"WHATEVER IS BORN OF GOD conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith." - 1 John 5:3-5 - Today more than ever, the questions we ask ourselves about our apostolic effectiveness are difficult ones, and they risk entangling us in the very questions we have about our own fidelity. The matter is so important that we cannot allow ourselves to indulge in any form of improvisation. The same holds true with regard to the different apostolic decisions that we have to make in our pastoral activity. When Paul VI spoke to us about the effort involved in announcing the Gospel to the modern world, he pointed out something extraordinary; in our time, he said, we are "buoyed up by hope but at the same time often oppressed by fear and distress"( Evangelii Nuntiandi, I  )

Hopes and fears are woven together even in our apostolic lives, especially when we have to choose among the different aspects of our work. We cannot take the risk of deciding such matters without clear discernment of our fears and hopes, for what is asked of us "in this time of uncertainty and confusion" is nothing less than to "accomplish this task with ever increasing love, zeal, and joy" ( Evangelii Nuntiandi, I  )

This is not something that can be improvised. For us who are committed to the Church, this challenge goes far beyond anything the positive sciences envision; it appeals rather to an original vision, to the very originality of the Gospel. Mutually consoled by one another's faith - Rom. 1:11-12 - we must unite with this vital force, and as apostles we must nourish our hearts with it precisely in order to recover the coherence of our mission, the cohesion of our apostolic body, and the consistency of our feelings and our actions.

For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you - or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. - Rom. 1:11-12 -

WE MUST ENCOUNTER our faith, the faith of our fathers and mothers, which is liberating in itself, without any added quality or qualification. This is the faith that makes us just before the Father who created us, before the Son who redeemed us and called us to follow him, and before the Spirit who works directly in our hearts. In the moment of making concrete decisions, this faith will lead us, through the Spirit's anointing, to a clear knowledge of the limits of our own role; it will make us wise and intelligent in choosing the means we use; in the end, it will lead us to evangelical effectiveness that is far removed from both emotional ineptitude and easy going indifference.

Our faith is revolutionary; it is a foundation unto itself. Our faith is militant, but not with the aggressiveness of most skirmishes; rather, under the guidance of the Spirit, it gently insists on whatever project it discerns will be for the greater service of the Church. At the same time, its liberating potential comes from its contact with the holy for it is hierophantic: it reveals the sacred. Let us think, for example, of the Virgin and the saints as "intercessors."

BECAUSE THE FAITH is so revolutionary, it will be under constant attack by the enemy, not so much to destroy it as to weaken it, make it inoperative, remove it from contact with the holy, with the Lord of all faith and all life. When our faith is weakened, we find ourselves exposed to positions that we thought were alien to us; and if we carefully examine our apostolic practice, we find that they are actually hidden in our sinful hearts. These simplistic positions would have us excuse ourselves from the hardships and the constancy required in our pastoral labors. We need to take a look at some of these temptations.

A MOST SERIOUS TEMPTATION, one that impedes our contact with the Lord Jesus Christ, is defeatism. When the enemy comes up against a faith that is by definition militant, he takes on the semblance of an angel of light and begins to sow seeds of pessimism. To engage effectively in any struggle, one must be fully confident of victory. Those who begin a struggle without robust confidence have already lost half the battle. Christian victory always involves a cross, but a cross that is the banner of victory. We can learn about militant faith and nourish it in ourselves by moving among the poor. During these meditations, we will remember the faces of many people whom we have known in our past pastoral labors.

Those faces of the humble folk with their simple piety are always faces of triumph, but they are also almost always accompanied by the cross. In contrast, the faces of the arrogant are always faces of defeat. They do not accept the cross; they want an easy resurrection. They separate what God has united. They want to be like God. The spirit of defeat entices us to commit ourselves to losing causes. It knows nothing of the powerful tenderness that can be seen in the seriousness with which a child bless himself or in the profundity with which an elderly woman says her prayers. That is faith, and that is the best vaccine against the spirit of defeat. - 1 John 4:4 -

For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? - 1 John 5:4-5 -

ANOTHER TEMPTATION is wanting to separate the wheat from the weeds too quickly. Ordained priestly have a privileged experience in hearing confessions. There we see much misery, but there also we behold the best of human hearts in the person who has repented. The penitent is one who is human plain and simply. Sometimes the ordained priests can be stern with the faithful in his preaching, but it is much more difficult for him to be harsh in the confessional. There the wheat cannot be easily separated from the weeds, and God is present there.

Confession also gives us a sense of time because it is impossible to force the pace of any human process. And that's the way of life is: purity does not exist only in God; there is also purity in human beings. God is not a far-off deity that does not get involved in the world; rather, "he became sin." Saint Paul tells us. The structures of this world are not essentially sinful - that is Manichaeism. The wheat and the weeds grow all together willy-nilly, and perhaps our humble mission consists in nothing more than carefully protecting the wheat while leaving the reaping of the weeds to the angels.

ANOTHER TEMPTATION is to prefer head-values to heart-values. That should not be the case. Only the heart unifies and integrates. Intellect without a sense of piety tends to divide. The heart unites ideas with reality, time with space, life with death and with eternity. The temptation is to dislodge intellect from the place where God our Lord put it. He gave it to us so that we could clarify faith. God did not create human intelligence so that we could set ourselves up as judge of all things. It is a light that has only been lent to us, a mere reflection.

Our intellect is not the light of the world; it is simply a flash for illuminating our faith. The worst thing that can happen is for human beings to let themselves be dragged along by the "lights" of reason. The true mission of our minds is to discover the seeds of the Word within humanity, the logoi spermatikoi.

FAITH IS SOMETHING we need to ask for. God forbid that we should fail to be importunate with God and with his saints. One of the most refined forms of arrogance consists in claiming that prayer of petition is inferior to other forms of prayer. Only when we become beggars do we realize that we are creatures. When we don't honor the faith of humble folk, who can teach us how to ask for what we need, then we think that what saves us in pure faith; but that is empty faith, a faith devoid of all religion and all piety. In such a state, we are unable to interpret religious experience. Our intellects go astray with the feeble lights, and we resort to explaining the truth of faith with slogans borrowed from cultural ideologies.

We are transformed into something like modern Quietists. but we substitute the notion "faith alone saves" with more trendy formulations such as "justice alone saves" (but with an idea of justice that has no history and seems to start from scratch) or "risk alone saves" (which means not relying on any consciousness of history or any memory of the path that has been trod) Or else we talk about "faith as commitment" and claim that "only committed faith saves" (where commitment is visualized in terms of risk, novelty, etc, and faith is seen as feeble and in need of adjectives to make it stronger.) I mention these just as examples, and perhaps I am caricaturing them a bit.

What is important is to recognize that these concrete formulations diminish the role of faith (see Evangelii Nuntiandi, 35) What is more, they constitute a confession of weakness: the weakness of those who do not believe that their faith can "move mountains" the weakness of those who fear that their faith is ineffective. Those who are "strong in faith" know exactly where faith is effective: it is effective where the evil one is overcome.

I write to you, children,
because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young people,
because you are strong
and the word of God abides in you,
and you have overcome the evil one. - 1 John 2:14 -

PERHAPS IN THIS MEDITATION, as we seek the means to recover the faith of our ancestors in order to hand it over intact and fruitful to our children, we do well to recall the Catholic image of our God. Rather than being a distant deity, God is the Father who accompanies all growth; he is the daily bread that nourishes; he is the merciful one who is near at hand in the moments when the enemy would exploit his children. God is the Father who gives his children what they request if it is appropriate; but whether he grants it or not, he is always affectionate toward them. If we accept the reality that God expresses himself within our human limits, then we should also accept the limits of our own pastoral expression.

Our honest limitations distance us from the ideas of those who think they have the key to the world, those who know nothing of waiting patiently and working hard, and those who are easily swayed by hysteria and illusion. Jesus, who by his incarnation proclaims that God expresses himself in limited ways, desired to share the life of human beings, and that is redemption. What saves us is not just "the death and resurrection of Christ" but Christ incarnate, Christ being born, Christ fasting, preaching, healing, dying, and rising. The miracles performed, the consolations offered, all the words pronounced by Jesus have saving power (see Evangelii Nuntiandi, 6) 

Christ wanted to show us that syntheses are fashioned; they don't come ready made. He wanted to teach us that serving God's holy and faithful people means accompanying them as we day by day announce salvation; it does not mean getting lost in visions of unattainable peaks that we don't even have the strength to climb ourselves.

IN SUMMARY, THEN, we are confronted with two rival projects. The first is the project of our faith that recognizes God as Father; this is the project that works for justice and makes us all brothers and sisters. The other project is the one proposed to us by the enemy acting as an angel of light; it is the project of the absent God, where humans prey on humans and the law of the strongest prevails: homo homini lupus. Which project will I choose? Am I able to distinguish one from the others? If I realize that I cannot discern between them, will I be astute enough to defend myself?

THAT IS WHY our identity as persons of faith involves our belonging to a body; it is not just a matter of affirming our isolated conscience. Baptism means belonging to the institutional Church. Our very existence is related to our belonging. Consequently, our religious sense of belonging will seek out unifying symbols like the Virgin and the saints rather than simply trying to satisfy our individual consciences. And here we take a further step: our faith will be militant, and militant in a way that is fully conscious of the enemy; our aim will be to defend the whole body and not just myself alone.

All this gives us a sense of realism: people are known by the struggles they wage, but to the extent that they are ignorant of the reasons for our struggle, their efforts are lost. The first evangelizers on this continent gave the Native Americans knowledge of why they should engage in struggle. Our work as pastors should not neglect this aspect of our faith: we should help people to learn the real reasons for their struggle.

WE SAID THAT along with this militant aspect, our faith also has a hierophantic dimension: contact with the holy. This is different from magical sacramentalism. It involves profound confidence in the power of God that becomes history through sacramental signs. It means making present in our day the specific grace of the incarnation: that physical contact with the Lord Jesus who "went about doing good and healing all." The tactic of the enemy is to squelch every combative spirit and cut off all contact with the holy so that our faith ends up devoid of discipline and respect. Indeed, it is only by discipline and respect, which are direct consequences of our faith, that we will able to discern what territories are best for our preaching, for our service of faith, for our promotion of justice.

By way of conclusion and as a guide reflection and prayer, we might ask ourselves what part the faith of our ancestors plays in my life as a pastor:

AND SO WE CAN CONTINUE to question ourselves about our faith as pastors of a people - or conversely, about our attitudes as persons in the clerical state. How deeply do we feel about belonging to the body of our holy Mother the Church, the Spouse of the Lord whom we should love and preserve united?

IN OUR REFLECTION as pastors of God's faithful people, we should realize that the truth by itself is not enough; what is needed is the truth in charity, for only this will build up the unity of the Church. In our adhesion to the best programs, let us not forget the body. Even if the Eucharist is still validly celebrated in certain cases of schism, we should remember that it still derives its power and its value from being the common table. It is our unavoidable duty in justice and as pastors to save people from schism and to help them toward greater communion and unity with Mother Church, remembering always that unity is superior to conflict.

As we prepare for our ministry, let us ask for the grace to be men and women of faith, evangelizers of the faith we have received. Let us hope that in these exercises the Lord will make us understand and realize that evangelization "is not an optional contribution for the Church... This message is something necessary. It is unique. It cannot be replaced. It does not permit either indifference, syncretism, or accommodation. It is a question of people's salvation. It is the beauty of the Revelation that it represents. It brings with it a wisdom that is not of this world. It is able to stir up by itself faith - faith that rests on the power of God. Let us be fully aware that it requires that we, as apostles, "consecrate to it all [our] time and all [our] energies, and... sacrifice for it, if necessary, our own lives" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 5)

My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of the power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. - 1 Cor. 2:4-5 -

BY  HIS  HOLINESS  POPE  FRANCIS

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Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.

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Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
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Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -