{"id":852,"date":"2019-08-07T13:25:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T13:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/?p=852"},"modified":"2019-08-07T13:25:13","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T13:25:13","slug":"reflection-dialogue-11-august-2019-c-nineteenth-sunday-of-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"Reflection &#038; Dialogue  11 August 2019 (C) nineteenth Sunday of Year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Reflection &amp; Dialogue<\/em><\/strong><em>: The theological virtue of faith<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s second reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews which\nreminds us that \u201cfaith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction\nof things not seen\u201d, invites us to reflect on how\nthis text leads to dialogue with an active humanistic, atheistic movement in\nour own day. This question of the current clash between faith and\nhumanism is so large that only bare essentials can be\ntouched on here. Pope Benedict XVI had almost completed an encyclical letter on\nfaith before his retirement. It was published (under the title <em>Lumen fidei\u00b8 <\/em>\u201cthe light of faith\u201d)in June 2013 by his successor Pope\nFrancis. An English translation under this title is available on Google. The\nPope notes (paragraph 2) that in speaking of the light of faith we can hear the\nobjections of many of our contemporaries. According to them, in the view of modernity,\nthat light might have been considered sufficient for societies of old, but was\nfelt to be of no use for our times, for a humanity come of age, proud of its\nrationality and anxious to explore the future in novel ways. Faith thus appears\nto some as an illusory light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in\nquest of knowledge. Faith was thus understood either as a leap in the dark, to\nbe taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotion or as a subjective\nlight, capable perhaps of warming the heart and bringing personal consolation,\nbut not something which could be proposed to others as an objective and shared\nlight which points the way. The Pope goes on to say that there is need, then,\nto see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith goes out,\nall other lights begin to dim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It will be\nfor future discussion to return to points arising from this. For the moment, in\nkeeping with the second reading, we may say that faith is not just a human\nopinion or human conviction. It is a divine gift, a theological virtue, giving\nassurance and conviction of things unseen. The certainty it gives comes from\nthe divine light of God\u2019s gift, which no human arguments can undo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reflection &amp; Dialogue: The theological virtue of faith Today\u2019s second reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews which reminds us that \u201cfaith is the assurance of things hoped for, the &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}