DAILY CATHOLIC WEDNESDAY June 3, 1998 vol. 9, no. 107
KEY TO LIVING GOD'S WILLColumn by Father John H. Hampsch, C.M.F.
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INTRODUCTION |
"Faith: Key to the Heart of God"Forty-Second Installment: Supernatural Faith part twoAfter my first visit to Europe, I wrote a book telling of all the extraordinary things I had seen in two months. Things like the incorrupt bodies of unembalmed saints almost as fresh as the day they died, and the three days I spent with the stigmatic Padre Pio, serving His Mass and watching the blood fall from his hands on the altar. People who read my book wrote back and said they'd never heard of miracles like that, ongoing miracles. For some, their faith was stimulated and they decided to return to the sacraments. Their faith was dependent upon signs. As long as they could hear that miracles were going on, they felt they ought to believe. Yet, Jesus called that kind of person faithless because they possess a posterior faith, the sort that believes because of a miracle rather than causing it. The person who can say "That's interesting but I don't need this kind of thing" is the person of faith.When Louis IX was King of France, some of his courtiers came to him and told him to come quickly to witness a miracle; the Christ Child had appeared in the palace chapel standing on the altar next to the tabernacle. To their amazement, the king refused to go. He told them he did not need to go to the chapel to see the miracle because he knew that Jesus was present there all the time. He refused to go to see the apparition because he had tremendous faith. Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe, Jesus told doubting Thomas (John 20:29). Real faith does not depend on signs, but often triggers them. Nor does faith depend on feelings or emotional reactions. The basis of your prayer of faith isn't whether or not you feel good. You're not assured of your salvation because you "feel" saved. True faith is in the Savior, not in saved feelings. Faith is independent of feelings. If you feel very unprayerful, without much fervor, and still you pray, then you have the faith of a sterling character; and grace is flooding into your soul far more at that time than if you were to pray only when you felt like it. So, many things faith is not. So, what is it really? Where does faith find its warranty? It is warranted simply in the promises of the Word applied to our hearts by the Spirit of God. It is divinely given intuition, an assurance that God has answered our prayer. Faith is an effortless confidence in God. In the next installment, I will treat "Faith's Simplicity."
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