Faith in Being (Not Just Doing)

The aspect of God we most often see is his activity.  He is creating, gathering, leading, saving, renewing, interceding, and his love is always in movement, seeking and embracing.  The life of Jesus is seen mostly as mission, as his doing and acting, moving always toward Jerusalem and the redemptive act that will occur there.  The Spirit of God is also described as movement, as an active infusion or the power that derives or impels the Church.  We have from the very beginning the question of action being the complement to faith, the implementing (and so the validating) of belief being in what is done about it.

It is, of course, true.  But it is only one aspect.  In addition to what God may do -- what he is now doing and all he has so far accomplished -- there is his being.  Jesus too is an essential self apart from whatever he did, or now does.  He was the one who also prayed, and who went apart, the one whose silence is stolen by the crowd's demanding to hear.  He had required reflection not only as renewal so that he might go on doing, but also (and more so) so he could sustain himself in who he was, enhancing the bond of being he shared with his father.  The Spirit, apart from being the breath of the Church, is its soul, the ground of its being, the essence in which it rests.