We are halfway through the Year of Faith which began October 2012 and ends November 2013. During the last few months, our faith has certainly been challenged and, hopefully, has grown.
Hebrews 11 defines faith as substance and evidence: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
To the modern mind faith seems to be the opposite of substance and evidence. Because we have absorbed more of the outdated positivists’ thinking than we like to admit, we tend to compartmentalize faith in the believing part of our lives and substance and evidence into the concrete or real part of lives. But that’s not what the Bible tells us.
Hebrews 11 goes on to say, “For this, the ancients earned commendation. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” That is, by understanding and accepting the truth that the things which we see were made by God through things that are unseen, we please God just as the ‘ancients’ did. Therefore, the things that we see are evidence and substance of our faith that they were “framed by the word of God.”
The author of the Book of Hebrews isn’t alone in pointing this reality out to us. The Book of Acts tells us, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” The Prologue of John’s Gospel says that all things came to be in Him and, without Him, nothing was made that is. Jesus’ Resurrection, that we celebrate during these forty days of Easter, is meant to assure us that our faith indeed is composed of the substance and evidence of the unseen world from which this passing world is made.
What difference does all this make? Why do we care? Because, as our Holy Fathers have not stopped telling us, people of faith “live differently.” The darker this world becomes, the more “The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the stubble.” (Wis 3) Our faith is always young and is always filled with hope because we know that the things we see are made of and exist in the things we don’t see. That is, the Word of God.
I think of all this when I see various people or websites or ministries being called out as exemplary evangelizers for our Faith. To be sure, there are many Catholics doing wonderful things in this world. But I wonder if the Lord looks more for the “sparks among the stubble.” Those who live little, hidden lives and whose ministries are never recognized.
If Therese’s Little Way teaches us anything, it teaches that the faithful father, the determined mother, the ignored grandma and the ebullient teenager who are living ‘differently’ everyday of their lives are the great evangelizers of this Year of Faith!
Copyright © 2013, Glenna Bradshaw
Glenna Bradshaw
Glenna Bradshaw is a happy Catholic who lives in Tennessee with her family and two spoiled greyhounds. She blogs at Celebrating the Year of Faith.
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