Faith Is...

About a month ago, I purchased Magnificat's Year of Faith Companion. The Year of Faith, as named by Pope Benedict XVI, began on October 11th, and I have been diligently reading the short reflections (about 1 page in length) each morning before heading to school. The reflections range from poems to catechism to prayer.

Today's reflection was "A Litany of Faith" (based on the writings of Pope Benedict), and it really defined faith in a more clear and rather new light for me. I wanted to share a few of the lines here with you:

"In faith, something meets us that is greater than anything we can think up for ourselves*...
Faith is reaching that point in which we recognize we need to be given something*...
Faith means opening our hand in trust and accepting a gift*...
Faith entails the shift from dependence on the visible and practicable to trust in the invisible*...
Faith expands our hearts in hope and enables us to bear life-giving witness*..."

(*The response after each line is "Lord, increase my faith.")

And I just meditated on the lines of this litany - pretty powerful stuff, eh?

Let us continue to pray that God increase our faith and that we remember these descriptions and explanations of what faith should be for each of us.

Amen.


P.S. - On a completely unrelated note (because I didn't want to leave you hanging), here's an update on the pumpkin cake - the "proof of the cake" was definitely in the eating - I personally enjoyed it, and many other faculty members shared how much they liked it as well.