The Three Essential Dimensions of Faith

(From CFC 128-136, 155-158)

128. Vatican II explains this faith-response as follows: “By faith man freely commits his entire self to
God, making ‘the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals,’ and willingly assenting
to the Revelation given by Him” (DV 5). Christian Faith, then, touches every part of us: our minds
(believing), our wills (doing), and our hearts (trusting). Let us briefly examine each aspect in turn.

Believing

129. Faith involves our basic convictions as Christians. “For if you confess with your lips that Jesus is
Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead; you will be saved” (Rom 10:9).
John sums up his Gospel with: “These things have been recorded to help you believe that Jesus is the
Messiah, the Son of God, so that through this faith you may have life in his name” (Jn 20: 31).

Faith, then, is knowing, but not mere “head knowledge” of some abstract truths. It is like the
deep knowledge we have of our parents, or of anyone we love dearly. Christian Faith, then, is
personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as “my Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28). Christ solemnly assures
each of us: “Here I stand knocking at the door. If anyone hears me calling and opens the door, I will
enter his house, and have supper with him, and he with me” (Rv 3:20).

Doing

130. But besides believing, faith is also doing. As St. James writes: “My brothers, what good is it to
profess faith without practicing it?” (Jas 2:14). Christ himself taught: “None of those who cry out
‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of God, but only the one who does the will of my Father in
heaven” (Mt 7:21). Faith, then, is a commitment to follow (obey) God’s will for us. This we see
exemplified in Mary’s “I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say” (Lk 1:38).

PCP II brings out this “doing” dimension of faith as “witnessing” through “loving service” of
our needy neighbors. In our concrete situation, particularly urgent is the call for: 1) deeds of justice
and love; and 2) for protecting and caring for our endangered earth’s environment (cf. PCP II 78-80).

131. Of course, we realize that we often do not do what we affirm in faith. But this awareness of our
failures emphasizes all the more the essential place of behavior in authentic Christian Faith. It also
makes us more conscious of our need for Christ’s Spirit to live out our faith in our actions. “For apart
from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). “Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace
of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the
heart and converts it to God” (DV 5).

Entrusting/Worshipping

132. Beyond believing and doing, faith is also entrusting oneself into God’s hands. Abraham, our
father in faith, at God’s command left everything to set out for a foreign land. Against all human
odds Moses trusted Yahweh to free the Hebrews from their slavery in Egypt. In the New Testament,
Jesus worked signs and cures only with those who trusted in him. He promised the possessed boy’s
father: “Everything is possible to a man who trusts” (Mk 9:23).
133. Faith, then, is from the heart __ the loving, trusting, and hoping in the Lord that comes from
God’s own love flooding our hearts. This trusting Faith “lives and grows through prayer and
worship” __ personal heartfelt conversation with God that is the opposite of mindless, mechanical
repetition of memorized formulas. Genuine personal prayer and group prayer find both their
inspirational source and summit of perfection in the Liturgy, the Catholic community’s official public
Trinitarian worship of the Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the Holy Spirit (cf. PCP II 74-77).

Faith and Three Classic Questions

134. These three aspects of our Christian Faith __ believing, doing, prayerful trusting __ respond to the
three classical questions posed to every person in life, and to St. Augustine’s famous triple definition of
faith. To the question “What can I know?” Christian faith responds that we can know God as Our Father
and Christ as Our Lord (credere Deum/Christum). “Know that we belong to God . . . that the Son of God
has come and has given us discernment to recognize the One who is true” (1 Jn 5:19-20). Pagkilala sa
Ama, sa Anak at sa Espiritu Santo.

135. “What should I do?” is answered curtly by “Keep His commandments” (1 Jn 2:3), which means to
“love in deed and truth and not merely talk about it” (1 Jn 3:18). This demands acting on the credibility
of God’s teachings in Christ as true and dependable (credere Deo/Christo).

136. Finally, to the question “What may we hope for?” Christian Faith celebrates in prayer and
sacrament the unshakeable hope that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither
the present nor the future, nor powers; neither height nor depth nor any other creature, will be able to
separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39). In brief, this
hope means to believe in God “with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind” (Mt
22:37), entrusting ourselves to Him in love (credere in Deum/Christum).

IV. MARY: MODEL OF FAITH

155. Many Filipino Catholics probably learn more about Faith from their devotion to the Virgin Mary
than any other way. This is perfectly grounded in Scripture which portrays Mary as the exemplar of
faith. Through her “Yes” at the Annunciation, Mary “becomes the model of faith” (AMB 35; cf. CCC
148). Luke stresses the contrast between Mary’s faith and the disbelief of Zachary by Elizabeth’s
greeting. “Blest is she who trusted that Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:20, 45). John
Paul II writes that “in the expression ‘Blest are you who believed’ we can rightly find a kind of ‘key’
which unlocks for us the innermost reality of Mary, whom the angel hailed as ‘full of grace’ ” (cf. RMa
19).

156. Mary perfectly exemplified the common definitions of faith as “full submission of intellect and
will” and the “obedience of faith” (Rom 16:26; 1:5; cf. DV 5). But she did it personally, with all her
human and feminine “I”, and this response of faith included both perfect cooperation with the
“grace of God that precedes and assists,” and perfect openness to the action of the Holy Spirit, who
constantly brings faith to completion by his gifts (DV 5; cf. LG 56). Luke carries this theme of Mary’s
faith into his second inspired book where he describes her presence among “those who believed” in
the apostolic community after the Resurrection (cf. Acts 1:14).

157. Mary is truly an effective inspiration to us because she constantly exercised faith in all the
realities of ordinary, daily living, even in family crises. Luke’s account of the “finding in the Temple”
offers a perfect example (cf. Lk 2:41-52). There is the first stage of astonishment at seeing Jesus in
the temple, in the midst of the teachers. Astonishment is often the beginning of faith, the sign and
condition to break beyond our “mind-set” and learn something new. Mary and Joseph learned
something from Jesus that day.

158. Second, there is distress and worry, real anguish and suffering. As with the prophets, God’s
Word brings good and bad fortune. Mary was already “taking up the Cross” of the disciple of Christ.
Third, there is often a lack of understanding. Both Mary and Joseph, and later “the Twelve,” could
not understand what Jesus meant. Faith is not “clear insight” but “seeing indistinctly, as in a mirror”
(1 Cor 13:12). Finally, there is the fourth stage of search wherein Mary did not drop the incident from
her mind, but rather “kept all these things in her heart.” Faith is a continual search for meaning, for
making sense of what is happening by uncovering what links them together. Like the “scribe who is
learned in the reign of God” Mary acted like “the head of a household who brings from his
storeroom both the new and the old” (Mt 13:52).

159. Since faith is the key to Mary’s whole life, from her divine motherhood to her “falling asleep in
the Lord,” her life is a real “pilgrimage of faith” (LG 58). That makes her our model and support in
faith. But beyond our individual ‘faith lives,’ John Paul II has brought out its wider significance. I wish
to draw on the ‘pilgrimage of faith’ on which the Blessed Virgin advanced . . . This is not just a
question of the Virgin Mother’s life-story, of her personal journey of faith . . . It is also a question of
the history of the whole people of God, of all who take part in the same ‘pilgrimage of faith’ (RMa 5;
cf. 14- 18).