God as Witness
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God as the Witness
We’ve said that, in Faith, God must be the witness our belief is based on. After all, God’s the only one with first-hand knowledge of the Trinity, or the Incarnation, or His program of Salvation, or the supernatural design of the Church. No mere human being has direct access to that kind of information.
That means that, in the act of faith, it only ultimately makes sense to believe that these things are true, not because some priest told you, or some parent told you, or some book told you – but because God told you.
But when did that happen? When did God offer you this gift of faith?
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When did God speak to You?
Of course, the moment in which God offers the gift of faith is very different for different people.
Maybe you received the gift of faith as a radical and unexpected conversion moment when your life hit rock bottom like the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well. Or maybe you went on a long intellectual journey trying to discover the ultimate truth, the way St. Augustine did, only to find Jesus as that final answer. Or maybe you were just born into a good, faithful Catholic family, like St. Therese of Lisieux, and you gradually made your own that faith you received as an infant.
But the important thing in all these cases is that even though other people are involved in transmitting the faith, it’s not on their authority that one believes. It’s because of a relationship with God in which you become convinced that He is trustworthy, and that what He says through Jesus, through the Scriptures and through the Church is the truth.
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How Faith is Transmitted
In the transmission of faith, then, there are two witnesses: the Divine witness (God) and the human witness (the parent or friend or teacher who inspired you.)
The human witness, the human believer, does present the Gospel message, but their job is also to facilitate an encounter with the Divine Witness.
In other words, if you’re trying to spread the faith, it’s not enough to give people the message. You also have to help them encounter God because only by that encounter will people see that this message is based on an infinitely reliable Witness, God himself.
And once people encounter God, then they are given the assurance they need to accept the message, to say, “Yes, this is true.”
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The Example of Philip and the Samaritan Woman
Two great examples of spreading the faith in the Gospel are Philip and the Samaritan Woman.
Philip goes to Nathaniel, tells him about Jesus, and then tells him to “come and see.” Nathaniel is skeptical until he meets Jesus, but once he encounters this Divine Witness, he believes.
The Samaritan woman goes to her village, tells them about Jesus, and gets them to go see Him. The villagers then go to encounter the Divine Witness, then they say to the Samaritan woman, “We no longer believe because of your testimony, but because we have seen and heard for ourselves.”
Notice how the human witness is necessary, but not sufficient for faith to take root in people’s hearts. Only an encounter with God can give people the gift of faith. We do have to evangelize. We have to spread the message, but it won’t take root in peoples’ hearts unless we help bring them to a prayerful engagement with the Lord because faith cannot be built on a merely human foundation; it must be built on God.
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How to Spread the Faith
Faith demands a relationship with God. That means that if we aren’t praying, if we aren’t spending time with the Lord every day, our faith will grow progressively weaker. We will lose our trust in the Witness if we don’t know Him, and we will begin to doubt His revelation.
By the same token, if we just “catechize” our kids, or if we just “evangelize” our neighbors, and we don’t emphasize the importance of regular prayer, well, it’s asking people to trust and believe someone they don’t know.
God knows other people’s faith can’t be based on our virtue, intelligence, or our good example! What an unstable foundation that would be!
If we want people to have a deep faith, a faith that will survive, we don’t want them to believe because we say so, but because God says so. And that can only happen if they hear it from Him.
So bring them to Him. Help them begin to Pray.
This is the amazing thing about prayer.
Prayer is just a conversation with God. Any person can turn and speak with God. The worst sinner or the greatest saint; a life-long Catholic or an Atheist; someone who prays daily or one who has lived long and never ever prayed.
God is always there. He listens, He cares, and He always answers in some way. Our responsibility is to invite them to pray and explain how to pray.
Every person can begin by just speaking to God from the heart, frankly and with human emotions but a conversation is a two-way street. God also wants to speak with us.
God speaks when we read or listen to His Word in Scripture, Tradition and the Teaching of the Church. We should think or reflect on His word and we should make some resolution to act on His Word. This is called meditation. This is what we do in the Rosary. We hear and think about what God says to us with the help of Mary, His Mother.
So, get to know people, learn where the best starting point for them will be with prayer, explain it to them and encourage them to begin. Be Apostles of Faith by leading people to prayer.