Ver­non Khelawan

Twelve months have rushed by since Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris, join­ing with oth­er dio­cese lead­ers around the world, ush­ered in the Year of Faith on the in­vi­ta­tion of the Holy Fa­ther. The Year of Faith ends next Sun­day on the Feast of Christ the King.

When Arch­bish­op Har­ris, in the pas­toral let­ter which launched the ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T, wrote, "To­day I in­vite you to ig­nite again the fire of cu­rios­i­ty about the truths of faith." And he sug­gest­ed, "Do not just say the creed. Thirst to un­der­stand it. Ques­tion it and, above all, let the creed ques­tion you–about what you re­al­ly be­lieve, about your lifestyle and morals, about your des­tiny."

Can we, Catholics, all re­flect on the past 12 months and as­sess crit­i­cal­ly whether or not we have in fact in­creased our faith, which has been passed on to us in this arch­dio­cese by mis­sion­ary priests and re­li­gious bod­ies, by par­ents and grand­par­ents and in our Catholic schools.

"For us Catholics," con­tin­ued the arch­bish­op, "the re­new­al of our faith will bring us to the deep­er un­der­stand­ing of the Christ event and the re­al­i­ty that the truth of our faith is a per­son, Je­sus Christ, the ul­ti­mate word of the Fa­ther who, as we are told by St Paul, 'gave up his di­vin­i­ty' be­came a hu­man be­ing, was born of the Vir­gin Mary, pitched his tent amongst us as the pro­logue of St John's Gospel tells us; who spent His time amongst us do­ing good; who suf­fered, was cru­ci­fied, buried and rose against af­ter three days and is seat­ed at the right hand of the Fa­ther.

"The re­new­al of our faith moves us from be­liev­ing in Je­sus and the his­tor­i­cal facts about Him to be­liev­ing Him, to be­liev­ing what Je­sus says, to be­liev­ing the mes­sage and ul­ti­mate­ly to liv­ing the life of self-giv­ing love, which Je­sus mod­elled for us by his life and death on the cross," he added.

The im­por­tance of faith was high­light­ed when in the pas­toral Arch­bish­op Har­ris quot­ed from the book Group Spir­i­tu­al Di­rec­tion: Com­mu­ni­ty for Dis­cern­ment, writ­ten by Sr Rose Mary Dougher­ty SS­ND, in which she ex­plains that "faith shar­ing...is the prac­tice in which two or more peo­ple share ex­pe­ri­ences con­cern­ing their re­la­tion­ship with God; their aware­ness of God's pres­ence in their lives; their strug­gles to be­lieve in God's pres­ence; the ways in which they have re­spond­ed to or re­sist­ed God's pres­ence in their lives; places of suf­fer­ing, con­fu­sion, or joy that have been the en­try point in their prayer.

"It is ground­ed in hum­ble ac­cep­tance of the truth that each of us is a per­son ho­n­oured and loved by God and that God is present and ac­tive in all our lives," the book con­tin­ued.

"It as­sumes the be­lief that God of­ten choos­es to min­is­ter to us through the shar­ing and sup­port of oth­ers."

We are, there­fore, re­mind­ed of Arch­bish­op Har­ris' call to all fam­i­lies in the arch­dio­cese a year ago when he urged, "to be­gin to build the prac­tice and habit of faith shar­ing in their homes." He point­ed out that there were op­por­tu­ni­ties for par­ents to teach and guide their chil­dren in the prac­tice of faith.

If it is felt that enough was not done to stim­u­late and deep­en your faith in your homes, in the work­place and in your parish com­mu­ni­ties, maybe this might just be the time to re­solve to do bet­ter in the com­ing year and be­yond by re­mem­ber­ing "Lord, I be­lieve; Help my un­be­lief," (Mark 9:24) which Arch­bish­op chose to ti­tle his pas­toral.

Ver­non Khelawan is me­dia re­la­tions of­fi­cer of Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel), the of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions arm of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. Its of­fices are lo­cat­ed at 31 In­de­pen­dence Square. Tele­phone: 623-7620