Imagine you are stuck in traffic. You are late, and there will be consequences. You cry out with a plea in your despair. Suddenly, your car is raised aloft by angels. You fly over all the traffic and land softly at your destination a few minutes early. This is not the Catholic Faith.
Imagine you are aging. You are frustrated by the wrinkles on your face, your varicose veins, your grey hair, your expanding waistline. You stand before the mirror wishing to be returned to your beautiful, youthful physique. You say a prayer. Suddenly, as if you are Cinderella or Dorian Gray, your wish is granted. This is not the Catholic Faith.
Imagine your neighbor, a seven-year-old boy stricken with cancer. He is dying. His hysterical parents call you to his hospital room. You touch his forehead. Instantly, the cancer disappears, and he leaps out of bed. This is not the Catholic Faith.
Now imagine that against colossal odds, akin to flipping heads on a quarter one-million times in a row, you have deliberately been willed into existence by a Being infinitely powerful. Somehow, He has a plan for you. This plan includes the highest honor any living being could receive: you have been made in His very image and loved into existence. This is the essence of who you are, of your true identity: you are a son or daughter of Him. We call Him God. This is the first principle of the Catholic Faith. We call it creation.
Imagine you are a sinner. Not only do you fall short of your vocation as son or daughter of God, but you do downright evil things. Granted, most are small transgressions committed out of weakness or emotion rather than malice. Yet you do not do the good you want; you do the very thing that you hate. You keep hurting people, and you hurt God whose plan you are messing up. You need help. Knowing your difficulties, God sends His own Son to do what you cannot: He assumes human nature, lives in first-century Palestine as the God-Man, and sacrifices Himself willingly on a cross so your sins are forgiven. You now have new life for God the Father thanks to God the Son. This is the second principle of the Catholic Faith. We call it redemption.
Imagine you are having a bad day at work. It’s Monday: you missed a deadline and incurred your boss’s wrath. Your colleague is giving you a hard time. You received a text from your son that he didn’t make the school soccer team. You get a call from a doctor: your father is being admitted to the hospital with severe chest pain. With your stomach in knots, you walk outside and sit on a bench. You place your head in your hands and ask God for help. After a minute, you recall that at Mass yesterday, you received Jesus Christ in Holy Communion. You felt at peace during that moment. You silently ask Jesus to be with you again and to bring you peace. Renewed, you walk back to your office. You apologize to your boss and ask to go be with your father. He is impressed at your apology and grants you leave with a promise to pray for him. You drive to the hospital anxious yet somehow confident that you are not enduring this moment alone. This is the third principle of the Catholic Faith. We call it sanctification.
Creation, redemption, and sanctification are the three pillars of the Catholic Faith. We have been created by God, redeemed from sin by God the Son, and sanctified—made holy—by God the Holy Spirit. We can look at these pillars in the abstract, as theologians often do in trying to understand these mysteries. We can also look at them in a personal way, for each pillar touches each of us as individuals who stand in a direct and filial relationship with God. When we build our lives on these three pillars, we receive a new way of living in the world.
Without these pillars, life can grow depressing very quickly. Consider the life of Richard, an atheist. He believes his existence is the product of a cosmic accident. He should not exist, therefore, nor can there be reasons for his life. Instinctually, he wonders about these questions, but he knows no answers are possible. He follows the law of the land to the best of his ability. But after following the world’s “live and let live” example, he is divorced; now he seldom sees his two children yet has to pay alimony for them. He has had multiple romantic partners in recent years but has not found love. Overcome by anger and without any recourse, he has started drinking and occasionally has used illegal drugs. This is the road of destruction.
The road of Catholic Faith offers so much more.
We can build upon these three pillars to develop our relationships as sons and daughters of God. Knowing that we are created by God, redeemed by Jesus Christ, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, we seek union with this Triune God who has called us first. He wants us to be His children and friends. The more we pray, the more rigorously we keep His commandments, the more we receive the sacraments, the more zeal we will find for life. The three pillars of our Faith are not three magic pills to take away our problems. They are the three realities through which we face our problems with confidence, determination, and hope.
Photo by Sarah Sheedy on Unsplash
