Our Faith
what catholics believe:
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”
So begins the Holy Gospel according to John. By these life-giving words, God revealed the coming of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus Christ, God-incarnate, is the one mediator between God and man, the only one who can heal our sickness, and the only way to heaven. There is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved (Acts 12:4).
Just before his saving passion, our Lord Jesus Christ said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Only by knowing Christ, who is the truth, may we know the truth and have life. And not just life, but life in abundance (John 10:10).
the problem
Jesus came not to make bad men good, but to make dead men live!
God made man in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:27). He made us good out of soul and the matter of the earth in order to share all his goodness, indeed his very Life with us. Adam and Eve walked and talked God face-to-face in the original goodness of the world. But when they sinned against God, and rejected his goodness, they rejected life itself (Genesis 3). Cut off from the life of God, Adam and Eve and all of creation decayed and eventually died. As Adam and Eve’s descendants, we have inherited death from them, but this is not our natural state nor the original end God intended for us. From the fear of death proceed all the problems which plague our world as we try to satisfy our eternal longing for God with created things: idolatry, greed, shattered marriages, anxiety, depression, gossip, petty jealousies, anger, war, etc. (Hebrews 2:15) “Therefore sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (Romans 5:12).
But God did not turn away from his creature forever, nor forget the work of his hands (Anaphora of St. Basil the Great). In his exceeding love for us, God promised a savior who would destroy the enemies of mankind. God said to the devil, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he will crush your head, and you will strike at his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)