Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. (James 2:18)

Life of faith

For me faith is the joyful response to the experience of having been found by someone who considers me worthy of being loved. Any man or woman who is or has been in love knows that this experience has changed their existence in every way.

From that loving encounter, a joyful force in our hearts gave us the courage and daring to do things that before would have seemed out of our reach. Without any palpable certainty, we put to work the best of what we had in those moments in order to achieve that which others considered unattainable ideals.

A life filled with love is a life of faith; believing moves us to create. The Person who went out to meet us has made us realize our value, he has given us a new dignity, which has created change in our minds, bodies and hearts. Those who are in love accomplish feats admired by all.

God has gone out to meet those men and women the believers call saints. That loving experience has made them capable of actions, which were considered insurmountable by others. To them, they became the joyous result of that loving encounter, of that leap of faith.

The Greek word martyr means witness. Pope Paul VI used to say, “In today’s world, more than teachers, we need witnesses.” Pope Francis persistently invites us to listen to the cries of our brothers and sisters. He calls us to become so closely involved with each person who seeks Jesus that we suffer and rejoice with them. That we may be martyrs — witnesses of the joys and sorrows, of the search for and the struggle of those who wish to be disciples — missionaries of the love of Jesus Christ in our world.

To be a witness, to be a martyr, is a responsibility and honor that seems to be beyond our reach unless it is a result of our being in love. St. Paul says, “The love of God compels us.” (2 Corinthians 5:14) We could paraphrase this by saying that the love of God pushes us, impels us beyond what we desire. That love disrupts our established style of life and the lives of those around us. Love expands our hearts, it expands the person and multiplies him, it makes him transform himself into one of us.

Living faith

Faith, as a loving encounter with God, moves us to spend time with the person we love. Dialogues with the beloved are intimate conversations, which fill those who are in love with happiness and joy. For the believer, those conversations take place in prayer. In that intimacy, greater knowledge of the beloved is obtained. There we discover what God loves, his preferences, his worries, his sorrows, what is pleasing to him, etc. In that intimacy we discover our capacity to create change in our lives for the sheer pleasure of giving joy to him whom we love and who loves us.

God has loved us to the extreme of becoming one of us in Jesus, so that divine love could become tangible in our humanity. By living in us, he allowed us to know what pleases and displeases him, what he desires to achieve in each of us and what he wants to prevent in our lives. His love pushes us to imitate him. His body and his blood, which we receive in the Eucharist, make us capable of following him. His passion for justice becomes our passion. His urgency to promote universal humanity becomes part of our urgency of life. His rejection of violence, hate or racial divisions takes root in our heart and makes us beat in tune with his sentiments.

Faith is not an idea, it is a relationship. Faith is an encounter that transforms our existence. That loving encounter creates a fervent desire to beautify our own life in order to offer it as a gift to the beloved. The personal joy of that encounter becomes manifest in our life and relationships with others. Faith in the beloved makes us create a new personal style of life. It makes us invent new forms of forgiveness, of solidarity, of healing. Those joyful relationships are our best service, our best apostolate, they are what transform us into authentic missionaries of joy, into authentic martyrs — witnesses in any situation of our lives.

Mary’s faith created the history of salvation for all humanity. Let us strive each day to have a faith like hers.

"Creer es … crear" that appeared in the January/February 2016 issue of NORTHWEST CATHOLIC.