BUILDING ON THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH

THE MEMORIAL OF ST. JUSTIN THE MARTYR

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP 

 Jude 1:17,20-25; Ps 63:2-6; Mk 11:27-33

Building on the Foundation of Faith

The holy apostle St. Jude gave us salutary advice in the first reading. It is beneficial to consider the advice in detail. He urged us to remember the words of the apostles of the Lamb on what to expect in our time. In other words, we are to go through the Epistles they wrote to the different churches that are now part of the Scripture. These scriptures serve as reminders of the prophecies they made concerning these later days. Their prophecies are being fulfilled before us, and many of us are not awake; many of us are moving along with the world, thinking that the strange events are the results of development. Not to be swept away by the flood of ungodliness raging through our time, he advised us to build on our faith. “You must use your most holy faith as your foundation and build on that, pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves within the love of God and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to give you eternal life.” We must know the teachings of the Church to build our life on the holy faith. The Church is the custodian of the revealed truths. These truths are found in the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church. We must be acquainted with these sources of our faith and doctrine. We must read the word of God meditatively and prayerfully daily and study the Catechism of the Church and other good books that will enrich our understanding of the faith we professed.

We build on the holy faith each day as we contemplate the truths of the faith and make them principles of our thoughts, words, and actions. If we read or study these articles of faith and the word of God, and fail to put them into practice in what we do, then we are not building on them. Praying in the Holy Spirit re-enforces our ability to live our faith. As we have noted in the previous reflections, prayer is the first activity of our faith in God. Thus, praying in the Spirit implies letting our deepest spiritual part initiate our prayer quest. In other words, worldly needs should take the back seat in our prayer. Our genuine hunger for spiritual things must guide our minds in prayer. The Holy Spirit usually reveals these spiritual needs and guides our prayer according to the will of the Father. Even when we need physical things, we should put these needs across to God with no anxiety, but trusting in the love of God, who will supply our needs when we desire to live in a heavenly manner. This is how to keep ourselves in the love of the Father while hoping in the mercy of our Saviour Jesus Christ who has promised us the heavenly kingdom. 

A faithful soul lives in the world as if on pilgrimage. Our faith in God makes his presence come alive within our community. This is true, for the life we live in union with the Holy Spirit is a gradual participation in the mysteries of Jesus Christ, and in the Trinitarian life. A faithful Christian life is counter-cultural, for it questions the values of the proud worldlings and exposes their false foundation and empty life. This is what we see in the gospel, where the authority of Jesus and actions in the Temple disturbed the false religion of the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. Thus, they demanded to know on what basis he was doing his work. “What authority have you for acting like this? Those who have conformed their lives to the pattern of this world and run after its pleasures will persecute the faithful souls to force them to abandon their faith and be like them. They demand to know our reason for choosing to live faithful to the commandments of God when they have abandoned their faith. The question Jesus put to them in response was to probe their consciences and expose the falsehood and inconsistencies in their foundations. “I will ask you a question, only one; answer me and I will tell you my authority for acting like this. John’s baptism: did it come from heaven, or from man? Answer me that.” They refused to answer because any answer they gave would expose the inconsistency in their foundation. St. Justin the Martyr sought the truth through different philosophies and found the complete truth in the Christian faith; he embraced it and built his whole life on Jesus Christ as the Truth. Our lives must be consistent with the faith we profess in God.

Let us pray: O God, who through the folly of the Cross wondrously taught St. Justin the Martyr the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, grant us, through his intercession, that, having rejected deception and error, we may become steadfast in the faith.