Grace, Faith and Works bring Order; otherwise, we get the Flood!
We constantly struggle against chaos, complexity and doubt. Interestingly, the sea is Biblically presented as a symbol of chaos and indeed there is a monster in the deep called the Leviathan. At the same time, Bibilically speaking, we have the Logos or the Word that hovers over the deep to bring order out of chaos:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light [Gen 1:1-3].
Today, we have the struggle between the Order of Faith and the Chaos of Doubt! Many of the new atheists today, like Richard Dawkins, say Faith is for the credulous, the superstitious, the ignorant and the stupid; it is unworthy of mature people. But history of Faith gives us men like St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, Blessed John Henry Newman, St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI who contradict this prejudice as these men, if anything, possessed brilliant minds.
Our 2nd reading today is from the Letter to the Hebrews which praises the way of Faith beginning with the Father of Faith, Abraham. It portrays how Faith calls us to be faithful, indeed, in the Code of Canon Law speaks of ‘the rights of the Faithful’, not the rights of the unfaithful! So let us consider Faith and ask three questions: what is faith, what is faith’s relationship to reason and why is faith needed?
What is faith? In our second reading from the Letter to Hebrews we find faith presented as trust in the God whom we cannot see who does speak to that inner silence of our being. Abraham harkened to the Word of the Lord and left the city of Ur and was brought to a new homeland based on God’s promise that this land would be given to all his descendants. Descendants who would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and countless as the sands on the sea shore. When he got to the promised land his faith was tested again and again; firstly, by the promise of a child when he and Sarah, his wife, seemed to be too old to have one; and secondly by the call to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, who was his first born and was returned to him alive.
Abraham’s faith shows us that there is an existential side to faith which requires trust in God in the daily life of the faithful. But Faith undergoes testing to strengthen this trust in God. Faith calls us to enter an adventure into being-in-time which we call history. An adventure that cultivates time into history and it turns out that history is really God’s story. The story of how he calls us to trust him, to follow him makes for a spiritual adventure that reveals history’s deepest reality, namely, that history is fundamentally about letting God-be-God so that he may save us for his kingdom. History’s deepest meaning then is the history of God’s salvation of his people who learn the truth that sets all mankind truly free: I will be their God and they will be my people.
So what is faith’s relationship to reason? Through this existential and daily exercise of faith in the face of testing times, questions about God must have arisen especially the question: ‘can God be trusted?’ Bishop Robert Barron speaks of the nature of Faith in relation to reason in the following way. Many speak of scientific knowledge as the only thing we need. But science is like a torch that sheds light on an object that can be analysed, measured and weighed. But God is not an object in the universe but is the ground of the universe existing at all. Faith is a right reasoning of a religious mind. Faith is a form of reasoning belonging to a religious mind aware of the ground of existence, the God who is not one object among many, nor an empirical force nor a principle but rather is a Person. God is therefore not an object but a subject who is free and He must be related too in that way. Between persons there must be trust for a relationship to exist and that trust requires reasons for being trustworthy.
So why is faith needed? Peter Kreeft addresses the issue of evidence for God and he speaks of the principle of sufficient reason as the basis of discovering the reality of God. Quoting Blaise Pascal, he says there are three classes of person in the world: those who seek and have found; those who seek but have not found; and those who neither seek nor find – there is no one in the 4th class those who find without seeking! God gives us just enough light or just enough clues so that those who truly love him and seek him will find him and those who don’t, wont! So sufficient reasons are given, not overwhelming proofs, because if God gave us too little light those who seek him would not find him and if he gave us too much light even those who didn’t seek him would find him. ‘So what determines our eternal destiny is not our IQ but our love!’
Faith then calls us out of ourselves, out of our emptiness, to seek, to find and to trust Him who is greater than ourselves, greater than our minds, the God who says I am He Who Is. God who, in the midst of life’s struggles, has given breadcrumbs that lead to stepping stones, stepping stones that lead to the narrow path, the narrow path which alone brings us to the Kingdom of Summer. The Kingdom where all our sorrows and all our joys find their final point and their ultimate reason, because it is our true home where God eternally fills our emptiness. In the words of G K Chesterton:
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one's life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.”
We have been entrusted with the treasures of Faith by Christ and for those who have been entrusted with such treasures much will be expected! So be awake and get busy by truly living out this Faith that we have received!
“What sort of steward, then, is faithful and wise enough
for the master to place him over his household
to give them their allowance of food at the proper time?
Blessed that servant if his master’s arrival finds him at this employment.” [Luke 12:32-48]
For the work and duties of our vocation are the ways that the supernatural grace of faith, hope and charity, given to us in baptism, is exercised and in that state we acquire merit that is stored up in that treasury in heaven which neither rusts nor can be lost:
“There is no need to be afraid, little flock,
for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom.
Sell your possessions and give alms.
Get yourselves purses that do not wear out,
treasure that will not fail you, in heaven
where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” [see Luke 12:32-48]
This treasury of merit acts like a dam keeping back the flood waters of sin that would otherwise have overwhelmed our world and brought it to an end. The treasury of merit is the fruit of the works of Christ, Our Lady and the Saints. Yet, we can contribute to this treasury when, in a state of grace, we offer up our trials, sufferings, tribulations and works of faith, hope and charity during our earthly lives, for merit cannot be earned by any of us after our death.
By the fact that our freely chosen acts for the good are done in this state of grace, we supernaturalise these freely chosen and offered acts and give them a vertical as well as an horizontal effect in effecting goodness over evil.
These are meritorious works because God’s grace works through our being-in-action for our actions flow from us being in a state of grace and so this makes our actions dynamic powers of grace. If the totality of human sin is like a mountain then this treasury of merit is like an ocean, an ocean of mercy waiting to be bestowed on humanity in a specific time, at a specific place through a specific will in communion with the Magisterium of the Church who makes visible to the world the presence of Christ as Priest, Prophet and King.
But when Catholics do not know about being in a state of grace, when Catholics take Holy Communion not in a state of Grace or irreverently, when priests themselves do not celebrate Mass in a state of grace or do not celebrate it reverently, obediently, gracefully and beautifully and when attendance at Mass declines, reception of the sacraments declines and forms of idolatry, sacrilege, blasphemy and superstition increase then either more victim souls have to step forward to stand in the breach or the dam holding back the waters of judgement cracks and then the Levee breaks!
Watch Jordan Peterson on the story of Noah and the tower of Babel who gives a psychology of the flood in this struggle against evil, chaos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNjbasba-Qw&ab_channel=JordanBPeterson
