Encouraging today's disciples

Encourage them to continue in the faith

There was a training session held this past week for people in our parishes who will be involved in various ways with the parish program which we are calling Arise together in Christ!  One of the hopes that we have for the Arise! program is that it will provide an opportunity for people in our diocese to rekindle their understanding and enthusiasm for our faith.  As I came away from that meeting this week, I began to think about the examples of faith that we already have in the commitment of those who are so actively involved in this parish.

Every day since my arrival (a few months ago now), I have given thanks to God for the gift of faith that I've encountered: in the adults who bring their newborns to this parish and ask us to celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism with them, in the adults who have journeyed with us in preparation for their own celebrations of the Sacraments of Initiation, in the children who are preparing for the Sacraments of First Eucharist and Confirmation, in the couples who are preparing to celebrate the Sacrament of Matrimony with us this summer … and in those who provide examples of faith for us even though they are confined by illness and infirmity.  Each of us helps the others in this community to witness faith in action, and each of us provides the witness of our own faith so that others who see what we do might come to know and to love the Risen Lord.

We live by the light of faith because Jesus provided an example of living by this light to his disciples.  The gospel tells us that he loved his disciples and I can imagine that those who knew the tender love of Jesus’ heart were fortunate indeed.  In fact, when the time came for him to depart from this world, he knew that his disciples would not find it easy to face such trial.  That’s why he first modeled for them the power of love.  Only after he had shown them how to love did he ask them to accept the new commandment: that you love one another just as I have loved you.  Throughout the centuries that have come and gone since then, Jesus continues to invite his disciples (that’s you and me) to love one another just has he has loved us.  Because we have encountered his love, we can teach our children how to love.  By the example of love that we show in our actions and our words, children learn the power of love, and they too learn how to live in the light of Jesus’ love.

Not only children, but neophytes too (the adults who have been recently baptised and confirmed) learn the power of Christ’s love through the example of love they witness in and through us.  In fact it was precisely through the witness of love that Saint Paul was able to embrace the invitation that Jesus gave to him -  to become a man of deep faith.  Together with Barnabas, another of Jesus’ disciples, Paul traveled to Lystra, Iconium, Antioch, Pisidia, Pamphylia, Perga, and Attilia – to all the corners of the known world in order to tell others about Jesus, the Son of God, about the kingdom he had proclaimed, about the fact that he suffered, died and rose again, all because of the infinite love that God has for us.  Paul and Barnabas also challenged the residents of those many cities to live as people of faith and conviction, as people who believe these truths not only because they have heard them, but because they themselves have experienced God's love, God's forgiveness and the sweet presence of the Risen Christ.

Like Paul and Barnabas, each of us is being invited to encourage our children, our friends, our relatives, our colleagues and our contemporaries to come to believe these truths, and to continue in the faith, sharing the good news of our faith with others.  Along the way, we come to the table of the Lord to partake in the gift of his special food.  This special food is a foretaste of heaven.  It helps us to strengthen our faith, and to grow each day in our belief that God wants to make his home among us.  In fact the truth is that when our journey on this earth comes to an end, we will indeed dwell with the Risen Christ in heaven.  The dream of our God has always been that we should discover the fullness of life, love and joy in His presence.  That’s why John’s vision of heaven is described as a place where God will wipe every tear from our eyes, where death will be no more, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more, and where all things will be made new.

During this Year of Faith, we are all being encouraged to renew our understanding of the gift of faith and the promise of life that has been entrusted to us on the day of our baptism.  With the gift of the Eucharist to strengthen us, and the oil of Chrism to seal the promise of faith, let us all go out to the world around us, proclaiming the joy and promise of our faith with enthusiasm.  Let us dare to share this gift of faith with others, and encourage them all to come to believe.