Knowing If You Have Faith

After spending the past month talking about church structure and hierarchy, it's time to move on to the important stuff - what the Church actually believes. For the next few weeks, the posts will deal with faith and what the Church teaches.

In order to have faith, you have to trust the word of someone else. When you demonstrate faith in a person, you believe what that other person is telling you-even if you never witnessed what they are explaining yourself. In other words, faith is trusting that a person is telling you the truth about something you don't know, even though they haven't shown you any cold, hard facts.

Using this description makes it sound like faith is believing in Santa or the Easter Bunny, but real faith is a bit more complicated. Having faith means having to live with unanswered questions, such as "Why is there evil on the Earth?" or "Why do people go to war?" (The answer "it's God's Will," doesn't really address these core issues.) Faith allows you to endure life without having all the answers. Instead of providing an explanation, faith allows a person to persevere.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a book that presents the official teachings of the Church. On the subject of faith, it says:

"Faith is, first of all, a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and
inseperably, it is a free ascent to the whole truth that God has revealed."
(Section 150)

"Faith is a personal act-the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who
reveals himself. But faith is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one
can live alone." (Section 166)

Catholics see faith as a gift from God, not as something a person just comes up with on their own. They believe He offers it to everyone, but it must be freely received. No one can be forced to have faith, and different people respond to it in different ways. Some people reject the gift, some view it with indifference, some treat it casually, with occasional seriousness. Some cherish their faith deeply. There is an old saying, "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation is possible."