Christian Faith: Our Response to God’s Revelation

The foundation of our Faith in God is based on the Divine Revelation.

 The word revelation comes from the Latin word “ REVELARE ” which means TO REVEAL, TO
DISCLOSE, TO UNVEIL.
 Revelation – is God’s personal, loving, communication to us of who He is and His plan to save us
all in His love.

What are signs of God’s Revelation?

 God reveals Himself;
1. In creation
2. In scripture, through Salvation History - He made covenants with Noah, with Abraham and with Moses.
3. In the church - Liturgical / Ecclesial Signs & Symbols

Christian life - is based on the conviction that God has spoken to us (Revelation) and that the central truths of our
faith are given in this revelation.

Christian Faith is one of the distinguishing characteristics of people.

 It enters their lives mostly through ceremonies attached to family celebrations
 (Baptism, marriage, blessings, traditional practices etc.)
 Faith in human relation Foundation of our faith in God

Faith is a central reality in Filipino Life.

 It is an everyday factor in all our human relationships and daily actions.
- In accepting the words of others, we show our Faith (paniniwala)
- Obey the directions of those over us, at work, in our communities ( pagsunod )
- When we entrust ourselves and our welfare to others (doctors, teachers, judges, drivers,
civic leaders etc.)
For Filipinos, this can be seen most clearly in our family life and friendships.
These are signs of Faith in human relationship
 Paniniwala ( believing )
 Pagsunod ( obey )
 Pagtitiwala ( entrust )

Our Faith in God is not automatic it is a process. It will start from our experiences.
Faith in God is about our personal relationship to God.
We grow up, nurtured and supported by TRUST, LOVE, and FIDELITY of our family.
We mature through a process of forming personal friendships, first as children, teenagers and as adults.
We experience something that liberates us from our narrowness, and opens us to fuller life and love.
We realize that friendship freely offered us by another also demands our free response.
It is a response that is never just one act, but a long process of growing intimacy with our friend, families, others
especially to God.
Meaning of Faith
The English word “ FAITH ” is derived from the Latin word“ fidere ”, meaning “ to trust ”.
Trusting belongs to the heart, to emotions.
To say to someone “I believe in you ”is to convey a deep, personal trust, an expression of confidence born of a
loving relationship.
When we believe in God we accept God as our Lord, our Creator, the giver of life, the one whom we reverence,
wonder at, grateful to and seek a close union with.

Faith simply means believing in God.

Christian faith means believing in God revealed by Jesus Christ.
Catholic Christian Faith is means believing that Christ reveals God to us in and through the Catholic Church, the
body of Christ, united in the Holy Spirit.
Believing – means realizing that God is calling us to share His Divine life.
Faith is our personal response as Disciples of Christ of accepting him as Lord and Savior

Characteristics of Christian Faith

1.Total and Absolute
- To commit our entire self to God.
-The full submission of intellect and will to God.
- Christ himself provides, especially in his Passion, Death and Resurrection.
-The best example of this total and absolute commitment to God.
 Intellect compared with Will

2.Trinitarian
- For us Christians, Faith is our adherence to the Triune God revealed through Jesus Christ our Lord.
- It is our friendship with Christ and through Christ with the Father, in their Holy Spirit.

> We come to believe in Christ our Savior, in the Father, and in the Holy Spirit sent into our hearts.
>Our Faith as Catholic, then, consists in our personal conviction and belief in God our Father, revealed by Jesus
Christ, His own divine Son-made-man, and their presence to us through the Holy Spirit, in the Church. (cf. PCP II 64;

3.Loving, Maturing and Missionary

- Our Christian Faith is truly life-giving and mature only through love. For “the man without love has
known nothing of God, for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).
- This means we are all called to share in Christ’s own three-fold mission as priest, prophet, and king
- And to be Christian, this love must be inseparably love of God and love of neighbor, like Christ’s.
- It thus impels us to mission, to evangelize, by bringing others the Good News (cf. 1 Cor 9:16).
- Such a missionary spirit is the test of authentic Faith because it is unthinkable that a person should
believe in Christ’s Word and Kingdom without bearing witness and proclaiming it in his turn

4. Informed and Communitarian

- PCP II insists that Catholic Faith must be “informed,” that is “believing Jesus’ words, and accepting his
teachings, trusting that he has “the words of eternal life”
- It must be “communitarian” since it is the Church that transmits to us Christ’s revelation through Sacred
Scripture and its living Tradition, and alone makes possible for us an adequate faith-response.

5. Inculturated
 This Catholic faith in God and in Jesus Christ is never separated from the typical Filipino faith in
family and friends.
 On the other hand, we live out our faith in God precisely in our daily relationships with family,
friends, fellow workers, etc.

The Three Dimensions of Faith

The Three Essential Dimensions of Faith

 Christian Faith, then, touches every part of us;
a. our minds (believing),
b. our wills (doing),
c. and our heart (trusting).
Believing
 Faith involves our basic convictions as Christians.
 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).
 “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)
 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
 But besides believing, faith is also doing.
 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
As St. James writes: “My brother, 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).

Entrusting / Worshipping
 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.
 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 fomulas.
 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)
 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

The Three essential objective Dimensions of Catholic Faith

1.Doctrine – the Truths of the Faith, the Creed. ( Head )
2. Morals - The Commandments, Beatitudes, Virtues ( Hands ).
3. Prayer- Worship – the Liturgy and Sacraments ( heart )

The three corresponding subjective dimensions of Catholic Faith

1. Believing - loving knowledge of Christ, our Truth.

2. Doing/acting - following Christ’s Commandments

3. Praying/worshipping – of the Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit. As empowered

by God’s grace, within the Church, the Christ’s body.

Constitutive Elements of Christian faith

1. Doctrine – 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.

2. Morals- What should I do ?

 Love others as Christ does.
 “ Keep His commandmends( 1Jn. 2:3 ) which means to love in deed and Truth and not merely talk about it.
This demands acting on the credibility of God’s teaching in Christ as true and dependable ( credere Deo/
Christo)

3. Worship - what we may hope for?

- Christ’s presence and life everlasting.

- Christian faith celebrates in prayer and sacrament the unshakeable hope that neither death or
life, neither angels nor principalities.
- This hope means to believe in God, with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind,
entrusting ourselves to Him in love ( credere in Deum/ Christum. )

Christian Faith is both

What is believed Act of believing

- Saving truths/revealed truths -Response to God’s Revelation

- Objective content of the Faith - Faith as a way of life

- The Christian message: - The gospel in daily life

Doctrine: The Creed Doctrine – act of “paniniwala”

- understanding, believing

Morals : Ten Commandments Morals - Act of pagtaklima

Beatitudes, Virtues - living out of faith
- witnessing

Worship : Prayer, Liturgy, Worship - act of pagtitiwala,

Sacraments - entrusting, praying