Faith Is the Act of Believing God
19th Sunday of the Year
There are benefits that come from having attended a seminary so close to Gettysburg. A few years ago, I remember a young woman came to Mass at the parish where I was serving dressed like someone from the 19th century. She had the petticoat, the corset, the bonnet; the whole outfit. I remember thinking that if I were in Baltimore and saw a woman arrive at Mass dressed like someone from the 19th century, my mind would fill with questions. To which dangerous element of the subculture does this person belong? Is she a hipster? Is she trying to enter a sorority? Is she mentally unwell? Did someone pay her to wear that outfit in public?
But being so close to Gettysburg, I was able to safely conclude that she was just coming to mass on her way to work as a tour guide or at a local restaurant near the battlefield.
One of the tragedies of our age is that we are seemingly required to make these kinds of judgments all of the time. And about much more important issues as well. Each and every day we receive information or find ourselves in situations that require us to make judgments about the truth or goodness or nature of whatever it is that we confront. This kind of mental work takes its toll. It can distract us from more important things; it can develop into settled dispositions of anxiety or suspicion; it can affect our relationships and our capacity for living in community. And the stakes are never higher than when we feel that we are called to make constant judgments about what is going on with something or someone that we care about. So, for all of us who love the Church, simply trying to keep pace with the scandals and controversies of the present moment is the type of exhausting work that can do real damage.
The point that I want to make with this homily is that one remedy for our constant need to make judgments is belief. Authentic, deeply-rooted belief. Beliefs can soothe our anxiety, keep us from distraction, and help us to form good relationships. But the challenge is that we human beings aren’t as good with believing as we used to be. The philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe once observed that we moderns have lost sight of the idea of believing God:
At one time there was the following way of speaking: faith was distinguished as human and divine. Human faith was believing a mere human being; divine faith was believing God. Occurring in discussion without any qualifying adjective, the word ‘faith’ tended to mean only or mostly ‘divine faith.’ But its value in this line of descent has quite altered. Nowadays it is used to mean much the same thing as ‘religion’ or possibly ‘religious belief.’ Thus belief in God would now generally be called ‘faith’— belief in God at all, not belief that God will help one, for example. This is a great pity. It has had a disgusting effect on thought about religion. The astounding idea that there should be such a thing as believing God has been lost sight of.1
What Anscombe points out is an old distinction in the teaching of the Church: that there ought to be a connection between believing in God and believing what God tells us. So for example, we might say that we believe in God on the one hand, and that we believe in the real presence of the Eucharist on the other, but rarely do we say that we believe God that Christ is present in the sacrament. We often talk about our individual beliefs in a way that is disconnected from our foundational belief in God. We no longer see belief as a kind of active and persistent trust in God’s divine testimony, but rather as something that follows from a judgment that we make for ourselves. But the belief of Abraham, for example, was just that kind of active and persistent trust in God’s spoken word. Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, St. Paul reminds us in the Letter to the Romans. Abraham didn’t need to make a separate judgment about the veracity of each of God’s promises. To believe God was enough.
In fact, faith — genuine belief in what God says — is the only reality through which we can understand the life of Abraham. No other motive or driving passion helps us to make sense of Abraham’s actions. Our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews today gives us a litany of acts of faith that defined the life of Abraham: by faith Abraham obeyed and left his home; by faith Abraham journeyed to a foreign land at the command of God; by faith Abraham received the gift of children; by faith Abraham offered the life of his son when put to the test.
Abraham lived by faith: the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. What does this mean? Faith is the possession of a future good in our present lives; something that we long for and yet hold onto in our lives now; something that is promised to us and yet already given. Faith is knowing God: knowing who God is and how God lives, now, in real time, in the lives that we have been given. And so faith is a matter of believing God: believing what God says to us. Abraham did not stop to deliberate upon every command of God in order to determine the truthfulness or the goodness or the accuracy of God’s instructions. Abraham acted in faith — by faith — through faith. Abraham knew God, and so Abraham believed God. And St. Paul teaches us that because of his faith — because Abraham believed what God told him — the faith of Abraham was credited to him as righteousness.
I can’t think of a better goal for us as Roman Catholics — as members of Christ’s body — than to pursue that kind of righteousness for ourselves. And that is especially the case when it comes to our relationship with the Church. I don’t know if there is an element of the Christian life in which I see more people struggle with faith than in matters of relationship with the Church. When we are confronted with the reality of the Church in our lives today, too frequently do we: doubt, judge, evaluate, criticize, worry, dismiss, ignore. Too often when we are confronted with the reality of the Church do we demonstrate a lack of faith — a genuine act of believing what God has revealed to us. And so too often we become: anxious, judgmental, angry, distrustful. Our relationships are harmed and we risk the loss of authentic communion with the Body of Christ.
And so I think this weekend is a fine opportunity for us to remind ourselves of what God has told us about his Church: that the Church is the Body of Christ, that the gates of hell will not prevail against her, that what she binds and looses on earth is bound and loosened in heaven. And as we hear from St. Paul: Christ is the foundation of the Church, the Holy Spirit leads her, and that God defends her.2 To believe God is to believe all of this.
The scandals and controversies that mark the life of the Church in our age are real, and perhaps it would be irresponsible to pay no attention to the affairs of the day. But neither can we commit ourselves to making distinct judgments about what the affairs of the day tell us about the fate of the Church. That kind of life will only make us anxious, or suspicious, or distract us from things more worthy of our time, or make community life more difficult for us. It will also harm our relationship with God. No relationship can long endure a lack of trust. We must remind ourselves that to believe God is to trust in what he tells us about the Church. The Church of our age. The Church of our time. The Church of the present moment. A few days ago in our Gospel reading we heard Christ inform Peter that he is the rock upon which Christ will build his Church. And we can’t make the mistake of thinking that the Church of which Christ speaks is some future version of the Church that we might hope to see for ourselves. We do not live in an age of prophecy; we live in the age of fulfillment. What God tells us about the Church is not a prophecy that describes the fate of the Church in some future time, but rather a kind of divine testimony that tells us about the life of the Church right now. What God tells us about the Church is happening now. And if we believe God, then we will believe what he tells us about his Church, and so our belief — like that of Abraham — will be reckoned to us as righteousness.
Elizabeth Anscombe, “What Is It to Believe Someone?” in Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2008. p. 2.
Cf. 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17.