WHAT DOES MY FAITH MEAN TO ME?
Those who know me, will tell you, I am not one to speak of my faith.
Faith to me is essentially life. In our world today, particularly in my peer group, faith I think can be seen as an optional extra, even something that you don’t need at all or something you need all the time. (depends on who you speak to). It is far more than that. It is what I was created for. We were created by God for Love and to Love. That takes a life time. A relationship with a true and living God, Jesus Christ. Faith can’t be segmented into a section of our lives. It isn’t just an important part of life, it covers all parts of life.
My faith makes the rest of the world make sense. It reconciles personal sufferings with happiness. It gives me a joy and optimism that many I know without faith don’t have. My identity and a way of life, that is often hard, is still joyful and in many ways, logical. The ‘rules’ of the church that many don’t understand, actually make sense of the confusing modern world and are a natural law that keep me healthy and happy. Don’t get me wrong, its not always easy. There are many ups and downs, desolation and consolations. Its hard standing out in the way that we live trying to be faithful. It comes with persecutions. Yet also, it helps with persecutions.
l love what Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said:
“For the life they would have to live, seculars would not be able to do it. For a work of continual self-forgetfulness and immolation for others, you need interior souls—burning with love for God and souls. Pure souls who would see and seek God in the poor.—Free souls—who would be able to sacrifice everything just for this one thing only, to bring a soul to God.—The work will need much deep, fervent prayers and much penance—and all these people of an association will not be able to bring to the work, and the work will not fulfill its aim—“to bring souls to God, and God to souls.”
Faith helps us change the world. Not that we can’t change the world without it, but as Blessed Teresa said, it is very hard.
And in a way that is indescribable, faith (my God) moves me even when I don’t feel it. It brings joys that cannot be described. And that makes it all worth it.
What does faith mean to you?
Disclaimer:
To thosee who know me and know my story, will understand why I said, that faith for me is essentially life- Even though, it may not give me the purpose it gives others, it gave me hope when I needed it the most.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.... 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
