The following are excerpts from The New Catholic Vision's  "The Faith Journey" &  "Continuing the Journey"
 

Every journey of faith begins with God knocking at the door of the heart - ever so gently.  The knock may be a spiritual hunger in the soul, a call to love in the heart, or an illness that invades the body.

If we open the door, God will take us by the hand and lead us into the unknown - ever so gently.

Then at some memorable moment God will surprise and bless us beyond our wildest dream. 

Of these three stages, the adolescent stage is normally the most critical and most painful.  It is the most critical stage because at this time in our lives, we begin the important transition from being a Christian by culture (physical birth) to being a Christian by conviction (personal choice).

Likewise, the adolescent sage is the most painful stage because during this stage our childhood faith must die before our adult faith can be born.  The dying of our childhood faith causes the pain.

John Kirvan's book, The Restless Believers, contains a moving description of how the death of our childhood faith affects us. He quotes a young person a saying:

The death of our childhood faith makes us feel sick at heart - even guilty.  This is unfortunate for our faith is simply going through an important transitional stage.

The transition from being a Christian by culture (birth) to being a Christian by conviction (choice) is a gradual process.  Moreover, it is a process that is never fully complete.  It goes on all of our lives and involves three human levels.

At the mind level, we often find ourselves questioning what we once took for granted.  For example, we ask, "Is there really a God?"  This questioning is necessary, for often our childhood idea of God is incomplete, even inaccurate.  Tolstoy observes:

At the heart level, we find ourselves making the transition from an almost exclusive, selfish concern for our own enjoyment and needs to a more responsible concern for other people's enjoyment and needs as well.  We find ourselves opening to love.  In Father Powell's words, this is "the surest way to find God."  Why?

And so when we open our heart to another, we open it to God as well.

Of the three levels, the soul level is the hardest to understand.  This is because faith involves gift on God's part and freedom on our part.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way:

To help us respond to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit, God has given us external signs, such as the miracles of Jesus.  "They are motives of credibility' ... which show that the assent of faith is 'by no means a blind impulse of the mind.'"           ccc, 156

This leads us to a final and extreme important dimension of the faith journey.  It involves:

• Loving Trust,

• Ongoing Effort, and

• Periods of Darkness.
   

A good example of what we mean by "loving trust" is marriage.  When two people join hands and promise to journey together on the road of life, neither is totally sure the other will remain faithful should a crisis arise.  They have no absolute certainty how the other will respond in some mutual crisis.  This is where loving trust comes in.

Faith is something like that.  It too, involves risk and, therefore, loving trust - not in the sense that God is unfaithful (God is always faithful).  Rather, it involves loving trust in the sense that we are not sure where a faith response of God will lead us.

This brings us to one of the biggest mistakes we can make on our faith journey to God.  It is the false idea that once we "get the faith" we will never have to worry about it again.  Consider these words of young person:

This person's experience illustrates what psychologists tell us:  the greater part of ourselves lies below our consciousness.  It surfaces only slowly and gradually with each new experience.

This explains why faith involves ongoing effort.  It is because we are constantly evolving and changing as persons.  As a result, we must constantly recommit ourselves to God as we change and evolve. Our faith can never be a one-time decision.  It must always remain an ongoing effort.

Finally, faith has a way of going in and out of focus.  What was once clear to us becomes fuzzy for a while.  Worse yet, there are times when our faith seems to go behind a cloud and disappear in darkness. This darkness is usually Traceable to one of three sources:

• Our Human Nature,

• Our Individual Selves, or

• God.

First, it may be caused by our human nature, which is vulnerable to "highs" and "lows".  In other words, the darkness reflects the natural mood swings of everyday human life.  Some days are great and we wonder why we ever thought life was hard.  On other days, nothing goes right and it's hard to know why we ever thought life was beautiful.  Our faith has similar mood swings.  These mood swings simply go with the territory of being human.

Second, the periods of darkness may be traceable to our individual selves.  We can cause them by neglecting our faith.  That is, we can let our faith grow weak from sin or from lack of spiritual nourishment.  Thus, just as our body grows weak from abuse or lack of physical nourishment, so our soul grows weak form sin and lack of spiritual nourishment.

Third, and finally, the periods of darkness may be trials traceable to God, who allows them to happen to strengthen and deepen our faith.  God uses trials to help us grow in our faith.

Take the case of Abraham. When he was told to prepare to sacrifice his son Isaac, his mind was cast into darkness.  How could Isaac give him many descendents if he was sacrificed?  Suddenly, Abraham's faith was challenged as never before.  Had he relied on the light of reason, rather than the darkness of faith of God, his faith would have been snuffed out.  Instead, he trusted in God and his faith was greatly strengthened and deepened.       Genesis 22: 1-16 

Regardless of the source of our darkness, the agony it can generate is great.  In his novel The Devil's Advocate, Morris West describes the agony caused by a period of darkness.

Continuing The Journey
Keep Open to God's Grace

John Newton was a British sea captain and slave trader.  One night a violent storm threatened his ship and his cargo of slaves, en route from Africa to America.  Newton promised God that he would give up the slave trade business and become God's slave forever if his ship made it safely to port.  It did.

Newton kept his promise.  He studied for the ministry and eventually became a great preacher and composer of hymns.  One of his most moving hymns celebrates his conversion.  Part of the hymn reads:

Grace is, indeed amazing.  The word grace occurs often in the letters of Saint Paul.  Three passages, especially, sum up the three important points about grace:

• Grace is a gift.
• Grace communicates God's life.
• Grace communicates God's help.
   

This passage reveals the first important truth about grace.  It is a "free and undeserved help that God gives us"    (cc, 1996)

This passage reveals a second truth about grace: it puts us right with God and communicates eternal life to us.  In other words, grace restores our friendship with God (which sin had destroyed) and communicates to us a share of God's life.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way:

This passage reveals a third truth about grace:  God does not "grace" us once and stop.  God does not just give us  a share of divine life and leave it at that.  God helps us preserve and nourish that life.  This is what Newton had in mind in another verse of "Amazing Grace":

God gives us not only divine life but also divine help to preserve it.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church distinguishes between habitual and actual grace, saying

And so we may sum up the three important points as follows:

• Grace is a gift from God.
• Sanctifying grace communicates God's life to us.
• Actual grace communicates God's help to us.
   

Someone asked an elderly Catholic what advice she would give new Catholics.  She said, "I'd tell them to stay in touch with Jesus, especially through some form of daily meditation on the Scriptures."

This takes only ten minutes a day and follows the daily Mass readings.  The meditation process involves four steps:

• Reading the exercise prayerfully,
• Thinking about some point from it that struck you,
• Speaking to Jesus about that point,
• Listening to what Jesus might want to say to you.
   

God often graces us through others.  An example of how others help us on our faith journey is the way Jesus helped the two disciples on Easter morning.  They were returning to Emmaus, crushed by the events of Good Friday.

Jesus reached out and supported the disciples with guidance and encouragement - - just when they needed help.  That is how the Christian community can help us, also.  One way to receive this help is to join a support and faith-sharing group.

In his humorous book, The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis has a delightful scene where the devil instructs a young "apprentice devil" to "work hard" on the new Christian when the euphoria of conversion subsides.  That is when the person is most vulnerable.

Continuing the faith journey is not unlike the journey of life in that it has its ups and downs.  Literary critic Emilie Griffin makes this point in her book, Turning.

Emilie writes that just after becoming a Catholic, she experienced a "burst of thankfulness, even a kind of euphoria, a spontaneous charity for everyone and everything.  I wanted to shout from the rooftops!"

Emilie compared her "euphoria" to what Charles Dickens said to Ebenezer Scrooge after Scrooge's conversion.

Naturally, such an intense, emotional high cannot last forever.  We can not live the rest of our lives on the mountaintop.   And so Emilie says:

Emilie quotes Avery Dulles as saying much the same thing about his own conversion:

The important thing to keep in mind in all of this is that the journey of faith is a lot like the journey of life.  Some days are bright and sunny.  Other days are dark and overcast.  Our faith journey is subject to the same rhythms of light and darkness. 

In conclusion, then, we should keep in mind these four guidelines as we continue or faith journey.  We should:

• keep open to God's grace,

• keep in touch with Jesus,

• reach out to others, and

• anticipate highs and lows.