Wednesday.blog
The Catholic Calendar for Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
St. Josaphat, bishop, martyr
Scripture from today's Liturgy of the Word:
Wisdom 6:1-11
Psalm 82:3-4,6-7
Luke 17:11-19
A reflection on today's Sacred Scripture:
Stand Up and Go. Your Faith Has Saved You.
This is another of the very interesting sayings of Jesus. 'Your faith has saved you.' Were we then saved by faith alone? Does our belief bring us into the Kingdom?
Well, yes and no. We do nothing alone, we only believe because God gives us the strength to believe and supports us constantly with grace. That is the first point.
Secondly, it is the object of faith that saves us, not merely the belief. If we were to believe that Superman would descend from the skies and protect us with his x-ray visions, we probably would be disappointed. If we believed that a massive governmental program was going to come in and alleviate whatever we viewed as the problem, we'd probably do better to count on Superman. It isn't merely faith, but faith in the right thing, or in this case, the right person. Faith in anything else is not salvific and it can be downright dangerous.
So, we shouldn't hang our hats on faith alone. It is Jesus Christ, and faith in Him supported constantly by grace and by the sacraments (which confer grace) that can be our hope of heaven and our joy on Earth.
- JuandelaCruz (sriddle415 at yahoo dot com)
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