Week 2: Have Faith - Believe in God's Promise  
God has saved us, as the second reading says today, not because of anything we have done ourselves but because that always been his plan. He “will make of you a great nation”, as it says in Isaiah. God loves us because he created us . . . that’s it! We don’t have to do anything else to deserve his love, which he gives no matter what we do or what we are.
We know this because we know that Jesus died for us on the cross and that God then raised him up, showing us that not even death can separate us from God’s love. He promised us this because he loves us.
So why do we sometimes doubt?
In the gospel, there is almost a sense of “What more could Jesus do?” when he takes the disciples to the mountaintop where they see Jesus in the company of the greatest of the prophets, Moses and Elijah.
Even the disciples, who live with Jesus every day, do not realize the importance of what they are seeing. They offer hospitality in the form of pitching tents for the great prophets, which when you think about it is a bit silly. Imagine if aliens came to earth from another planet and all you could think of was to ask them if they wanted to come in to your living room and have a coke . . . and by the way, what’s the weather like up there?
So, they are interrupted by the voice of God – who has something else in mind. This is God’s Son – the promise is here, the promise is now! Have faith and believe in God’s promise, and see how amazing it really is!
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What would you do if you saw Jesus and the prophets standing and talking with someone you know? |
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Do you truly believe in your heart that God loves you no matter what, and that you love him too . . . or do you just say the words? Why? |
Week 3: Have Faith - Worship in Spirit and Truth
The woman at the well is coming there for mere water to quench her thirst, to wash, to cook. The stranger she meets raises her mind to a different kind of water – a water for the soul that satisfies the thirst for meaning, cleanses the spirit, fills the hungers of our hearts.
This water stands for a new kind of faith that does not require special places – wells, mountains, even temples. In this faith, our eyes will be raised beyond just what we can see to the life of Spirit and Truth, where God lives. When we gather in Mass, this is where we worship – not just in a church building but in the depths of our hearts.
We may use things like gold cups and incense and fancy robes, we may use spoken and sung words, we may use bodily gestures like kneeling and standing – but all these signs and symbols merely point toward the real truth which we worship . . . God.
So, part of our “faith life” is in our worship and prayer at Mass and elsewhere, where we look beyond what is just in front of our eyes, through eyes of faith, to a much deeper meaning.
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Name some other things we use or actions we do at Mass that point to deeper meanings. |
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Name a way that God has helped you with something in your life – in other words, how has a spiritual truth helped you with a work |
Week 4: Have Faith - Open Your Eyes
The readings this week are all about having ‘eyes of faith’, and about seeing things in new ways.
In the first reading today the Lord says to Samuel: “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.” This means that God sees things differently than people, who usually get too caught up in what is right in front of their noses.
The gospel of the Man born blind is all about different points of view.
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Jesus sees the potential of the blind man, the people he ministers too whom he wants to change over to God’s true path. |
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The blind man sees with both the eyes of his head and his heart. Both his sight and his faith are restored. |
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The Pharisees see only with the eyes of the head, but not of the heart. |
As people of faith we learn to see into the heart with God’s eyes. Look out! Paradigm shift! A paradigm shift is when your whole idea of the world and how you understand it changes suddenly. You frame what you see in new ways! Think of how different the world would seem to be the poor blind beggar who was cured!
Now WE see a new reality to which we have always been blind, just waiting for us to see it. Have faith . . . God has been here all along, seeking us, calling us, even while we attempted to avoid him with the limitations of our human vision and understanding.
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Have you ever had an experience, good or bad, that made you see everything in a new way? (A paradigm shift!) |
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Name some different kinds of blindness that you have encountered in your life. |
Week 5: Have Faith - Rise To New Life
Death is like a huge stone. We see only this life, from a point somewhere in our past up to the blank, stone wall of our death beyond which we cannot see.
Then comes Jesus, who calls out: “ROLL AWAY THE STONE”, and suddenly we see that death is not an end. Lazarus comes forth, and Jesus rises again and conquers the blankness of death.
As a people baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have been truly blessed. The stone has been rolled away centuries ago, the veil between this life and the next ripped apart. The final conclusion of Christian faith is the complete ‘death of death’, accomplished by Jesus on the cross.
After that, it is up to us to DECIDE to have faith. God has done his part to fulfill his promise and has saved us . . . even though we did nothing to deserve it. There is nothing we even CAN do.
So take a single step of faith toward the God who loves us - a single act of surrender - and he will accept you into his arms without condition and with unending love.
That is the New Life that Jesus won for us on the Cross.
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There is one thing guaranteed about Life . . . every single one of us will die someday, somehow. Do you ever think about your own death? |
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Do you have faith that there will be life in God after death, or is this something you have to think about? |
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If you had three months to live, what would you change in your life? |
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Consider making these changes today. Decide to have faith! |
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