Renewal of our Faith

Among all of the tal­ents and abil­i­ties that God has given us, faith is the most pre­cious, because faith gives us the proper out­look to under­stand God and our rela­tion­ship with Him. Faith reveals to us the very pur­pose of our lives; it encour­ages us dur­ing tribu­la­tions and glad­dens our heart; it moves our prayer and grants us access to the mercy of God.

Sadly, in the mod­ern world, it is dif­fi­cult to have this kind of faith. Our life of com­fort and con­ve­nience weak­ens our faith, the end result being we lose sight of God and His mercy. The more we are faith­less, the more our inner life suf­fers from dis­or­der: we lose pur­pose in our thoughts and actions, we find our­selves with­out strength, and we enter into a state of depres­sion and empti­ness. These feel­ings, of course, impact not only our rela­tion­ship with God, but also our rela­tion­ship with oth­ers. A per­son feel­ing this way becomes irri­ta­ble and dis­sat­is­fied with every­thing around him; he loses the abil­ity to give thanks. No mat­ter how intel­li­gent a per­son may be, he reverts to a sav­age with­out faith.

In order to escape such a fate, which St. Paul calls a “ship­wreck” (ναυαγέω; 1 Tim. 1:19), we must seri­ously embrace the renewal of our souls, for our souls, like our bod­ies, require con­stant exer­cise in order to func­tion prop­erly. We know, for exam­ple, that, to pre­serve a sharp mind, one must con­stantly read, think, med­i­tate and study; to pre­serve nim­ble fin­gers, one must con­stantly flex and use them; and so on. In the same way, our souls require con­stant noetic exer­cise to main­tain them.

How, then, can we renew our souls? There is no sin­gle easy answer that will match the con­ve­nience of the mod­ern world in which a per­son can gain his heart’s desire with the click of a but­ton. The hard (but true) answer is that we must live spir­i­tu­ally. This means we must reg­u­larly read the Holy Scrip­tures, med­i­tate on God and the pur­pose of our life, fast and pray. We must sin­cerely repent of our sins, con­fess before a priest, and par­take of the Mys­tery on a reg­u­lar basis. In addi­tion, we must try not to live for our­selves, but instead, ded­i­cate our lives to God and our neigh­bors. Of course, doing all of this is not easy in itself, but the task is made even more dif­fi­cult by the real­ity that, when we begin all of these things, Satan and his legions of demons will fight even the more. Any­one try­ing to lead a Chris­t­ian life can­not avoid bat­tles, tri­als, and tribu­la­tions. At times, it may seem that the whole world is armed against us. While dif­fi­cult, it is these times that help us grow spir­i­tu­ally and become bet­ter Chris­tians. These things, after all, help strengthen our faith. As St. Cyprian of Carthage said in his Exhor­ta­tion to Mar­tyr­dom,

We must press on and per­se­vere in faith and virtue and in com­ple­tion of heav­enly and spir­i­tual grace, that we may attain to the palm and the crown. In the book of Chron­i­cles [we read], “The Lord is with you so long as you also are with him; but if you for­sake him, he will for­sake you” (2 Chr. 15:2).

In work­ing towards the renewal of our souls and the strength­en­ing of our faith, let us remem­ber that faith is a gift and one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Let us, there­fore, ask God for faith as our Lord Jesus Christ com­manded, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matt 7:7). As faith grows, it will bring with it peace of mind, joy, and a fore­taste of vic­tory over evil, as St. John wrote, “And this is the vic­tory that has over­come the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4).

Related Posts:

1. The Joy­ous Fifty Days as a Cel­e­bra­tion of Faith
2. An Image of Faith from Imbaba
3. GYP Con­ven­tion — Defend­ing the Faith with­out Offend­ing It (Oct. 7–10)