Faith, prayer and the word of God
Faith
You can only discover prayer when you have discovered what faith is
We all learned a definition of faith, when we were children, in a catechism.
That definition of faith was defined by the First Vatican Council: “Faith is a supernatural virtue, a habit or an act by which, with the grace of God, man admits certain truths not because they are self-evident, but because God, who cannot deceive himself, nor can he deceive us, has said them.”
Normally, when we have taken this definition from a young age, we have underlined it, which perhaps in our conscience continues to have the utmost importance.
It is admitting certain truths that we do not perceive, we do not understand; it is admitting the dark; it is admitting the difficult; we even have a classic word: it is to admit the mystery.
However, in the definition there is something much more important. The important thing about faith is not to admit a certain dark truth, but to admit it because God has said it. From this, faith is a word that God addresses to man
When the divine word has been received by man and man says to the Lord: “I accept your word”, then that man begins to live in dimensions of faith.
Man dialogues with God and God dialogues with man
This is what is called faith. Later, God will tell me this or that, it is clear or it will be dark…
What is important, unprecedented, wonderful and surprising is that God has spoken to man and that man has listened to the word of God and has accepted that Word of God. That is being a believer.
This is the structure of faith: God and man as interlocutors: God and man in dialogue.
Dialogue content
In a dialogue you always have to talk about something determined and concrete.
What is God talking to us about? What is he showing us?
Vatican Council I tells us that God does not speak to us in this dialogue of faith, of things that we can know by other ways, such as science.
In the dialogue of faith, as the First Vatican Council says, God speaks to us about himself, about what he carries within his heart.
Frequently, we forget that God is a person, that he has something inside, the same as each one of us; that he can freely manifest it to whomever he wants and whenever he wants.
The wonderful thing about God in the dialogue of faith is that God suddenly opens his interior and begins to tell him what he carries in his own heart. This is the meaning of the mysteries.
We often say that mystery is what is not understood, no. Mystery is the interior, the intimacy of each person.
We can find a skull from thousands of years ago; we will be able to determine your height; whether it was a man or a woman, etc. What we can never know is who she fell in love with, who she dreamed of… We could only know that if that person told us.
That is the mysteries of God. It is what he carries within himself, that I can only know if he tells me.
Later we will understand him or not, like when we explain certain things to a child and he does not understand them because he is still small.
God one day decided to tell us about Himself. And what did he tell us?
The dialogue of faith has only one point of comparison: it speaks of itself, but it speaks as a lover speaks to the person with whom he has fallen in love.
God has said only one word, exclusively one word: “That he speaks in such a way to men and to each person in particular that he is willing to sacrifice his only-begotten Son for the salvation of men.”
That is to say, God has not revealed more than one thing to us: that he loves man, the greatest reality of all creation on which he has deposited all the affection of his heart.
In other words, the mystery of God’s revelation is fundamentally centered on this word: “God is love for man”; or in another way, it is the word of God that says to each one of us: “I love you”.
Dialogue quality
In order for a dialogue to be authentic, the one who speaks and the one who receives the word need to be on the same level.
When a person talks about their intimacy, they can only demand a response, and it is a response of love: “I accept your love and I also put my love at your disposal.” That is faith.
Faith is having listened to a God who suddenly turns to man and says: “I love you” and then there can only be one authentic response: “Lord, I love you too”.
It is the word of God that tells us at a given moment: “I give you everything, even my only Son”, and the response of faith can only be one: “Lord, I give you everything and I put myself totally in your hands because I make you the center of my life”
Faith is the dialogue between two lovers.
Therefore, a believer, from this point of view, is nothing more than a man who has fallen in love with God, because he met a God who had previously fallen in love with him.
Logically, faith has a series of consequences: if I have fallen in love with God, then I believe in God, I put my trust in the Lord; if I have fallen in love with God, I have to be faithful to him and at all times I really try to do his will; if I have fallen in love with God, I focus on God, God becomes the value, the reality, the most important person in my life.
We understand then, from this dimension, what a believer is. A believer is Pablo: he is a man who has met God, with this vision of falling in love, of fidelity, of trust, of center, and then he has only one urgency: to communicate what he carries inside to others and for that then faith is essentially missionary.
The sentence
If faith is a loving dialogue between God and man, what is prayer?
Normally, we have defined prayer as a loving dialogue between God and man. By this definition, we find that faith and prayer are the same.
It is not that I am a believer and then I am a praying person. No. It is that to be a believer is to find oneself already in a trance of prayer.
That is why we say, and we hear it said, and it is true, that the whole of life has to be prayer.
Not at this moment or the next: the whole of life has to be a dialogue with God; it has to be a situation of falling in love with God.
So what is the difference between faith and prayer?
We could define faith as an existential loving dialogue between God and man.
Faith, as an existential dialogue, would come to be like the life of a lover is oriented towards him, even if he is not thought of; Instinctively in life, you proceed as the other person likes, without thinking about it.
Thus, faith, as an existential dialogue in which my life is oriented towards God, needs, as happens in a marriage, not only that lives are existentially oriented. It goes without saying. In life it is very important to express what one carries inside.
In life, it is normal to seek solitude to communicate.
God’s word
Pursuing goal: “make our faith grow”, make it more vital, efficient and true.
It has the claim – bold and beautiful at the same time – of putting man in relationship with God.
There is only faith when this relationship is entered into, or when this relationship is strengthened. Which is not achieved by the fact of communicating some statements, although these are really understood and even accepted as true.
What is nuclear in faith is the vital relationship; the bridge or real contact between God and us.
Pretending that the Word of God be made present to man or to a specific group… always depends on a free communication from God. It is grace.
To say “Word of God” is to allude to a message, a content, an announcement that reveals a perspective and a horizon for man.
It is “what is said” in the Word; emphasizing what is said.
But supporting this content is something, without a doubt, existentially shocking, which is the mysterious and ineffable presence, but real, of God himself who approaches as gift and presence.
This is the great thing, that it be the “Word of God”, that it encloses its breath and closeness; it is not a dead saying, but a real communication.
The two aspects – content and presence – are inseparable; The great news is that God gives himself to us, communicates with us, speaks to us, that his Word reaches us. This is great content.
The Second Vatican Council summarizes the fullness of the revelation made in Christ: “that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death and to raise us to eternal life” (DV4).
It is necessary to be alert not to fall into the temptation of “reifying” the Word of God and reducing it to simple intelligible statements or bare historical facts; when this is done, what is most vital is destroyed, it is forgotten to consider them precisely as belonging to God, as mediations of his real and gratuitous communion with us. We are in danger of falling into the temptation of objectifying the Word of God, as we have often done with “grace” and the “sacraments”; It would be to betray the most characteristic of the Word: to be a vehicle of interpersonal communication.
To speak of the Word of God is to refer to a “real and effective communication” between God and the people; between God and the believer.
God speaks to communicate his plan of salvation to us; his passion for man.
The Word of God is a revealing Word of his will of salvation. God wants man to live.
God always speaks for our good, for the full realization of our history.
God’s passion is for man to live; that he reaches the stature that He has marked in Christ and that he responds to the vocation that each one of us discovers in the depths of himself.
Word of God is equal to force capable of giving life; when God speaks it is to communicate life.
The Word of God must really sound like Good News for man and for the concrete situation, to be discovered as a way, truth and life. If this does not happen, it is that the Word of God is not really reaching us.
When God speaks, it is to open new horizons for man; but this invitation and offer is never just for one that is for everyone.
Accepting the Word of God is not simply fulfilling oneself, reaching the fullness of oneself, but rather communion with the salvific plan of God that embraces all of humanity.
We find the two characteristic dimensions of the word – presence and message – in the man Jesus to a unique and insurmountable degree: in him, God has come close to us, he has penetrated to the depths of the human condition; he has become one of us. He is Emmanuel, God with us.
At the same time, He is the message, not “because he says things”, but because with his living, his presence, his actions, gestures and words he has shown us what it is to be a man, what it is to be free; what does it mean to believe, love, hope… In Him we see how far man can go; how God loves him and even…