Faithfulness

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We’re told in the Book of Genesis that the Lord said to Abraham, “Abraham, bear yourself blameless in my presence. … You shall maintain my Covenant, yourself and your descendants after you, generation after generation” (Gen. 17:1,9). In the Psalms, we're told, “Yahweh is faithful in all his works” (Ps. 33:4).

Scripture often speaks to us about the virtue of faithfulness, of the need to keep our promises, to carry out our undertakings freely contracted, to make the effort to finish off a mission to which one has committed oneself.

It's a virtue required by love and faith. The strength of the covenant with Abraham and his descendants would be a continual source of blessing and happiness. On the other hand, breaches of this pact by Israel would be the cause of its misfortune.

God asks for faithfulness from men, from those whom He looks on with predilection, because He Himself is always faithful, despite our weaknesses and shortcomings.

We're told in the book of Deuteronomy, “Yahweh is the God of loyalty” (Deut. 7:9), who is “rich in love and fidelity,” says the Book of Exodus (Ex. 34:6-7), who is faithful in every work of his,” says the Psalms (Ps. 33:4), and “his faithfulness remains forever” (Ps. 100:5).

Those who are faithful are most pleasing to Him, says the Book of Proverbs (cf. Prov 12:22), and He promises them the definitive reward: he who is “faithful unto death will receive the crown of life,” says the Book of Revelation (Rev. 2:10).

Throughout the Gospel, Our Lord speaks to us about this virtue. He offers us the example of the faithful and prudent servant, of the honorable administrator.

The idea of faithfulness penetrates the life of a Christian so deeply that the term faithful is enough to describe the disciples of Christ, we’re told in the Book of Acts (Acts 10:45).

St. Paul, who had repeatedly exhorted the first Christian generation to practice this virtue, intones a hymn to faithfulness, which can be taken as summarizing his life as he approaches the end of it.

He writes to Timothy, saying, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his coming” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).

St. Thomas Aquinas says, “Faithfulness consists in accomplishing what was promised, in making deeds conform to expressed intentions” (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Question 110).

We are faithful if we keep our word, if we hold firm, in spite of the obstacles and difficulties, to the commitments which we have undertaken. Perseverance is intimately united to this virtue. It's often identified with it.

Faithfulness applies to many areas: our relationship with God; between spouses; among friends...it's an essential virtue. Without itsocial intercourse becomes impossible. As far as the spiritual life is concerned, it's closely related to love, faith, and vocation.

We're told in the Furrow, Point 343: “That passage of the Second Epistle to Timothy makes me shudder, when the Apostle laments that Demas has fallen in love with this present world and gone to Thessalonica (2 Tim. 4:10). For fear of persecution, for a trifle, this man whom St. Paul had quoted in other epistles as being among the saints, had betrayed the divine enterprise.

“I shudder when I realize how little I am: and it leads me to demand from myself faithfulness to the Lord even in events that might seem to be indifferent—for if they do not help me to be more united to him, I do not want them!”

What use are they if they do not lead us to Christ? We could apply those words to all the things we read, all the things we watch, movies and television and conversations. It was to make a certain selection of all the things we expose ourselves to.

“Bear yourself blameless in my presence,” we're told. “You shall maintain my Covenant” (Gen. 17:1,9). So God is continually telling us in the secret depths of our hearts.

Our age and culture is not an age characterized by a flowering of this virtual faithfulness. Perhaps for this reason, Our Lord wants us to appreciate this particular virtue all the more, both in the implementing of a dedication freely undertaken in our relationship with Him, and in our human relationships with others.

Many might ask: how can this person, who is changeable and weak, commit himself forever? Well, he or she can, because his faithfulness is sustained by One who is Himself unwavering, who is neither lacking in strength nor subject to mutability—by God Himself.

The Psalms tell us that “Yahweh is faithful in all his words” (Ps. 145: 13). Our Lord supports this disposition in those who wish to remain loyal to their commitments, and especially to their most important one.

It is a commitment that relates directly to God—and to other men because of God—as is the case when there is a calling to total dedication, a commitment to sanctity.

“Every good endowment and every perfect gift,” says St. James, “is from above, coming down from the Father of Light with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).

St. John Paul said: “Christ needs you and calls you to help millions of your fellow men to be truly human and to work out their salvation. Live with these noble ideals in your soul. … Open your heart to Christ, to the law of love, without placing conditions on your availability, without fear of receiving non-committal replies, because love and friendship do not vanish over the horizon” (John Paul II, Address, November 6, 1982). They always maintain their plenitude, for love does not grow old.

St. Thomas teaches us that we love someone when we desire the good of that person (St. Thomas, op. cit. I-II, Question 26).

If, on the other hand, we try to take advantage of the one concerned, either because it gives us pleasure or because he is of use to us, then, properly speaking, we don't love that person.

Pleasure, whatever we want, is not his good. When we love, we desire what is the best for the other; our whole person is directed to this love, independently of our likes or dislikes or moods. “The payment and the price of love is to receive more love” (St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle).

We can ask Our Lord for the firm conviction that the essence of love is not mere sentiment or feeling, but the will and the right intentioned deeds it evokes: it demands effort, sacrifice, dedication. Feelings and emotions and moods change; on them, something as fundamental as faithfulness cannot be built.

The virtue of faithfulness acquires its firmness from love, from genuine love. And so, when love—both human and divine—has gone beyond the realm of mere feelings, what remains is not its least important constituent, but rather the most essential, in fact, that which gives ultimate meaning to everything.

Our Lord has a calling, a plan, a vocation for everyone, for each one in particular. He has promised that this call will always come, and He will sustain it through temptations and the various difficulties one encounters in life.

And to demonstrate this permanence, He uses an analogy that we well understand: it is the love and care which a mother has for her child.

Imagine, He says, a mother, deeply maternal (and not, if that were possible, an egotistical mother, who is selfishly immersed in the world). How could such a mother, He says, forget about her own child? “Even if she might forget, I will never forget you” (cf. Isa. 49:15).

We consider it impossible, but we could imagine the possibility that from time to time she might forget about her child, or does not continually have his needs in the forefront of her mind. It is possible.

But I, says the Lord, will never forget you, about your commitments in life, about my loving designs for you, about your vocation.

Faithfulness is a loving response to this love of God. Without love, cracks and fissures soon appear in the solidity of every commitment.

We are asked in the Psalms, “What can I give back to God, for all the good things He has given to me?” (Ps. 116:12).

For our part, we can all offer whatever we have, in order to fulfill the task of being faithful. For this, perseverance until the end of one's life is made possible by faithfulness to the little details of daily living and by constantly and purposefully beginning again, when, through weakness, one might have veered off the path, fidelity is the response to this love of God, ceaselessly allowing oneself to be loved by Him, removing the obstacles which prevent His merciful love penetrating into the depths of our soul.

One writer says, “On many occasions in life, fidelity to God comes down to perseverance to a life of prayer, to a faithful persistence in those devotions and customs which keep us close to Our Lord each day.

Our own perseverance and the perseverance of others relies on our union with and our filial love for God. Those who love persevere, because they feel the strength of their Father God in the apparent monotony of the day-to-day struggle (cf. R. Taboada, Perseverance).

“Love is the weight which drags me along,” says St. Augustine, the lodestone, the direction for our soul to be faithful. For this, a recognition of the love of God, a love from which no man can be excluded, leads to sincerity, a sure support for faithfulness.

It will be a sincerity, in the first place, with ourselves: one will be able, under its influence, to recognize and identify by name, even before they've taken shape, those desires, thoughts, aspirations, and dreams that insistently beseech the soul, but which point in unmistakably wrong directions.

Immediately after, there comes sincerity with God, born of an upright intention and interior cleanliness. Then will come sincerity with whoever is chosen to guide the soul spiritually by making manifest the symptoms of an egoism, that in diverse forms attempts to harden the heart. In this way, we will always be able to count on powerful help.

The virtues of faithfulness and loyalty ought to be present in every aspect of a Christian life: relationships with God, with the Church, with one's neighbor, at work, as regards duties towards the state or nation.…

And this fidelity is practiced in the different fields where one is faithful to one's vocation, for in it is contained all the other values which we acquire through loyalty and faithfulness. If fidelity to God is lacking, everything else begins to disintegrate and break down.

Pope John Paul II said, “The heart of Jesus, the human Heart of the God-Man, is aflame with the ‘living call’ of triune love, which can never be extinguished (John Paul II, Sunday Reflection, June 23, 1986).

It is faithful in its love for men. We have to learn from this faithful love.

Scripture tells us of a well-respected Jewish scribe named Eleazar who was 90 years of age at the time of a certain persecution. He steadfastly refused to betray the faith of his fathers, preferring death to practicing idolatry.

It so happened that friends of Eleazar whom he had known for a long time had been persuaded to enforce Jewish compliance with pagan sacrifices. These men privately urged Eleazar to join in the sacrificial meal with meat of his own choosing, a compromise which, he was assured, would save him from execution.

Yet Eleazar made a noble resolve to honor God and His holy law. This heroic decision was in accordance with his entire exemplary life.

Eleazar realized that it would be beneath the dignity of a man of his age to engage in such dissimulation. He was anxious not to give bad example to the young.

“‘Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life,’ he said, ‘lest many of the young should suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year has gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they should be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age.

“For even if for the present I should avoid the punishment of men, yet whether I live or die, I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty’” (2 Macc. 6:24-26).

Interesting words for professional people who might be tempted to do something wrong, do business under the table, to perform an abortion, to prescribe the morning-after pill, to take a bribe, etc.

Eleazar refused to give in and so he was taken at once to be tortured. When he was about to die, he groaned aloud: “It is clear to the Lord in His holy knowledge that though I might have been saved from death, I am enduring terrible sufferings in my body after this beating, but in my soul I am glad to suffer these things because I fear Him” (2 Macc. 6:30).

The inspired author relates that Eleazar's heroic death was “an example of nobility and a memorial of courage, not only to the young, but to the great body of His nation” (2 Macc. 6:31).

We Christians should be loyal to the Lord. No amount of peer pressure or inconvenience could make us compromise our beliefs or our principles.

St. John Chrysostom has called Eleazar “the proto-martyr of the Old Testament” (John Chrysostom, Homily 3 about the holy Maccabees). His serene composure in the face of martyrdom is in some way a foretaste of the joy in persecution that Jesus promised to His disciples (cf. Matt. 5:12).

Our Lord grants this joy to those who persevere in the faith and their vocation, despite every type of contradiction.

The first Christians had the custom of speaking of their fellow Christians as “the faithful” (Acts 10:45; 2 Cor. 6:15; Eph. 1:1).

This terminology came into common use during a period of harsh external difficulties, persecution, campaigns of slander and coercion. The pagan world at the time did its level best to impose its beliefs and practices on the Christian community, yet they remained faithful despite the most grievous consequences.

St. John records these words in the Book of Revelation: “Be faithful unto death; and I will give you the crown of life.” This is the challenge facing Christians of every age.

The Evangelist gives the warning from the same passage: “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested for ten days” (Rev. 2:10).

Those ten days could be understood to symbolize our time on earth. We don't have a lot of time. When we suffer some contradiction, even some discrimination because of our beliefs, how do we react? Do we firmly resolve to be faithful, no matter what people may say?

Pope St. John Paul has said, “It's easy to be consistent for a day or two. It's difficult and important to be consistent for one's whole life. It's easy to be consistent in the hour of enthusiasm; it's difficult to be so in the hour of tribulation. And only a consistency that lasts throughout our whole life can be called faithfulness” (John Paul II, Address, January 26, 1979).

Sometimes the obstacles don't arise from our environment but can spring from within our being. Pride is the most principal obstacle to fidelity. Next to pride there's lukewarmness, the spiritual disease that robs us of our joy in following Christ.

Lukewarmness leads us to indulge in ridiculous fantasies. We might suffer from a period of spiritual obscurity or dryness. This problem may arise from our lack of knowledge or it may be God's way of purifying our intention.

Whatever the cause may be, the solution will normally lie in humble recourse to spiritual direction and in the persevering prayer to Our Lord. If we're willing to be led, God will take us by the hand.

St. Josemaría in Friends of God has said, “One of my most vivid childhood memories is of seeing, up in the mountains near my home, those signposts they planted alongside the hill paths.

“I was struck by those tall posts usually painted red. It was explained to me that when the snow fell, covering up everything, paths, seeded fields and pastures, thickets, boulders, and ravines, the poles stood out as a sure reference points, so that everyone would know the way.

“Something similar happens in the interior life. There are times of spring and summer, but there are also winters, days without sun and nights bereft of moonlight.

“We can't afford to let our friendship with Jesus depend on our moods, on our ups and downs. To do so would imply selfishness as we try to look after many other people around us, and this would be incompatible with love.

“Therefore, in times of wind and snow,” he says, “a few solid practices of piety, which are not sentimental but firmly rooted and adjusted to one's special circumstances—all these will serve as the red posts always marking out the way for us, until the time comes when Our Lord decides to make the sun shine again.

“Then the snows melt and our hearts beat fast once more, burning with a fire that never really went out. It was merely hidden in the embers, beneath the ashes produced by a time of trial, or by our own poor efforts or a lack of sacrifice” (Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 151).

We can turn to Our Lady, Virgo fidelis, Virgin most faithful, pray for us, pray for me.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF