure. It is also evolving.³ By this we mean that the Church, as she progresses through the ages, is meant to strive constantly for a more perfect understanding of the truths of revelation. This is one sense in which the Church's faith evolves. It evolves also in the sense that the Church, reading the signs of the times, must constantly endeavor to present Christ's revelation in categories which are relevant to each succeeding age.⁴ The Church must so act because of the very nature of revelation. God has revealed Himself in Christ in order to exact a response from man. The Church also has to be concerned about the response which any age makes to her continual presentation of God's revelation. Since one of the factors which will determine man's response to God's word is its discernible relevance to his here-and-now existence, the Church is obligated to make her teaching of the faith as meaningful as possible according to all the various exigencies of each and every age.

     The faith of the individual Christian likewise has an evolving dimension because his faith participates in the evolutionary growth of the Church's faith. But the Christian's faith evolves also precisely because it is the faith of an individual. One's understanding of the mysteries of faith can grow indefinitely. This growth will take place not only through the objective means commonly available to all within the Church, but also through the more subjective means which are peculiar to individuals as individuals. Consider the fact that one's faith evolves as his experience of life evolves. Faith is part of our total existence, and God often causes us to understand more perfectly the mysteries of faith by our actual experience of them in the concrete circumstances of our individual lives.

     Christian faith is certain, obscure to some extent, and evolving. There is a final set of characteristics we would like to mention. As with all aspects of our grace-life, faith is both incarnational and transcendent.⁵ At the basis of faith's incarnational dimension is the fact that faith is received within this world's material framework. Faith partly depends upon the tangible and concrete for its proper nourishment, growth and expression. One example of this is faith's relationship to the liturgy with its very obvious incarnational dimension. Another example is that faith must be exercised within the ordinary framework of the Christian's everyday experience of work, relaxation, pain and joy. Again, such a framework of daily life has a very obvious material or incarnational aspect.

     If faith is incarnational, it is more ultimately transcendent. The truths of faith, although having a relationship to man's material world, are themselves above it. This fact constitutes one aspect of faith's transcendency. Another aspect is the fact that our conceptual formulation and expression of the mysteries of faith do not completely exhaust their reality. This holds even for the Church's official teaching of these mysteries. It also holds true for theology's expression of the Christian mystery, and for the individual Christian's personal conceptualization of faith's realities, a conceptualization which must be, of course, in proper harmony with the Church's official teaching. Summarily, the mysteries of faith cannot be totally confined to our human categories of thought and speech. These are meant as means to lead us closer to faith's transcendent realities as they are in themselves, especially to the ultimate transcendent reality, our Trinitarian God. ...

     By faith, through the order of knowledge, we enter into an intimate personal relationship with the Trinity. Because faith is thus fundamentally a personal dialogue between God and the Christian, it has a deep, personalizing efficacy.⁸ If I respond properly to God revealing, I achieve in graced freedom my greatest potential as a person. I become the person I should become.

     Our faith-encounter with God centers in Christ. It is obvious why this is so, since it is through His Incarnate Son that the Father has spoken and continues to speak to us. Christ contains all revelation in His Incarnate person. Christ revealed, not only by His words, but also by everything that He was and did. Christ has spoken to us not merely through verbalized intellectual truths, but through His total Incarnate person. He revealed by giving His complete self, not only His words. This fact has deep significance concerning our response to Christ's revelation. For just as Christ has given us the Father's truth in a personal way through the loving gift of His complete Incarnate person, so I must respond in the same manner. I must assent to the truth of Christ, not only with my intellect, but in love with my total being.

     Christ's message cannot be separated from His person. If I am authentically to respond to His truth I must accept everything about Christ. Full Christian faith is commitment of my total person to Christ and to the total mystery of Christ. This, of course, does not mean that this commitment is initially as perfect as it can become. My entire Christian life is a growth in this response. However, the initial response is complete in the sense that I open my complete being to Christ with the determination that I will allow myself to be assimilated to Him as He wishes.

     As the Christian responds in loving faith to Christ, he discovers his true existence. He has discovered a meaning outside of himself. And, paradoxically, the more he goes out of himself into this true meaning of life who is Christ, the more the Christian becomes himself. Now in living faith he views all reality with Christ, through the vision of Christ. The Christian sees that with Christ, and in the Spirit, he must spend himself in love for the Father, man and man's world. We see, then, that faith is not only encounter with God, but also with man.

     Because he is caught up in the vision of this Christ whom he loves with his entire being, the Christian will not count the cost. As Christ was willing to pay any price to achieve the vision which the Father showed Him concerning man's redemption, so also the committed Christian, in order to achieve faith's vision, is willing to pay the price Christ asks of him.

     Part of this vision which the man of faith has is the deep realization that living faith in Christ can transform a man's life. Consequently, the man of faith has a deep desire to help develop this faith in those already possessing it, and to aid in giving it to those not yet blessed with faith in Christ. He realizes from personal experience the importance of making such a contribution, for he knows that he himself has received this faith partly through the efforts of others, and that he is helped by them in so many ways in achieving faith's maturity. Finally, the man of faith is convinced that he promotes faith in others to a great extent by the way he himself lives it out: "The written and preached word, however, is intended to be incarnated in human beings. The word will have its most powerful effect only when it appears in another person who embodies the gospel in his life."⁹

     In conclusion, let us be convinced of the following. What faith in Christ means for ourselves and others must engrave itself deeply within our souls. For only then will we have a desire to open ourselves up fully to this life of faith in Christ, and only then will we become the desired instruments in communicating this faith to others. Each of us in his own way must be caught up into the vision, the fire, the enthusiasm of St. Paul: ". . . I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him . . . I want only the perfection that comes through faith in Christ, and is from God and based on faith." (Ph 3:8-9).
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     2. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trinitate, q. 3, a. 1.
     3. Cf. Karl Rahner, Belief Today (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1967), p. 49.
     4. Cf. Edward Schillebeeckx, Revelation and Theology, Vol. 1 (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1967), p. 150.
     5. For the transcendent dimension, cf. Rahner, Op. cit., pp. 80-89.
     8. Cf. Jean Mouroux, I Believe (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1959), pp. 60-65.
     9. Gabriel Moran, Theology of Revelation (New York: Herder & Herder, 1966), p. 151.

 

 

^NINE  Christian Hope

         1. God as Object of Hope

If faith gives a special vision of God and His plan for us, hope enables us to desire to participate in the realities of faith's vision. Hope enables us to desire the supernatural order with God at its center. This desire is to be partially fulfilled on earth, but perfectly in eternity. Hope also enables us to trust that the good and omnipotent God will give us the means of achieving our desire. Moreover, hope, as do the other Christian virtues, contains a communal dimension. The virtue of hope is concerned not only with my own personal relationship with God. It also gives me a desire to want all men to participate increasingly in the mystery of Christ.

     Our need of hope for the maintenance and growth of our Christ-life is immediately evident from the very nature of the life of grace. As we have said before, our merely natural efforts cannot achieve grace and develop its life. Grace is completely above nature, although, obviously, not contrary to it. God must always take the initiative in giving us grace. This He is always willing to do. The point we are stressing here is that we are completely helpless in the supernatural order without God's assistance in grace. The need for hope or trust in God is manifest. It is not that God refuses to give us grace unless our hope is what it should be. In His mercy and love He can overwhelm a person with His grace even though that person had been previously void of supernatural hope. However, the general principle is that we receive from God according to the measure of our trust in God.

     We have every reason to trust greatly in God. Christ reminds us of this: "Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are?" (Mt 6:26). Here is another truth which should bolster our trust in God. The Father loved man overwhelmingly even when he was His enemy in sin. He showed this love by giving His Son to live and die for the human race. How much more, then, we should trust in God's love, now that Christ has re-united us with the Father.

     This does not say that we always find it easy to trust as we should. In time of special difficulty or crisis, as our heads are bowed in anguish, we can especially experience the difficulty of properly hoping in God. Yet it is precisely at these times when trust is all the more necessary to us. Despite the pain, then, we must trust, even though at times it seems we are hoping against hope. We must learn to trust as did Abraham: "Though it seemed Abraham's hope could not be fulfilled, he hoped and he believed, and through doing so he did become the father of many nations exactly as he had been promised: Your descendants will be as many as the stars. Even the thought that his body was past fatherhood – he was about a hundred years old – and Sarah too old to become a mother, did not shake his belief. Since God had promised it, Abraham refused either to deny it or even to doubt it, but drew strength from faith and gave glory to God, convinced that God had power to do what he promised." (Rm 4:18-21).

     God can act similarly with us as He did with Abraham. He can do great things with us if only we allow Him to do so. Among other attitudes, we must have that of hope or trust. We must trust that God can bring us to maturity in Christ. We must trust that the Father will give us all the graces necessary to accomplish our mission in life, difficult as this mission may seem at times. We must trust in this manner despite the great sense of our own weakness which can become especially manifest at times. As a matter of fact, the more we experience our own weakness, the more optimistic we should become.

     This was the attitude of the saints. I think we often view the saints in the wrong light. We imagine that they must have felt very secure in the strength of their spiritual development. It seems rather that they were more aware of their weakness and helplessness than we are. Because of such an awareness, they more and more went out of their weakness into the strength of Christ. Therefore, they were secure. But, paradoxically, they were secure because they knew how weak they were. They became secure because they gave themselves completely to Christ, and to His reign of strength within them.

     In our own measure we can imitate the saints. We, too, can learn to build upon our weakness. The realization of our weakness should actually increase our hope. The more we admit our helplessness, the more God tends to strengthen us with His grace. As long as we do not capitulate to our weakness, let us glory in our helplessness so that Christ may possess us as He desires. St. Paul tells us: "So I shall be very happy to make my weaknesses my special boast so that the power of Christ may stay over me, and that is why I am quite content with my weaknesses, and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and the agonies I go through for Christ's sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong." (2 Co 12:9-10).
 

       2. Hope and the Secular City

We have mentioned that the Christian's virtue of hope concerns not only himself and God, but others as well. Hope is one facet of our grace-life in Christ. It therefore partakes of that dimension of grace which links the Christian with man and his world.

     Under this social aspect of hope we would now like to discuss ideas concerning the Christian and his involvement with the world. This relationship can also be termed involvement with the secular city.¹ In other places – for example, in the chapter on the Church – we have discussed the Christian's temporal involvement. It is not a case, consequently, of discussing this dimension of the Christian's life for the first time. It is rather a question of giving a more unified presentation.

     Why do we connect such a treatment with the virtue of hope? There are other possibilities, but the concept of Christian hope does offer a logical opportunity for the discussion of Christian involvement with the secular. This is so because one of the thrusts of Christian hope is toward that which is not yet possessed in full. This is also one of the obvious dimensions of man's effort here below. He is always eager to build a better world, to progress to a higher form of temporal life than that which is at present possessed. This is true especially of contemporary man who is keenly aware that human life is not static, but is ever reaching out in an evolutionary desire for that which has not yet been attained. Christian hope elevates this natural desire of man and incorporates it into an effort of unifying all creation more and more into Christ: "Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made in Christ from the beginning to act upon when the times had run their course to the end: that he would bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth." (Ep 1:3-10).

     This linking of Christian hope with human endeavor is one of the basic tenets of Teilhard de Chardin, a man who has contributed so much towards contemporary Christianity's awareness of the necessity of proper involvement with the secular. "Teilhard . . . bases his ethic of conquest on Christian hope . . . and situates the notion of 'conquest' precisely in eschatological perspectives . . . his idea of conquest is that it is a broad effort to build the world in view of the eschaton."²

     Why should the Christian be concerned with the secular? Why can we say that the Christian should passionately love this world with all its authentic values? Why can we say that the Christian should love this world and desire its progress more than the nonbeliever? The answer to all these questions is simply that this world belongs to Christ. Through His human nature Christ has united to Himself not only man but also man's world. The entire temporal order has entered into the redemptive process. In the words of Vatican II, "Christ's work of redemption is directed both toward the salvation of men, as individuals, and at the renewal of the whole secular order. Hence the church's mission is not only to preach Christ and his grace to men, but also to bring the secular order to perfection by permeating it with the spirit of the Gospels."³

     Christ, indeed, is the center of a new creation. In the view of Teilhard, Christ is the active point of convergence who gathers to Himself the evolving universe with all its various facets of progress.⁴ Through His humanity Christ is gradually leading the universe back to the Father. At Christ's second coming the transformation of the universe will receive its final touches, and then Christ will present to the Father the new creation in all its perfection.

     In the meantime, before Christ's second coming, we Christians must contribute our share as we help Christ build a secular city which will blend properly with the total process of the new creation. What we accomplish does make a difference, not only in the sphere of the spiritual, but also in that of the material. The shape that we help give to the secular city will in some way remain for all eternity.

     The Christian, then, is called to have a deep concern for the secular. Provided his secular involvement is accompanied by the previously discussed dimensions of the cross and transcendence, there is no reason why the Christian should not feel at ease with the secular and rejoice in his relationship to it. Because of his relationship to Christ, who in His humanity is at the center of the created order, the Christian should realize that he has a special, vital affinity for involvement with the temporal order in all its various dimensions. The manner in which this affinity is implemented will depend upon one's basic vocation and the personal graces attached. Yes, even the cloistered contemplative is called to be involved with the secular through the means available, such as prayer and sacrifice.

     All of us have to be convinced that we are shaping our eternal destiny within the context of the secular city, the life of this world. God has given us no other milieu. Within this secular city we are shaping our eternity by giving ourselves in various ways to the service of man and his world. We thereby are shaping our eternity by helping to shape the eternity of the entire temporal order.

     Each Christian has a peculiar contribution to make in the shaping of the secular city. No one else can fulfill your role, because no one else is the uniqueness which you are. What are the various contributions to be made to the building of the city? Some contributions are obviously highly spiritual – a priest administering the sacraments. Some contributions are in the area of the material and the physical – the work of a scientist. Some persons contribute to the furthering of the secular city in the neat, peaceful confines of an office.

     Others contribute amidst the dirt, the poverty, the disease and the explosive anguish of the inner city. Some are asked to contribute, seeing little or no visible results of their efforts. Others are blessed with the consolation of observing the visible fruits of their labors. Some must labor surrounded with almost insurmountable difficulties. Others work at the building of the city almost unimpeded by any such obstacles.

     There are many Christians performing many different tasks amidst many different circumstances. The common element in all this is that each Christian is helping Christ draw man and his world closer to Himself. It can be a painfully slow process, and the world in its historical evolution has at times seemed to be going away from Christ rather than toward Him. In all this we have to have faith that our effort in Christ does make a difference, whether that difference is apparent or not.

     Christ, despite the suffering in His life, rejoiced greatly in the accomplishment of His work. Let us also, despite the pain and the effort and the suffering involved, rejoice greatly in the Christian task allotted to each of us. Let us realize that such rejoicing mingled with suffering is part of the death-resurrection involved in evolvement of the secular city. Just as death-resurrection was present in the life of Christ, just as it is present in the life of the Church and each Christian, so it is present in the evolving world order. Through the process of pain and effort and suffering we believe that the world is slowly but surely being more perfectly inserted into newness of life, into Christ's Resurrection. Through our Christian hope we desire to make our contribution to hasten the process. As we so labor with Christ we look ahead to the hour at which Christ will bring to completion His redemptive work. Then, as all becomes subject to Christ in perfect harmony, hope or expectation will be fully realized in regard to the entire universe. Let us recall the words of St. Paul: "After that will come the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father. . . . And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all." (1 Co 15:24-28).
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     1. For a novel approach to the secular, cf. W. Lynch, Christ and Prometheus: A New Image of the Secular (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970).
     2. R. Faricy, Teilhard de Chardin's Theology of the Christian in the World (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1967), p. 176, footnote.
     3. Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, No. 5.
     4. Cf. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 121-123.