The Gift of Faith

When speaking of faith, a passage from the Gospel of Matthew always comes to my mind.  When at Caesarea Philippi Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” to which the apostle Peter responded, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  Jesus’ response reveals the nature of faith: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”

Peter’s profession of faith which recognizes Jesus as the Son of the Living God is not a conclusion based on observation and reason, but rather it is a revelation from God himself.  Faith is a gift.  Flesh and bone, reason alone, cannot reveal Christ’s divinity to Peter, only God can do it through the gift of faith.  If faith depended solely on the conclusion of rational argument, it would no longer be faith.  Faith is a gift that cannot be gained as one gains knowledge from a chemical equation or mathematical proof.

When Jesus walked on earth two thousand years ago many people saw him and heard him preach, yet not everyone recognized him as the fullness of God’s revelation.  For example, when Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well as recorded in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”  Recognition of Jesus’ divinity is not obvious nor immediate, but rather requires the gift of faith.  If it were otherwise, every single person in Judea would have fallen prostrate at his feet recognizing him as God immediately.

Reason alone cannot give faith because faith comes directly from God, but this does not mean that faith is irrational.  Arguments from reason for the existence of God give direction, but these alone cannot give faith.  Faith goes beyond reason without doing violence to it or requiring its negation.  On Easter Sunday 2009, I heard the Reverend Ignatius Harrison, past Provost of the Brompton Oratory of London preach, “Facts by themselves are not always enough, though always indispensable.  The facts down on paper do not always convince.  The disinhinging [sic] of the facts is a supernatural process; they have to be ratified by the gift of faith.”  

The study of facts and critical use of reason is needed to increase our faith, yet what is needed above all is fervent prayer asking God to increase in us the gift of faith.  May our faith grow deeper and be strengthened by the grace of God like the many who encountered Christ and gently came to recognize Him as the Son of the Living God.