What Is Faith?

Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Father. Amen.

What is faith? What is the purpose of believing? An awful lot of talk happens in Christian circles about faith – growing in faith, the power of faith, faith moving mountains, and so on. But why? What is the big deal about faith?

 

Is faith an intellectual assent to a set of propositions? “Strong belief” or “complete trust”, as some dictionaries define it? Or perhaps faith is an emotional connection to something? Many religious sorts would posit that faith is defined by a burning in the bosom, some sort of internal and immediate flush of feeling and conviction that serves some sort of devotional purpose. To such as this, faith is not about intellectual matters so much as a matter of the heart simply hearing the call of God and experiencing the nearness of Christ, or some such business.

He Was Made Known to Them

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

As the two disciples walked along the road from Emmaus, they discussed between themselves the events that had happened in Jerusalem in the past few days. They had seen and heard of all the things that Jesus had said and done, and yet they did not understand what had happened, and why it had happened. Furthermore, Luke has not recorded a sighting of Jesus yet, so these two had reason to be perplexed and despairing.

The two disciples walked along the road, discussing all these things, when Jesus came up alongside them and asked what they were debating. They were amazed that He did not know what had happened, because the whole of Jerusalem was atwitter with the news. Luke records that their eyes were held back from recognizing Jesus, so they must have marveled at His supposed ignorance.