Getting Interested in Faith vs. Seeking Signs
- FATHER BEDE JARRETT, O.P.
The Kingdom of God that our Lord came to establish upon earth was not merely the elaborate or simple knowledge of the ways of God.
Rather it was the individual acceptance of truth simply as a means of life. God teaches me about himself so that in the end I may be led to a closer union with him; it is he for whom I am created, not for faith, but for possession.
The Kingdom of God, therefore, is something that the individual from the age of reason to the end of life has to be continually realizing for himself. He has to be continually hammering away at the truths of faith, endeavoring to get more meaning out of them, to find in them the help and guidance that daily life continually demands. The whole series of mysteries will certainly be no use to me in my endless advance to God unless I try to make them my own by ceaselessly pondering over them.
Of themselves they are just the bare outlines of truths, yet it is not truths but the facts that are contained in the truths that are ultimately to influence my life. Hence my first act must be to get interested in my faith....
Faith has now to be regarded as the revelation to us of the meaning of life, the understanding of life, the effects of life. I shall never become interested in religion until I have come to see that I must make it personal to myself — chew it, digest it, form out of it the sinews of my spiritual being.
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Acknowledgement
Father Bede Jarrett, O.P. "Getting Interested in Faith vs. Seeking Signs." from Meditations for Layfolk (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1915).
Note: Meditations for Layfolk is in the public domain.
The Author
Father Bede Jarrett, O.P. (1881-1934) was Cyril Jarrett, who received the name Bede when, at age 17, he entered the Dominican order in England. In his own life time he held a recognised position as the greatest preacher in Catholic England. The Times of London noted in his obituary that "he has been called the best Roman Catholic preacher in this country, and he was perhaps the most popular English preacher in the United States, his sermons being marked by their intellectual quality, their appositeness to the times and their incisiveness". He is the author of Classic Catholic Meditations, Life of St. Dominic, The abiding presence of the Holy Ghost in the soul, and Mediaeval Socialism.