Epistle: Romans 15:1-7

Gospel: Matthew 9:27-35 

And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. (Matthew 9:35)

The Essence of Faith

The first-created man lived, like the angels, by beholding God; his descendants, after the Fall, lived by faith in God. Those to whom the beholding was closed and faith no opened could not be counted among the living, having no contact with Life; by what, then, could they live?

One lake, open to the sky, receives water from on high; it is filled and does not dry up. Another lake, closed to the sky, receives water through the earth, from mountain springs; it is filled, and does not dry up. But a third lake, closed to the sky and cut off from all underground streams, cannot but become empty and dried up.

Can a lake without water be called a lake? No; it is rather a dried-out crater. Can a man without God within him be called a man? No; he is rather a dried-out grave. As water is a lake’s main component, so God is of man. A lake without water is not a lake, and a man without God is not a man. How will a man have God in himself if he is closed off from God on all sides like a dried-out lake from water, like a dark grave from the light?

God is not like a stone that is once cast into a man, and there remains with no reference to the man’s will. God is a power, finer and stronger than light and air; a power that fills a man or leaves him in response to the man’s free will and God’s limitless goodness. So, from one day to another, a man is not filled by God in equal measure. This depends, more than anything else, on a man’s openness to God. Were a man’s soul to be fully open only towards God (and this means being, at the same time, closed to the world), then that man would return to the primal delight of gazing upon God. But it is very difficult to attain to this in the mortal milieu in which man’s soul finds itself, in which there is only one opening by which man can come into contact with God as the Source of life, and that is faith.

Faith means, firstly, the memory of that lost primal gazing upon God: a memory that has remained engraved in the conscience and understanding; secondly, the accepting of what God has revealed through His discerning prophets and saints, who were made worthy to behold the Truth; and thirdly and most importantly: the acknowledging of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, as the visible image of the invisible God (2 Cor 4:4). This third meaning is sufficient in itself; it contains and fulfils to perfection both the first two. It is the faith that vivifies and saves. It is the greatest opening through which God comes into a man according to the measure of his desire and goodwill.

This is why the Lord often asked the sick and suffering: “Do you believe?” “Believest thou that I am able to do this?” Are you opening the door, to let Me in? A man’s faith is nothing other than his opening the door of his soul and allowing God to enter in. “O God, empty me of self, and make Thine abode in me!” These words express the essence of faith.