“Do you have faith?” Isn’t it a bit dumb to ask such questions at a religious ceremony? Isn’t having faith the main reason for coming to church regularly in an ever more secular country, where religion seems to be an increasingly uncommon lifestyle choice? And yet, let me ask again: “Do you have faith?”
What is faith, and can you have it? I’ve grappled with this question, and I’m sure many of you have, too. When I first asked myself this, my instinctive answer was like a social media relationship status: “It’s complicated.” But as I delved deeper into our Christian context, I found that faith is more accurately described as “multilayered.”
In general terms of human interactions, faith or trust (here, we can use them interchangeably) is a relationship to realities we don’t yet have in hand, based on a promise to make them happen. Online shopping is an excellent example of this. The retailer promises to fulfil their promise by shipping the ordered goods. They take your money, and then you must wait for the delivery for a few days. That’s the period of faith (in a non-religious sense) in the retailer. The product is effectively yours, but you haven’t got it yet. This period of faith ends when the goods have been delivered, unpacked and checked. Your faith has been rewarded when everything is as promised, or – having found yourself let down – you have to start the often tedious return and refund process.
How do you decide to order a product from a specific online supplier? First of all, you find the desired product, usually offered by a number of retailers. The price is the initial factor, but then you look at the seller’s trustworthiness, whether it’s a well-known, established supplier with an excellent reputation or one that’s a bit niche but with good reviews left by its previous customers. With the latter, you try to determine whether those opinions are genuine or fake. Eventually, you take the plunge, place the order, pay for it, and wait. This is the first fundamental layer of trust in faith, which applies to our Christian faith too.
We believe that God will fulfil his promises; such trust is built on the opinions of fellow believers as well as our own experience over time. The base of our religious faith is the Bible combined with the sound teaching of the Church; the latter is called Tradition. It sets spiritual and ethical frameworks that help us navigate towards the fulfilment of what we believe in. Here, the similarities between online trade and religious faith end, and we must find a different image to help us. The love between two people is a handy one.
It starts with either mutual or one-sided attraction; in the latter, the other side develops their attraction in response to the efforts made by the person who initiated the relationship. The expectation or premise of the relationship, often non-verbalised, is to be unconditionally loved and to love in return. Love is ever dynamic as we respond to each other’s attitudes, behaviours, words, actions, or lack of the expected ones (negligence). In such a never-ending process, the relationship either breaks up (when the differences are unsurmountable) or grows stronger and becomes formalised when the couple make their mutual commitment firm by exchanging marital vows. However, this is not the moment to stop making efforts to build up a loving relationship (a relatively common, subconscious mistake) but rather to double them up. In the name of love, we respond to the spouse as best we can day by day. Such love pays off in small coins rather than large banknotes. Only when you look back, after years and years, can you see the love that has been present and propelling your lives.
Today’s first reading and gospel share a theme. In both cases, there were many hungry people without enough resources to feed them. The leaders, the prophet Elisha and Jesus, respectively, challenged their helpers’ presumptions that nothing could be done due to the acute shortage of food: “Two hundred denarii would only buy enough to give them a small piece each. […] There is a small boy here with five barley loaves and two fish, but what is that between so many?” Elisha the prophet, addressed it directly: “Give it to the people to eat’ he insisted ‘for the Lord says this, “They will eat and have some left over.” The basis of his “unreasonable” action was God’s promise. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we know what would happen. But put yourself in the place of Elisha’s servant or Jesus’ disciples, told in no uncertain terms to act in a specific, logic-defying way. They must have trusted their respective leaders that their promises would be fulfilled. The only way to see that was by acting accordingly. Only having done that, they realised they had witnessed a miracle and “said, ‘This really is the prophet who is to come into the world.’”
In our everyday lives, we respond to a wide variety of challenges, hardships and problems. How we do this can be determined by our faith or lack of it. On the one hand, we have clear moral and religious rules of engagement, essentially set by the Ten Commandments and ethics of the Christian faith. On the other hand, their practical application can be much more challenging and often must be nuanced by taking the circumstances into account. The way we respond is the practical answer to the question: “Do you have faith?”
Considering that faith is my dynamic response to everyday challenges, the question of where to get faith from or how to keep it alive is critical. Faith needs a solid foundation, and the religious type comes from a trusted source: “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.” (Romans 10:17). That’s why reading the Bible – the word of God – in the community of the faithful is so crucial, as we share our religious experiences and support one another as we heard in today’s second reading: “Bear with one another charitably, in complete selflessness, gentleness and patience. Do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together. There is one Body, one Spirit, just as you were all called into one and the same hope when you were called.”
