Faith, Anyone?

Judaeo-Christian Faith!

The New Testament faith fulfills the faith of the Old Testament. The Magnificat of Mary introduces us to the God that she believes in, the faith of the early Christian community, the faith of the Church. Listen to this: (Luke 1,46-55) “Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.’” Mary calls her God Lord and Savior. Her joyous praise to her God is, first of all, due to her own personal experience of what her God has done to her: “for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.” She then identifies herself with the tradition of the heroic women of Israel who gave themselves as instruments of God for the defense and liberation of the Israelite land and people, when she continues, thus: “For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” She personifies ancient Israel and its experience of the saving and only God.

As such, she goes on to present the God that she believes in, thus: “for he who is mighty has done great things for me”. And she calls Him holy by name: “and holy is his name”. This Mary’s, and Israel’s, holy God is merciful to all of humanity in history who believe – past, present and future - : “and his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.” So, now, Mary, that particular woman who experienced God personally and who simultaneously stood for Israel, is now transformed to represent a community of believers with a collective memory of God’s saving deeds in human history.

To the perennial question: God, who are you? Mary, personally and as the spokesperson for old Israel, for the new humanity, and for the Church, responds by recounting the great reversals that God has done in biblical history. “He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the conceit of their hearts; he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” We must listen to this Marian proclamation of the object of faith. It is our well-considered conviction that this God of Mary ought to be the testing and measuring rod of the God-images we have produced by “the arbitrariness of the phenomenological, the subjectivism of the existential and the objective functionalism of the sociological”. This Marian creedal statement is rooted in the experience of the Jewish people: “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever."

With the Old Testament “wandering Aramean” and the New Testament’s Magnificat of Mary, the stage is now set for a new articulation of faith. Still rooted in the Jewish Old Testament tradition, the Epiphany now moves the faith forward and proclaims who we should believe in in these new and redeemed times: Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. That is why at Cana, Mary says: “do whatever he tells you!” So the question now, for us, is essentially: Jesus, who are you? – Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC

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Jesus Christ!

What is faith for us, Christians and Catholics? What kind of faith is humanity called to?

We already noted Mary’s order to the servers in the wedding feast at Cana: “Do whatever he tells you!” This third moment of the Epiphany, in the eyes of the Church, manifested “the first of (the) signs (that Jesus did) .. and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him,” (John 2,11). The succeeding chapters of John would describe the ever-growing number of people who would come to believe in Jesus, and in his gradual self-revelation.

What is instructive in this Johannine presentation of faith in Jesus is that people who are predisposed to believing recognize him as the one sent by the Father. Those who refuse to believe fail to recognize him. Two poles are at work in the dynamics of believing: the human pole that seeks, and is open to God’s invitation to seek; and the pole of God who invites, and fulfills the deepest desire of the human heart. In the human quest for fullness of life, God offers eternal life; in the midst of human confusion and uncertainty, God offers light and truth; and in a world of rejection and hatred, God offers his unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness. All these, and the way to access these offers of God are, in the fullest degree, possible, tangible and accessible through, with and in Jesus.

The synoptists Mark, Matthew and Luke locate the question: “who do you say that I am” strategically in the structure of their respective accounts of Jesus. Mark (16 chapters) has it in Mark 8,27-30; Matthew (28 chapters) in Matt 16,15-16 and Luke (21 chapters in Luke 9,18-21). Mark places the question on the identity of Jesus at the center of his gospel. The Markan plot shows how early on, people who came to believe in Jesus were opposed by a corresponding number of non-believers. After Mark 8,27-30, the believers would gradually abandon him to the non-believers until his death on the cross, totally alone and forsaken. Such are the choices of believers of Jesus in a time of persecution. Matthew places the question in the context of the early Church community’s search for a unifying teacher. Jesus is the only teacher, there is no other. Luke makes the question of Jesus’ identity, confirmed at the Mount of Transfiguration, as the basis for his long missionary journey towards Jerusalem, to confront the center of secular power with the real radical alternative of the Kingdom of God. (This confrontation would be carried to its logical conclusion in the Acts, when the Christian community under the leadership of Paul would confront the ultimate seat of imperial power at that time: Rome).

Biblical faith is really thus about faith in Jesus Christ: the firm and solid conviction of his person, of what he does and what he stands for. But can we believe in him, in his cause and in his ethical morality? Or shall we just continue to “leap in the dark”, “as if there is a God” or to invent a myth of a god that suits our interests and desires? -- Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC