What is the Point of Our Faith?
Fr. Saunders explains the heart of the Catholic Faith: a loving relationship with God.
Why Be Catholic?
We’re Catholic because the eternal God of the universe loves us so much that he sent his only begotten Son to redeem us from our sin, bring us into his divine life, and immerse us in this truth and love.
Essentially, being Catholic is a heavenly gift intended to allow us to become fully human, fully alive, fully invested with the beauty of our awesome God!
In this section of our website, we invite you to explore several aspects of the beauty of Catholicism, and we invite you into a deeper relationship with our Lord, who is Jesus Christ.
Links to More Resources
Who Is Jesus?
For centuries leading up to the coming of Jesus, God had promised through his prophets that he would send an anointed king to save his people, Israel. This king would come as a servant and would mysteriously save his people through his suffering. This king would be glorified somehow, and in doing so, would bring redemption, salvation, and glory to not only Israel, but to the entire human race.
And so it happened in a way that went far beyond Israel’s expectations… God was extremely generous in fulfilling his promises.
In the fullness of time, this foretold anointed king was conceived in the womb of his mother Mary, a virgin, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the name given to him was Jesus. In Hebrew, this name is Yeshua (from which we get the modern day name of “Joshua“), and it literally means “God saves!”
The title “Christ” (in Hebrew: Messiah • in Greek: Christos) means “The Anointed One.” In the Old Testament, priests, prophets, and kings were anointed with a flask of consecrated oil, and in several instances, the Holy Spirit came down from heaven to confirm such a sacred appointment (for example, with Saul and David, kings of Israel). Jesus experienced this appointment in his baptism in the Jordan River, by the hands of John the Baptist, when the Holy Spirit rushes upon him, as he was baptized.
The salvation Jesus brought – as the anointed priestly and prophetic king – was far greater than the temporary political and military victories of his royal Israelite predecessors. In fact, many of Jesus’ contemporaries expected him to amass an army, defeat their Roman oppressors, and bring political sovereignty to the people of Israel. Instead, Jesus conquered the greatest enemy we all face: the powers of darkness (the demonic world) and the grip that sin has over our lives. He did this in the most incredible way: by allowing those powers to seemingly destroy him!
Jesus suffered a most excruciating death upon the Roman instrument of torture and death: the Cross. Yet, he did so completely voluntarily, without any struggle on his part. He gave his life freely as a gift, in order to atone for the sins of Israel and the entire world, to bring humanity back into right relationship with God the Father, through a superabundant measure of divine love.
When all seemed lost, after his body was wrapped with burial cloth and his tomb was sealed… Jesus gloriously rose from the dead. This “rising from the dead” was far, far greater than a mere resuscitation of a dead man: His body was glorified: no longer capable of suffering, spiritually transformed to reflect the beauty of his divinity.
For the next forty days, Jesus appeared to his disciples and taught them many things, allowing them to see how his suffering, death, and resurrection fulfilled God’s promises from long ago!
At the end of these forty days of teaching, Jesus ascended to his heavenly throne as that anointed king to reign over his kingdom: the Church. Today, Jesus continues to heal, teach, and transform us through his royal ambassadors: the ministers of the Church. He invites every single human being to share in the fruits of his redemption by means of the sacraments and to live under his heavenly reign, which brings true joy to the disciple, the follower of Jesus.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
– C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
What Is Salvation?
At its heart, Salvation is the process of becoming a child of God.
When a mother gives life to her son, the child receives the very human nature – the DNA – of his mother. The child possesses the very nature of his mother and father, bringing about a real likeness to his parents.
In the beginning of humanity’s existence, God created man and woman to share in his supernatural divine life as his very own children. This is a supernatural gift above and beyond our natural humanity, and it elevates our humanity with the divinity of our Creator.
In the Book of Genesis, this absolutely incredible and supernatural gift is told through the following poetic imagery:
“The LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)
It was only upon humanity that God breathed this extra gift of life. Earlier in Genesis, the beasts, the fish, the birds… these were created and are alive, but they didn’t receive God’s “breath of life.”
In in the Hebrew, the term for “breath of life” is ruah, which is the same word used for the very spirit of God.
This breath of life made our first parents the very children of God, sharing in God’s divine life!
Another way the Book of Genesis relates this divine sonship is by saying that our first parents were created in the image and likeness of God.
The Original Sin
The Book of Genesis then describes a very real event that occurred near the beginning of humanity’s advent, by means of poetic imagery: This supernatural gift of divine sonship was lost by our first parents, through the first sin. We call this Original Sin.
Original Sin is not only the first sin that was committed, but it is also a term that describes the ongoing privation – the lack of – God’s divine life in the human soul and body. It is the loss of divine sonship or divine filiation. After the first sin, we remain God’s beloved creatures, but we have wandered outside of God’s divine life.
We see the effects of Original Sin in our daily lives. We suffer. We die. We have disordered desires. We have darkened intellects. We have weakened wills. We are sinners at war with ourselves internally, with one another in our relationships, and with God through our continual disobedience and lack of trust in him.
If left untreated, this sad state will result in eternal separation from God through the state we call Hell. Hell is essentially eternal separation from God: the lack or privation of his life for all eternity.
The Good News
After carefully preparing humanity for centuries, God delightfully surprised us by becoming one of us. He assumed our humanity, infusing his divinity with our humanity through the incarnation of Jesus in the womb of Mary.
The eternal Son of God became one of us so we can become children of God through him!
Jesus ultimately made this reunification with God – becoming God’s children – possible through his redeeming work: his intense suffering, death, and resurrection from the dead. These salvific acts were imbued with his divine love, offered on our behalf, to atone for our sins.
When we are united back to God through Jesus’ death and resurrection in baptism, we are reborn as children of God… and given the ability to live a life of faithfulness by the power of the Holy Spirit!
This event of being born from above, by means of the spirit, in Baptism, is also called initial justification. It is the glorious event of our salvation… our spiritual rising from the dead… our being made children of God through the power of God’s free gift of grace.
After our Baptism, we grow in our divine sonship through the process of becoming holy. Another term for this is sanctification or ongoing justification. By growing in the life of Jesus, we become more and more configured and conformed to the divine image of God. Essentially, we experience growth as God’s children, becoming more and more like Jesus.
After Baptism, we can reject God’s good gift of his divine life.
Through serious sin committed intentionally, we can commit sin that is called mortal.
This is sin that deprives us of God’s life once again, returning us to our former status of waywardness.
The Good News is that Jesus gave his apostles, and their successors, the ability to forgive sins, by breathing his spirit upon them:
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
(John 20:21-23)
Since this incredible gift was given to the ministers of Christ’s Church, we have the awesome gift of the Sacrament of Confession whereby validly ordained ministers are able to forgive the sins of Christians, bringing them back into the life of divine sonship by the power of the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God.
By means of these two incredibly powerful sacraments – Baptism and Confession – God restores us to his divine life, raising us from spiritual death, and uniting us to his divine family, which is the Church.
In the Family of God, we receive older brothers and sisters, whom we call the saints. God becomes our Father (Romans 8:15). Mary becomes our spiritual mother (John 19:26-27), and we learn the discipline of God (Hebrews 12:7), which leads us along the path to eternal joy in Heaven!
Other Resources for Learning the Faith
There are many great ways to grow deeper in your knowledge of the Faith over the Internet…
It’s difficult to count them all. Below, we’ve included some great resources you can check out. Some are free. Some cost a little bit of money. All are priceless!
- Formed.org is like a Catholic Netflix, bringing awesome movies and programs into the comfort of your home. Our Parish is blessed to have a free all-access account. All you need to get started is to click the link above, provide an email address to set up an acount, and you’re well on your way to learning your faith! If you want to share this resource with other friends and family, our Saint Agnes Code is f1a3f2.
- Catholic Answers at Catholic.com provides a free powerhouse of articles, audio, and video on various topics of the Faith.
- The Understanding the Scriptures Podcast provides a 100% free Bible study that takes you through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. You can listen on your smartphone while driving!
- Featuring the acclaimed work of Bishop Robert Barron, WordonFire.org is an excellent source of online videos, study programs, DVDs, books, lectures, CDs, and articles.
- Catholics United for the Faith has created more than a hundred Faith Facts on just about every topic you could imagine!
- The Knights of Columbus provide a free study course at CatholicHomeStudy.org, which is mailed directly to you, at no cost! The study consists of 9 books (and workbooks) that highlight the major tenets of the Catholic Faith. Topics such as the Mass, Mary, the Bible and Prayer are explained in an easy and relatable style that appeals to people of all ages. Throughout your reading, you will have online support and tutors to answer all your questions and concerns.