Your Faith Has Saved You

Your faith has saved you. These are the words I pray I will hear when my heart stops beating, when the last breath has left my lungs.

We hear Jesus say these words, or words like them, several times in the Gospels: to the woman bold enough to grasp for his cloak in a crowd, to the men who testify to their belief that he can restore their sight, to the leper kneeling before him in thanks.

These are some of my favorite passages in all of Scripture, because they illustrate so beautifully what salvific faith is — and what it is not.

It’s so easy to think that I have done all the necessary work by simply believing. Yes, Christ is my Savior. Yes, the Church is his bride. Yes, this doctrine is true, that dogma is infallible, so on and so forth.

I believe!

Well, so what? Satan believes, too. It doesn’t do him any good.

The lepers had faith — so they begged Jesus to heal them. They had faith — so they followed his instructions and went to the priests. Their faith was sufficient to motivate these actions, which led to their physical healing. But only one had faith strong enough to understand that physical healing doesn’t mean anything without spiritual results. Only one had enough faith to go back to the source of his healing and say, “Thank you. Now what?”

I have enough faith to know that God can heal me. But do I have enough faith to embrace the purpose for which He heals me?

If Jesus tells you that your faith has saved you, he isn’t talking about faith as merely an internally held belief. In each of these Gospel passages, he’s talking about faith as a conviction that is making itself seen. Heard. Felt. He’s talking about an arm that is reaching for the hem of a garment, a voice that says “I believe” or a knee that is bent in gratitude.

He’s talking about faith that is so strong it becomes action. This is the faith I hope I can have.

©LPi