Faith and Action
During this season of Lent, I think one of the images that comes up frequently is a desert. We perhaps think about Jesus fasting for 40 days in the desert or about the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt before they were freed. As these images come to mind I can’t help but think what it would have been like to live in the Ancient Near East. Just think for a second of our ancestors in faith who lived in various desert regions and had to live off the land to survive. Furthermore, they had to travel in groups very slowly if they were ever to relocate. As is said in Lord of the Rings, “It’s a dangerous business stepping out your door.”
This is where we find Abram in today’s First Reading. He is asked by God to leave everything he knows and go to a land. Notice there is no destination given, just that he should wander without knowing where he is going and that God will guide him. Of course, we know now that they were headed for the Promised Land, but they didn’t know that then. There is a reason that the Catechism says, “Abraham thus fulfills the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1: ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’: ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ Because he was ‘strong in his faith’, Abraham became the ‘father of all who believe’.” (CCC 146)
It’s even more impressive that during this time polytheism was rampant. The idea of having faith in one God was very foreign to the people of the Ancient Near East. And here we have Abraham not only believing in the Hebrew God, but putting all of his faith in him. This trip could have easily been a death march for his family if God was not with them every step of the way.
Fast forward to today and the question I think we all should ask is, do we have faith like Abraham? Faith is described in the Catechism as a supernatural virtue so the good news is that we don’t need to try with all our might to muster up faith. God freely gives it to us. We just need to ask. The more we ask, the more we receive grace from the Church and the Sacraments, the more we pray and talk with God, the stronger our faith becomes.
What big things is God asking of you? He has a plan for each of us and his plans are great. We simply need to step out in faith, or as the First Reading puts it we can become more like Abraham and go just as the Lord directed. No plans, no map, no vision of the future, just hope and trust in God who is love.
— Tommy Shultz
Reflection provided by diocesan.com. Reprinted with permission.