Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Richard G. Pazcoguin
FAITH “Believing in God.”
Faith is from the heart __ the loving, trusting, and hoping in the Lord that
comes from God’s own love flooding our hearts. This trusting Faith “lives
and grows through prayer and worship” __ personal heartfelt conversation
with God that is the opposite of mindless, mechanical repetition of
memorized formulas. Genuine personal prayer and group prayer find both
their inspirational source and summit of perfection in the Liturgy, the
Catholic community’s official public Trinitarian worship of the Father,
through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the Holy Spirit (cf. PCP II 74-77).
•certain enough to die for, yet a “mystery” because
like love, there is always more to understand;
•a free personal response to God, yet morally
binding in conscience;
•reasonable, yet beyond our natural ways of
knowing;
•an individual act of our graced reason, yet also a
life-long process;
•a gift of God through both Revelation and interior
inspiration, yet something we do nobody can
“believe” for us;
•a personal individual response, yet only possible as
a member of the Christian community, the
Church.
Faith in Jesus Christ:
• helps us to grow into adult persons who can
relate to others responsibly and maturely;
• liberates us from being enslaved by sin; and
• opens us to deep joy and happiness in the
Lord.
CHAPTER 3
OUR RESPONSE: WE BELIEVE