The Danger of Faith and the Pathway to Victory

By Kathleen McCarty

What would you do if Jesus told you that he was amazed by your faith?

The Gospels are filled with accounts of the Lord wondering at the faith of certain people who encounter him: the centurion in Capernaum, the paralytic, the woman with the hemorrhage, the Canaanite woman. Perhaps even more surprising than the miracles themselves is the fact that Jesus is amazed by faith. Since he is God, he knows everything and sees inside the secrets of the heart. Yet it is striking that he wonders at faith.

The act of faith is a mystery and certainly beyond the scope of this article to explore deeply. The Catechism defines faith as “the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1814). A couple key points stand out here. First, faith is supernatural—above our human nature. Faith is a grace from God that precedes any response of faith on our part. Second, faith and reason are not opposed. Faith allows our reason to know truths that are not unreasonable but simply beyond the capacities of our reason alone.

The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, “Dei Verbum,” contains some beautiful reflections on the nature of faith, describing the ways in which faith is the work of God as well as our response to his grace:

“The obedience of faith is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals, and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him. To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it. To bring about an ever deeper understanding of revelation the same Holy Spirit constantly brings faith to completion by His gifts” (5).

Thus, faith is total. It allows us to entrust our very being to the Lord and the ways he wants to work in and through us. While faith remains fundamentally a gift of God, we remain free to receive or to reject this gift. Each day, we are faced with hundreds of decisions. Each moment represents an opportunity to make a choice for or against God — a choice to believe or not. Scripture tells us that faith is the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). There is a certainty to faith that keeps us coming back despite fears and doubts — a certainty that God is who he says he is, that he is faithful, and that what he has told us is true. There is a certainty that the promise will be fulfilled.

The ancient Eucharistic hymn, “Adoro Te Devote,” written by St. Thomas Aquinas, describes faith magnificently:

What God’s son has told me, take for truth I do,

Truth himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.

In other words, we don’t get to decide for ourselves what’s true and what’s not. Only God is the source of truth. Jesus tells us in John 6 that we do not have life within us unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood.  If Truth himself has told us these things, what are the consequences of questioning that? What does life look like if “there’s nothing true”?

The life of faith is not easy, but it is necessary if we desire to live in the truth. The paradox of faith is that there is a constant tension between certainty and uncertainty. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” in the words of St. Paul (2 Cor 5:7). Faith is a both/and: both “now” and “not yet.” In the “now,” Jesus is truly in our midst, though in a hidden way. In the “not yet,” the fulfillment of our hope is still to come. Quoting St. Paul again, we currently “see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor 3:12). On an experiential level, uncertainty is a given. Yet the present life will lead to future glory if we are able to remain faithful. Hope and trust allow us to live in the tension between these two seemingly opposed realities of certainty and uncertainty.

If we are honest with ourselves, this tension will always exist. But if we embrace faith despite that tension, we become free. This freedom of faith enables us to be daring — to be a little reckless, if you will. If we “take for truth” what God’s Son has told us, we really have everything to gain and nothing to lose. When people have nothing to lose, they become the most dangerous.

And that is precisely the point.

This “dangerous” side of faith unlocks our potential for mission. C.S. Lewis describes this perfectly in Mere Christianity: “Enemy-occupied territory — that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed—you might say landed in disguise as one of us—and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” God wants us to be daring and to work with him in reclaiming his world from the power of evil.

Recently I came across a striking observation in a newsletter from Echelon Front, a leadership organization run by former Navy SEALs, describing the value of belief and how it leads to success: “What does it mean to believe? Belief means you can see the actual pathway to victory . . . Your belief in the mission inspires others, gives them confidence in the plan, and creates a sense of purpose.”

Do we “see the actual pathway to victory”? 

Faith allows us to share a profoundly different vision than what the world has to offer. Because it is also a true vision, we can be confident in sharing this truth with others. I’ve been struck recently by how many people I see around who carry a certain deadness about them. It seems that there are indeed very many distractions, very numerous troubles, and very little joy — but is that the kind of life anyone really desires? What would it look like to wake the dead?

Jesus came to do just that – and he continues that work in and through us. Our mission flows from our faith and hope in the ultimate victory of Christ. I would argue that we can afford to take some risks.

Your faith isn’t just for you. So many people live in the darkness without faith and without hope. Ask Jesus in the Eucharist to increase the light of your faith. Ask him to send just one person into your life who needs to encounter him through you. We already know the objective: to go and make disciples.

As we embark on this missionary year of Eucharistic Revival, let’s dare to be “dangerous.”

(Kathleen McCarty is executive assistant to the Chief of Staff for the Diocese of Colorado Springs.)