"Relationship is the heart of mature faith"
Mature faith is a lifelong journey that challenges believers to enter into ever-deepening relationships with God and with one another.
Sister Eva Marie Lumas, a Sister of Social Service and a nationally known consultant and teacher of religious education, sounded that theme in her keynote speech to the 2009 inter-diocesan Faith Formation Conference. The speech was sponsored by the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s Office of Religious Education and Youth Ministry.
The primary purpose of faith formation is to nurture mature faith, Sister Lumas told religious educators from the archdiocese and the dioceses of Monterey, Oakland, San Jose and Stockton in her remarks opening the Nov. 20-21 conference in Santa Clara.
“Having mature faith enables us to rest our hearts and root our lives in an ultimate ground of being,” said Sister Lumas, who is field education director and an assistant professor at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley.
“The three most effective ways of developing mature faith (are) to be in the company of people who welcome us into hospitable and just relationships, engage with us as valued and gifted sojourners and strive to practice the presence of God.”
Sister Lumas related a poem, “Baptism of the Spirit,” written by a former student. The poet describes her struggle to find a faith community that embraces her vision of mature faith:
“I don’t go to church anymore because I’m bored, because the words are disconnected from the bodies, because there’s no fire, because no one seems to know or care of my people’s pain.
“I don’t go to church anymore because it only happens on Sunday, because they read the Bible without conviction.
“I don’t go to church anymore because they smile when they’re not happy, because they dress up their brokenness in fine robes or other kinds of Sunday morning ritual finery,” the poet writes, “because they don’t share the truth about their lives, because they seem to want my money or my labor but not my visions or my leadership.
“I want to shout and they just say, ‘Sit quietly for awhile.’
“I sometimes feel I have to fight,” the poet writes, “and all they feel is, ‘You have to wait.’”
Calling for an active faith that renounces injustice and intolerance, the poet closes with the plea: “I really want to go back to church.”
Each of us wants hospitable and just relationships and the freedom to live them without feeling defensive, Sister Lumas reflected after reciting the poem.
“Each of us wants to rise to our full stature in the company of others who presume our dignity, participation, giftedness, and our right to responsibilities as co-creators of the world,” she said. “That is what it means to develop mature faith, to assume the right and the responsibility of being a co-creator of the world, of bringing the world closer and closer to the reign of God.”
Sister Lumas proposed that “church affiliation is less and less compelling in American society because our churches have severely backed off in our engagement in the daily concerns of people’s lives.”
She said there is a growing movement in our society that no longer deems it necessary to be actively involved in a specific faith community in order to develop a relationship with God. At the same time, she said, we live in a society that is littered with the “little gods” of media and technology.
These false idols, she said, “promise to relieve us of the demands of being a responsible person in the world.”
But there are no easy answers in the quest for mature faith, Sister Lumas said.
“It requires a commitment to live for the love of another,” she said. “Because in our pursuit for the holy, for the sacred, for God, there is also a pursuit to be in communion with other persons.”
She urged the gathering of religious educators to embrace the responsibilities and rewards of relationship.
“These are the requirements of Christian community,” she said. “Let our lives and our ministries, whatever they are, lead us to consciously and carefully keep those relationships uppermost in our heart, and let us trust that if we can hold those relationships as the most enduring and the most precious gifts that we have been given, we will learn that we are more and more able to enflesh the Word that is Lord.”
Sister Lumas urged the faith formation teachers to walk life as a “sacred pilgrimage.”
“Praise God,” she concluded, “we are determined to make this journey while creating an ever-expanding community that will not allow anyone to make this journey despairing or alone. May the Word of God live on in our lives.”
By Rick DelVecchio
From December 4, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
