A PERSON WITHOUT FAITH IS A BIT LIKE A DOG AT A BIRTHDAY PARTY – HE SEES ALL THESE INTERESTING THINGS GOING ON AROUND HIM, BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT IT’S REALLY ALL ABOUT

Note that St Peter said “we have believed and have known”, not “known and believed”. Faith comes first, then understanding. “Faith Seeking Understanding” could, I suppose, be a sub-title for many great works of theology. “Understanding Seeking Faith” could be a sub-title for many works by agnostics. It is faith that gives us that deepest penetration into reality – more so than any other human mode of cognition. Why? Because faith is sharing in God’s own knowledge. Just as our life of grace gives us a share in His life, and makes us “partakers in the divine nature”, as St Peter puts it (2 Pet 1:4), so, corresponding with the human faculties of will and intellect, we have charity and faith. By charity we share God’s love, as anyone can see by looking at Mother Teresa. By faith we share in God’s knowledge, as has often seemed plain to me from seeing certain people praying before the Blessed Sacrament. It is only by faith that we are fully in touch with reality.

People without faith live in a grey, nightmare sort of world. They cannot see its meaning or purpose. They do not know why things happen. They see things happen, of course, but they do not know the meaning. It is like a dog at a birthday party. He is having a great time. All these people eating! At any moment, food might fall to the floor. He is really enjoying himself, and he looks as though he is entering into the spirit of the thing. But all the same, he does not know what it is really all about. He does not know that it is a birthday party.

And so people without faith do indeed observe the world; they observe it very closely. But they do not know the why and wherefore of it. To them, it seems to be ruled by chance, or by “natural selection”, or whatever they care to call it. But it is only we, who know that God is our Father, and see the whole world bathed in the light of his love, who see it as it really is.

I remember seeing my mother, when she wanted to buy a reel of cotton, take it out of the shop into the daylight. To see things as they really are, we must look at them in the light of God’s love. It is only to a believer that the world really makes sense. (Fr Hugh S. Thwaites) A

PRAYER FOR UNBELIEVERS

O Lord Jesus Christ, upon the Cross you did say: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And this surely, O my God, is the condition of vast multitudes among us now. They deny that there is a God, but they know not what they are doing. They renounce all faith in you, the Saviour of man. They mislead the wandering, they frighten the weak, they corrupt the young. Others, again, have a wish to be religious, but mistake error for truth – they go after fancies of their own, and they seduce others and keep them from you. They know not what they are doing, but you can make them know. Teach them now, open their eyes here, before the future comes; give them faith in what they must see hereafter, if they will not believe in it here. Amen. (Blessed John Henry Newman)

 

WE WALK BY FAITH (HYMN)

We walk by faith, and not by sight;
no gracious words we hear
from him who spoke as none e’er spoke;
but we believe him near.

Help then, O Lord, our unbelief;
and may our faith abound,
to call on you when you are near
and seek where you are found:

That, when our life of faith is done,
in realms of clearer light
we may behold you as you are,
with full and endless sight.

 

“MY WORK AS A SCIENTIST HAS GREATLY ENRICHED MY FAITH IN GOD”

“My activity as a scientist has not changed my faith in God, but it has certainly enriched it. Whenever scientists are discovering things in the laboratory, what we are actually doing is seeing a bit more of the beauty of God’s creation. As St Paul proclaims in Romans 1:20, ‘Ever since the creation of the world God’s invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.’ Similarly, in Acts 17:28, it is said, ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being’.

When we study the wonderful way the human body works or when we examine the beauty of a cell under the microscope, we sense that all this magnificent beauty and complexity simply cannot have arisen out of randomness, but can only be the result of what we may call a Higher Power: God. Extremely organised and intelligent systems like living organisms do not assemble out of disorder by chance. This is against the law of entropy; it does not happen from a practical statistical perspective.

I would also like to add that when we create or invent new ideas, we are participation in the ongoing creation process of God. We become essentially co-creators with God and create new ideas and things, something that was never there before.

God is the power , the creator, the Father that gives rise to everything, both at the beginning of the universe and throughout its existence. Also, God cares about us and loves so much that indeed He came to earth in the person of Christ. God is all-powerful and all-knowing, but He also wishes to be in a personal relationship with His creatures, which I find remarkable and amazing.”
– Dr Keith L. March; excerpt from an article by Mario Conte, OFM Conv. In “Messenger to St Anthony”, November 2012 issue.