Growing In Faith, In Hope, And In Love By the Rev. Dr. Andrew Grosso
By the Rev. Dr. Andrew Grosso, Senior Associate for Discipleship
One of the challenges we often experience in the life of faith has to do with our need for a clear vision of what growing in faith looks like. We can be inclined to think of faith as a feeling or an idea rather than as a behavior: this can frustrate our attempts to become mature Christians because it makes it hard to recognize how we may be called to grow in specific, concrete ways. The call to grow as a mature disciple of Jesus invites us to reflect on where it is Jesus calls us to go and how we’re going to get there.
At Saint Michael and All Angels, we use four terms to summarize the ways God calls us to grow as we walk the path of faith. Those four words are “pray,” “learn,” “serve,” and “give.” Each of these terms signifies a distinct dimension of the life of faith, a particular area of our lives within which God invites us to grow in specific ways.
Growing in prayer involves deepening our intimacy with God by learning to orient more of our daily lives around the practices of adoration, intercession, and thanksgiving. The call to grow in prayer invites us to learn how to engage the various dimensions of our lives—our families, our work, our recreation—as invitations to see God at work in the world and to join in the work God is doing. We do this in part by learning to pray in the ways given to us in the traditions and practices of the church, such as the Book of Common Prayer.
Growing in learning involves both deepening and broadening our capacity to recognize the ways the Gospel of Christ bears on every part of our lives. It involves unfolding the mystery revealed to us in Jesus Christ and allowing that mystery to condition the way we understand ourselves, our lives, and our world. We grow in learning when we accept the invitation Jesus offers us to know the truth that sets us free (John 8:31–32), which we do by becoming more familiar with the traditions, teachings, and practices of the Church.
Growing in serving involves sharing more fully in the servant ministry of Christ himself, the one who comes to us in the form of a servant (Philippians 2:5–8) and is among as one who serves (Luke 22:24–27). We grow in service as we come to recognize that the occasions of our lives are nothing other than opportunities to let God minister to others by working through us as we offer his mercy and grace to them. When we do this, we fulfill the vows we made in baptism to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to love others as we love ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace among all people (BCP 305).
Growing in giving involves living more fully into our vocation as bearers of the divine image and stewards of God’s good creation. It invites us first to learn to receive everything we have as part of the gift of life God gives to us, and then to share that gift with others. As we grow in giving, we find we not only learn to be more generous with our time, our talents, and our treasure, we also find ourselves better able to practice thanksgiving for sharing in God’s abundance. As we grow in our capacity to give, our lives become increasingly Eucharistic.
Praying, learning, serving, and giving together provide us with a framework for pursuing growth in the life of faith. They each in different ways invite us to shift the exercise of our faith out of the realm of ideas, emotions, and intentions and into the realm of action; they are, in other words, things we do, and as we do them, we find ourselves growing in faith, in hope, and in love, and thereby becoming the people God calls us to be.
**This article was written by the Rev. Dr. Andrew Grosso and was featured in the 2024 Summer Archangel.