4:Faith
(clergy talk)
Key points:
- Faith is how we respond in love to God’s love.
- Faith is not something you ‘have,’ but something you ‘do.’
- Faith is not instantaneous, it is expressed over time.
- Faith is not just a set of beliefs.
Suggestions:
- Modelling our ideal on the values of Christ, and accepting the overwhelming grace of God, we meet as the “laos,” (laity) to exercise our response to God: through faith.
- Faith is not just about acceptance of Jesus as Lord, it is about living our lives under his Lordship, and in particular exactly how we do that.
- A key way to understand faith is to examine what it means to be faithful.
- There are talks to come that will spell out in greater detail some of the aids to a life of faith that Cursillo can help with in the future.
Comments:
Faith is a word closely related to, but not the same as, belief and trust. Interestingly, both belief and trust have associated verbs – to believe, and to trust, – but there is no equivalent verb “to faith” even though the very heart of faith is that it is expressed through practice.
Hebrews 11 reminds us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” and that “what is seen was made from things that are not visible” This does not mean that Christian faith is “blind faith,” an arbitrary trust and belief in something that amounts to no more than wishful thinking. We believe and trust in the promises of God, supremely exemplified in Christ, and we accept in humility that his word deserves a faithful response.
This talk often concludes with the introduction to the concept of palanca. The link needs to be made that palanca comes from those who wish to physically express their life in faith through assuring our new Cursillistas of their prayerful concern and love for them.