Faith

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The Measure of Faith

When I was in High school, i was a self-confessed Atheist.

I was studying in this all-girls Catholic school since prep and I have grown up to first friday masses, tridum, novenas and the children of Mary club.

It was my eleventh year, and I was sick to death of it all.

I would look at my Christian Living teacher, and all I would see was a stout woman, whispering to herself in a thin weak voice and bobbing her head up and down like E.T. For the life of me, I could not understood a word she said, or, it could have been that I refused to understand anything.

My Values education teacher was another spectacle. She was a self-proclaimed spinster who refused to do anything with men, scolded us as flirts when she saw us talking to "atenistas", and generally warned us that boys are the scrouge of the earth and something really really terrible would happen to us if we as so much get within 10 feet of them. Somehow, it did not occur to us that we couldn't get pregnant by talking to boys. We thought that laughing or conversing with our batch atenistas would brand us as "fornicators".

I was 16 and the years of indoctrination by the Daughters of Charity seemed to have been a complete waste of time.

I did not believe in God. I refused to go to Mass. I was sarcastic during Bible reading times

and praying the rosary was a tedious obligation.

There was REBEL emblazoned across my head. I was sick and angry at their "dogmatic" ways and blatant hypocrisy.

"Why would you not teach us to swim instead of warding us off from the deep waters?" I sarcastically asked my Val Ed teacher..."You have always told us that sex outside marriage is bad...but you never tell us why? why don't you tell us if is it ok to masturbate? or what in the heck is erection? or how about ejaculation? have you even heard of that word? " My teacher's cheeks turned red. To be sure, I did not learn those words from her. She must have been wondering frantically where I picked it up.

Sadly, my teachers in that catholic school has never been able to keep up with times. They have chosen to repeatedly shield us from the real "world", but in doing so, only turned as against them.

There were things around us we did not know about, and we deeply resented them for blindfolding us.

However, they were not as successful as they believe in guarding us against the "evils" of sex, because it turned out, several of my batchmates got pregnant before they even graduated from Highschool -- and this, from a class without boys.

It was deeply ironic....my parents enrolled me in that school with the best intentions of turning me to a devout catholic...but i turned out to be a complete antithesis.

I enrolled in college with a firm conviction that the Roman Catholic faith is but a prospestorous invention of man designed to hide the truth about Life, Sex and Boys.

It was only later, after enrolling in a Philosophy class entitled "The philosophy of Religion" that i regained back my faith.

It was not a religious earth-shaking experience that brought me back to Christianity. It is almost disappointing in its unromanticness. Rather, it was pure cold logic that set me to the path again.

My teacher explained God to me and why he is necessary to exist, while I...was not.

I learned that although I could not see God, it is impossible for him not to exist...she explained to me St. Aquinas Summa Theologica..St. Anselm and the degrees of Perfection in this world. She patiently pointed out how finite I was, how completely mortal and irrelevant to this world.

...then i started to believe. I started to wholeheartedly believe when , during a baptism of fire in a charismatic movement, I asked the Holy Spirit to give me faith. Faith, among others -- to help me stick through my convictions through high and low... to help me believe in God no matter how the tides of life would turn.

...and Faith he gave me.

At this point, I really do not know if I could possibly withstand the same trials that Job endured in that parable in the bible. But I do know for a fact, that God to me has become a certainty rather than a possibility.

My measure of faith is not seeing, nor witnessing others' tremendous devotion to God. It is not heeding dire predictions of hellfire and brimstone. My measure of faith is understanding God's immense, encompassing ubiquitousness....it is understanding why he must exist.

The word Christian says that you take away the word "Christ" and the rest of the letters -- ian -- is actually an abbreviation of 'I Am Nothing".

A play of words? I don't think so.I think it is bare truth staring unashamedly at us, one, which most of the time we choose to ignore: I am nothing without Christ ---

We are Nothing without God.

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