The freedom of faith
To be human, man's response to God by faith must be free, and... therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will. the act of faith is of its very nature a free act. God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently, they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced. . . This fact received its fullest manifestation in Christ Jesus.
Indeed, Christ invited people to faith and conversion but never coerced them. "For he bore witness to the truth but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom... grows by the love with which Christ, lifted up on the cross, draws men to himself.
The necessity of faith
Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. Since, without faith it is impossible to please (God) and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end.
Perseverance in faith
Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: Wage the good warfare, hold faith, and have a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwrecks of their faith. To live, grow and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; it must be working through charity, abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church.
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Faith - the beginning of eternal life
Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God face to face, as he is. So faith is already the beginning of eternal life: When we contemplate the blessings of faith even now as if gazing at a reflection in a mirror, it is as if we already possessed the wonderful things which our faith assures us we shall one day enjoy.
Now, however, we walk by faith, not by sight; we perceive God as in a mirror, dimly and only in part. Even though enlightened by him in whom it believes, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. The world we live in often seems very far from the one promised us by faith.
Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and death, seem to contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it. It is then we must turn to the witnesses of faith: to Abraham, who in hope... believed against hope; to the Virgin Mary, who, in "her pilgrimage of faith", walked into the night of faith in sharing the darkness of her son's suffering and death; and to so many others.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
