Let Your Faith Define You

Aug 13, 2008

So often Catholics change their beliefs to suit themselves and the world because their catholic faith opposes what they want or what they think should happen in life. These changes may be little or large but they all have the same result and that is to make what the person believes no longer Catholic and just another worldly way.

To be truly Catholic is to live to what the Church teaches and not to put one’s own personal preferences before that. Some have forgotten that when the Church speaks on faith, morals and life that it is God’s Holy Spirit speaking. Some have forgotten or reject the authority that Christ, Our Lord, gave to St. Peter and through him to all the popes. Instead, they put their own authority and judgement before that of the Church. This is fraught with danger for surely human desires will influence people’s judgement and may lead people into the acceptance of what is wrong. This too is a reflection of mankind’s pride where people often believe they know better than God. The same pride that Lucifer has!

To live as a Catholic means to live humbly in obedience to the will of God as it is shown by God through His Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Anything less diminishes a person’s faith and opens the person to serious error and misunderstandings of God’s will. True faith is defined by a complete acceptance of God’s will as explained by The Commandments and the teachings of the Church even when a person does not understand the reasons for them. To follow and accept only what a person understands leaves a great void in faith as the pride that says, ‘I will only accept what I know to be true’, closes the heart to God. What arrogance it is to accept only what can be proven or what fits in with what a person perceives to be true, for surely our human minds do not know everything and do not understand everything. There is so much in existence that we know so little about and have still to unravel. Yet mankind so easily denies God and His eternal truth. Many Catholics are guilty of this by putting self before God and changing their faith so that it fits in comfortably with their life.

Our faith is meant to define us in the way that our lives are lived with the faith as given by God and explained by His Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Every decision we make, every action we do and every word we speak are meant to be expressions of God’s will so that those who look upon us see the truth of God’s love and are drawn to His love through us and away from the bitterness of evil.

Let us reflect on the early Church and it’s obedience to God’s will even until death and how by the grace of God the sacrifices made then defined the Church in the world and showed the beauty of God’s love to all.

Alan Ames