This document discusses the Catholic understanding of faith. It defines faith as a personal response to God's revelation in Jesus Christ, as expressed through beliefs and adherence to the Catholic Church. Faith involves believing in God the Father, accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, and being open to the Holy Spirit. It is a total commitment of one's mind, heart and will to God. The document emphasizes that faith is relational, requiring love of God and neighbor, and is lived out through witness and mission.

2. FAITH
CHRISTIAN
FAITH
CATHOLIC
CHRISTIAN
FAITH
“Believing in God.”
“Believing in the God
revealed by Jesus Christ.”
“Believing that Christ reveals God
to us in and through the Catholic
Church, the body of Christ, united
in the Holy Spirit.”
Faith is our personal response as “disciples of Christ”
of accepting him “as Lord and Savior.” “It is our
‘Please come in!’ to Christ who stands at the door and
knocks (Rv 3:20)” (PCP II 64).

3. FAITH IN HUMAN RELATIONS:
•We show our faith when we accept the words
of others. (PANINIWALA)
•We show faith when we readily obey the
directions of those over us. (PAGSUNOD)
•We show our faith when we entrust our welfare
to others, even to strangers . (PAGTITIWALA)
It is impossible to live without faith!
Faith, as a human reality, is central to
our lives.

4. FAITH IN GOD:
•As our total response to God’s revelation:
“It is to know, to love, to follow Christ in the
Church he founded” (PCP II 36)
•As a Theological virtue: Faith is our
personal knowledge of God in Christ,
expressed in particular beliefs in specific
truths by which we adhere to Christ.
FAITH IS PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF
CHRIST, WHO IS OUR TRUTH.
FAITH IS OUR WHOLE LIFE IN CHRIST.

5. TOTAL AND ABSOLUTE
Already the Old Testament contrasted faith
“in man in whom there is no salvation” with
faith in “the Lord who made heaven and
earth . . . who shall reign forever” (cf. Ps
146:3,5-6,10; Jer 17:5-8). Only Faith in God
calls for a total and absolute adherence (cf.
CCC 150). Christ himself provides,
especially in his Passion, Death and
Resurrection, the best example of this total
and absolute commitment to God.

6. TRINITARIAN
For us Christians, Faith is our adherence to the
Triune God revealed through Jesus Christ our
Lord. It is our friendship with Christ and through
Christ with the Father, in their Holy Spirit. Through
Christ’s witness to his Father in his teaching,
preaching, miracles, and especially in his Passion,
Death and Resurrection, we come to believe in
Christ our Savior, in the Father, and in the Holy
Spirit sent into our hearts. Our Faith as Catholics,
then, consists in our personal conviction and belief
in God our Father, revealed by Jesus Christ, His
own divine Son-made-man, and their presence to
us through the Holy Spirit, in the Church (cf. PCP II
64; CCC 151-52).

7. LOVING, MATURING, AND MISSIONARY
Our Christian Faith is truly life-giving and mature only
through love, for “the man without love has known
nothing of God, for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). And to be
Christian, this love must be inseparably love of God
and love of neighbor, like Christ’s. It thus impels us to
mission, to evangelize, by bringing others the Good
News (cf. 1 Cor 9:16). Such a missionary spirit is the
test of authentic Faith because it is unthinkable that a
person should believe in Christ’s Word and Kingdom
without bearing witness and proclaiming it in his turn
(cf. EN 24; PCP II 67-71, 402). This means we are all
called to share in Christ’s own three-fold mission as
priest, prophet and king (cf. PCP II 116-21; LG 10-13).

8. INFORMED AND COMMUNITARIAN
PCP II insists that Catholic Faith must be
“informed,” that is “believing Jesus’ words,
and accepting his teachings, trusting that he
has “the words of eternal life” (cf. Jn 6:68;
NCDP 147). It must be “communitarian” since
it is the Church that transmits to us Christ’s
revelation through Sacred Scripture and its
living Tradition, and alone makes possible for
us an adequate faith-response (cf. PCP II 65).

9. INCULTURATED
This Catholic faith in God and in Jesus Christ
is never separated from the typical Filipino
faith in family and friends. On the one hand,
we live out our faith in God precisely in our
daily relationships with family, friends, fellow
workers, etc. On the other hand, each of these
is radically affected by our Catholic Faith in
God our Father, in Jesus Christ His only
begotten Son, our Savior, and in their Holy
Spirit dwelling within us in grace. “This is how
all will know you for my disciples: your love
for one another” (Jn 13:35; cf. PCP II 72-73,
162, 202-11).

10. MIND
What can I know?
HEART
What can I hope for?
WILL
What should I do?
We can know God as Our Father and Christ as
Our Lord. “Know that we belong to God . . .
that the Son of God has come and has given us
discernment to recognize the One who is true”
(1 Jn 5:19-20). Pagkilala sa Ama, sa Anak at sa
Espiritu Santo.
“Keep His commandments” (1 Jn 2:3), which
means to “love in deed and truth and not
merely talk about it” (1 Jn 3:18). This
demands acting on the credibility of God’s
teachings in Christ as true and dependable.
“Neither death nor life, neither angels nor
principalities, neither the present nor the
future, nor powers; neither height nor depth
nor any other creature, will be able to
separate us from the love of God that comes
to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39)
DOCTRINE
MORALS
WORSHIP

11. Faith is knowing, but not mere “head knowledge” of some abstract
truths. It is like the deep knowledge we have of our parents, or of
anyone we love dearly. Christian Faith, then, is personal knowledge of
Jesus Christ as “my Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28). Christ solemnly
assures each of us: “Here I stand knocking at the door. If anyone
hears me calling and opens the door, I will enter his house, and have
supper with him, and he with me” (Rv 3:20).
Faith is a commitment to follow (obey) God’s will for us. This we
see exemplified in Mary’s “I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be
done to me as you say” (Lk 1:38). PCP II brings out this “doing”
dimension of faith as “witnessing” through “loving service” of our
needy neighbors. In our concrete situation, particularly urgent is
the call for: 1) deeds of justice and love; and 2) for protecting and
caring for our endangered earth’s environment (cf. PCP II 78-80).
Faith is from the heart the loving, trusting, and hoping in the Lord that
comes from God’s own love flooding our hearts. This trusting Faith “lives
and grows through prayer and worship” personal heartfelt conversation
with God that is the opposite of mindless, mechanical repetition of
memorized formulas. Genuine personal prayer and group prayer find both
their inspirational source and summit of perfection in the Liturgy, the
Catholic community’s official public Trinitarian worship of the Father,
through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the Holy Spirit (cf. PCP II 74-77).

12. •certain enough to die for, yet a “mystery” because
like love, there is always more to understand;
•a free personal response to God, yet morally
binding in conscience;
•reasonable, yet beyond our natural ways of
knowing;
•an individual act of our graced reason, yet also a
life-long process;
•a gift of God through both Revelation and interior
inspiration, yet something we do nobody can
“believe” for us;
•a personal individual response, yet only possible as
a member of the Christian community, the
Church.

13. Faith in Jesus Christ:
• helps us to grow into adult persons who can
relate to others responsibly and maturely;
• liberates us from being enslaved by sin; and
• opens us to deep joy and happiness in the
Lord.
Faith is something like the loving knowledge
we have of our family and friends. We are
“sure” of their love and we try to respond to
them. Likewise, through God’s Revelation in
Christ, we are absolutely sure of His love for
us, and try to respond through the gift of faith.

14. CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE OF
THE PHILIPPINES ECCCE
CHAPTER 3
OUR RESPONSE: WE BELIEVE