What is faith exactly

[billcu1]

I hope this is in the right forum. When we are baptised or given absolution we are given the theological virtues. What exactly is faith? And charity? I have heard and I believe experienced the “attack” right after your absolution. The temptations of our blindness and so on. What is happening to you when going to mass and your faith “grows”.

Bill

 

[LEMAITRE]

Hi BILLcu

Faith should evolve, grow and strengthen over time. It is the individuals responsibility to do so, the Church provides the tools for this and it is our personal responsibility to participate in Church life and liturgy.

Treat your spiritual body the same way you do your physical body. With respect. Feed both.

• I eat healthy foods to keep a healthy body.
  I partake in the Sacraments and Church life to keep a healthy spiritual body.
• I participate in physical exercise regularly to keep my body fit as a preventative medicine tool so that it strays strong, heal quicker and fight disease should it occur.
• I exercise my spiritual life with retreats, researching/reading of the faith, fasting, prayer etc

I view the Saints as World Champions in Spirituality. They train hard and stay focussed on the goal. They take all the elements of spiritual life and practice it daily, with discipline and with such clarity and precision that they are spiritually elevated to be on the Cross with Christ. They happily strap their cross on every day with no whinging and whining. Some of us strap the cross on grudgingly and complain about the restrictions placed on us. Some of us leave the cross in the closet only take it out on special occasions such as Weddings or Baptisms and many of us leave the cross in the garage gathering dust and only think about it in a crisis.

Is the Buddhist equivalent Enlightenment? That is where we should all aspire to be.

 

[Kathryn_Ann]

I hope this is in the right forum. When we are baptised or given absolution we are given the theological virtues. What exactly is faith? And charity? I have heard and I believe experienced the “attack” right after your absolution. The temptations of our blindness and so on. What is happening to you when going to mass and your faith “grows”.

Bill

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”

Here is a Catholic explanation you might appreciate.
catholicbook.com/AgredaCD/MyCatholicFaith/mcfc041.htm
Best wishes

 

[Aelred_Minor]

The theological virtue of faith is means “divine faith”, the gift by which we supernaturally believe in God, in all that God has said, and in all that the Catholic Church proposes for our belief.

[Note that certain knowledge of God is theoretically possible even without divine faith, through natural reason alone. Though the question of how in practice we can accept the conclusions of reason with certainty without divine faith is difficult. Pope John Paul II’s statement that faith frees reason from presumption may be relevant here.]

 

[jpjd]

Faith is our response to God’s revelation of Himself to us. We adhere our will to God’s will. When our faith grows, it means we believe ever more strongly in, and follow in, all that has been revealed to us through Christ and His Church.

 

[billcu1]

Hi BILLcu

Faith should evolve, grow and strengthen over time. It is the individuals responsibility to do so, the Church provides the tools for this and it is our personal responsibility to participate in Church life and liturgy.

Treat your spiritual body the same way you do your physical body. With respect. Feed both.

• I eat healthy foods to keep a healthy body.
  I partake in the Sacraments and Church life to keep a healthy spiritual body.
• I participate in physical exercise regularly to keep my body fit as a preventative medicine tool so that it strays strong, heal quicker and fight disease should it occur.
• I exercise my spiritual life with retreats, researching/reading of the faith, fasting, prayer etc

I view the Saints as World Champions in Spirituality. They train hard and stay focussed on the goal. They take all the elements of spiritual life and practice it daily, with discipline and with such clarity and precision that they are spiritually elevated to be on the Cross with Christ. They happily strap their cross on every day with no whinging and whining. Some of us strap the cross on grudgingly and complain about the restrictions placed on us. Some of us leave the cross in the closet only take it out on special occasions such as Weddings or Baptisms and many of us leave the cross in the garage gathering dust and only think about it in a crisis.

Is the Buddhist equivalent Enlightenment? That is where we should all aspire to be.

You are right about the saints. Are they enlightened as in buddhism. Hardly. We are working more on what would be called “karma yoga” or trying to get close to god by doing the right thing. Yoga means to link to god. Mass in yoga. Absolution is yoga. We are doing as we should as average people who need a savior to take us to a “pure land” or heaven

Bill