Growing our faith received from God and the Church in Baptism, we must cultivate a personal relationship with Jesus through the Word, prayer, the sacraments, the fraternal love, and evangelization. “God wants to have fellowship with us, God loves us so much that this communion of love does not confine itself, but invites people to participate in the Trinitarian life, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”, said Moysés Azevedo. He gives us advice on how to cultivate this relationship of love, emphasizing the importance of faith.
- The Word of God. Jesus is the word incarnated: in his life, his acts. He is the culmination of the revelation of the face of God who is Love. Reading the Word and praying with it, leaving us to seek answers to the questions that arise in us by what God says, is a great way to cultivate friendship with the Lord.
- Prayer. Saint Teresa of Jesus says that prayer is a covenant of friendship with God. We nourish our experience as we relate to Him, and prayer is this relationship with God. Do you know why you pray? Why does God do His Will? No? We pray that God will transform us and therefore we will do His Will. Prayer is food and purification for the soul.
- Sacraments. Mainly the sacraments of Reconciliation and of the Eucharist. In every Eucharist, let us go to the cross with Jesus and rise with Him.
- Fraternal love. In fraternal love, we find Christ and grow in our experience with Him. Jesus puts Christian love in relationship with unity: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one”, is the prayer that Christ addresses to the Father, narrated in John 17. Moysés also cites the commandment of Jesus to “love one another as I have loved you”, to explain that the measure of love that God asks of us is to forgive, to give life, to see in another complementarity, not a competition. The founder points out that the sign which distinguishes Christians by the early Church’s love is to love as Jesus did, “to love those who are different from me”, overcoming every division, and seeing that as an opportunity to take a step forward in faith.
- Evangelization. The more we evangelize, the more our faith grows. “When we communicate the faith, it grows”. “To evangelize with charity: this is our mission, this is our call, this is our vocation”.
Translation: Jhoanna Climacosa
Revision: Steven Heiber