Why Belief Must Change Behavior

We have begun the season of Lent. In our faith, Lent is a time of change, a time of transformation, a time of becoming new in the Lord. Through these forty days we are called to deepen our prayer, make more intimate our relationship with God and renew/refresh the strength of our faith. As Jesus turned his face to Jerusalem to go and do God's will, so we are called to examine our lives and discern what God is calling us to do. As Jesus in the garden prayed and accepted God's will we are called to an understanding of God wants of us and proceed in the way which God calls us. As Jesus submitted on a Good Friday and rose on Easter Sunday, we are called to die to sin and all things not of God so that we may be made anew and raised up in ways beyond our imagination. In other words, a truly active faith transforms the individual.

For too many, however, the season of Lent is a temporary time. For forty days we will sacrifice. For forty days we will concentrate on our prayer. For forty days we will practice fasting and abstinence. And then at the end of the forty days, we will revert to the people we were before the start of Lent. Too many will have missed the message of the season and of our Catholic faith.

Too often there appears a disconnect between the Gospel we hear proclaimed from the pulpit and the actions of our lives. Too often we hear the words but do not act upon them. The reasons for the disconnect may vary. We may find the Gospel too difficult. We may find the message inconvenient. We may find the Gospel in opposition to the things we want to do. However, when we decide to disconnect from the Gospel, we find ourselves actively saying "no" to God. When we decide to live lives not in accordance with the Gospel, for whatever reason, we are not practicing our Catholic faith. We are practicing ritual. Ritual, without any aspect of a deeply growing and practiced faith, does not offer life. It offers a façade activity that in essence is the beginning of atrophy of our faith.

Our Catholic faith is not a static practice limited to attendance at Sunday mass. When we practice it in the way Jesus showed how to practice faith, it is an ever-transforming process that continually brings us closer to God. The closer to God we become the more we are changed into what God wants us to become. The closer to God we become the more we see, the more we understand, the more we seek to submit ourselves more fully to God's will. The closer we become to God, the more we become dissatisfied with what we were and the more we desire God's forming of us. We experience impatience with the parts of us that refuse to yield and seek to remove them from our existence so that nothing may impede God's shaping of us.

In essence, our belief in the God of Jesus Christ, our movement guided by the Holy Spirit towards the horizon of our Creator begins to alter our behavior making us reexamine our attitudes and change the way we view and do things. The human heart cannot intimately touch the face of God and finds its body unchanged. The soul cannot stand prayerfully in the presence of God and find its shape unaltered. The human vessel cannot be filled with the Spirit of the Lord and hold its original shape. In the instant that it submits it is broken and thus begins its reshaping on the kiln of faith. This is the result of our deep belief, the transforming power of our faith. Recognize that it is not we who bring about the transformation. It is God transforming us.

Such transformation, such newness of us requires that we see, we do, we experience things differently than before. We experience chafing tension when we think or seek to perform actions that denigrate others. We no longer easily accept or brush off the things we do that hurt our families or our community. We no longer silently tolerate any type of injustice whether it is the ugliness of an ethnic joke, the gossip concerning another or the disrespectful remarks made about other women and men. In our prayer we begin to reflect on what we have done, are doing and what God is calling us to do.

Jesus turned his face to Jerusalem trusting God. And when God raised him from the dead, he was so transformed that those who loved him most did not recognize him when they saw him. Every day of life is meant to be the same for us. We are continually undergoing a transformation because we are believers in the God of Jesus the Christ seeking to live as intimately in God as Christ. Like the lump of clay that God scoops us from the bank of the river in James Weldon Johnson's Creation , God is constantly forming us in his hands. Rolling, shaping, contouring us into the image and likeness of us that resides in God's mind. In our submission, we find ourselves formed anew. Having been open, having submitted, having accepted that life is best when it is lived God's way, we will find our behavior changed. We will live out the words of the Gospel instead of simply agreeing with them. We will move out of the comfort zone of time, effort and money to feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. We will find bad attitudes replaced by the understanding that God has sent us on mission to help all people come closer to Him. We will shed the attitude that declares anyone worthless or beyond help.

We will recognize everyone we meet as a man or woman of God and this view will determine our response to their presence. We will lose the fear of the boys on the corner, the disdain for the teenager pushing her baby in the stroller, the disgust for the one who drinks much. Our transformation will help us understand that because we are working in the power of an omnipotent God, we are given the grace to achieve God's ends. We may not change the world overnight, but we have the grace to affect the world one person at a time. We will recognize that our mission is not hopeless, it is not futile. It is necessary and because it is of God it is doable. Our transformation will make us able to answer Paul's charge to proclaim the words under all conditions (2 Tim 4:1-2).

The change of our behavior into conformity to God's will may frighten others. It may even frighten ourselves. But it will energize the Body of Christ. It will surge life through the Body and increase the fire wrought by the Holy Spirit. The glow from that fire will provide a beacon for those who are lost or in doubt. The glow from that fire will attract the lonely with the promise of its loving warmth and caring. The glow from that fire will ignite the reticent into action and singe the bystanders who seek to meekly observe. For the transformation of faith is not given to us for ourselves. It is given to us to strengthen the Body of Christ. And the mission of the Body of Christ is to proclaim the word that changes the world.

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