So often, we think of faith as a sentiment, a fuzzy feeling of trusting in a vague God "up there" somewhere.

Faith is an Action // The Faithfulness Project

But that's the luxury of faith in a place of relative comfort, safety, and security.

Faith was neither fuzzy nor vague for our early Christian brothers and sisters who faced the prospect of being torn apart by lions or cut down by gladiators for the amusement of spectators.

Faith was not a mere sentiment for Dietrich Bonhoffer, who he risked his life, and ultimately lost it, by defying the evil regime of Hitler.

Countless others faced all-too-real, visceral, painful consequences for their faith.

True faithfulness, then, is not reflected in intensity of feeling, but in commitment to action.

I had an opportunity to contemplate and experience this firsthand, as I prepared to jump out of an airplane for the first time. I was a Marine Corps officer at the time, attending the Army's Airborne school, where troops become paratroopers, trained to parachute out of aircraft as a means of getting to places where those planes cannot land.

I must confess, the prospect of jumping out of an aircraft in flight, thousands of feet up in the air, was frightening. I was not enjoying a serenity of faithfulness. Rather, I faced the need to step out by faith, regardless of my feelings.

As it turned out, within a class of a couple hundred, I was assigned to a group of fellow trainees that included an Army Chaplain, an ordained minister in uniform. During our training, we had many opportunities to talk about our faith, and it was in those conversations where we remembered and reinforced this truth: faith is an action, not a feeling.

Our faith in God's will for us to be there, our faith in our instructors, and our equipment, our faith in the ability to successfully and safely complete the jump, was not manifested in a sense of peace when the aircraft doors opened and the cold air rushed in as we prepared to jump; it was manifested in our stepping out of the aircraft anyways…

As the faithfulness of Jesus Christ was manifested on the cross, so our faithfulness must be manifest in our actions, as we live by His example and live in accordance with His will for our lives.

“All that is earthly – no matter how much or how beautiful – comes to an end. But God’s Word is eternal.”

It was this singular conviction, buoyed by a clarity of conscience, that gave Franz Jagerstatter the courage to refuse participation in the evil of Hitler’s depraved ideology and military conquests, even at the cost of losing his own life. 

But the path to a life marked by sacrifice seemed initially as unremarkable as any farmer’s upbringing in the Austrian village of St Radegund. Jagerstatter was born in 1907 to an unmarried farm servant, educated in a one room schoolhouse, as pious as the next churchgoing villager in an area steeped in Catholicism, but also prone to fistfights and other mischief.

His deepening faith as a young man could in part be attributed to Franziska Schwaninger, the devout woman he married, though there were already signs of greater dedication to the affairs of the Church. Together, they had three daughters and lived a happy but ordinary life, attending to their family and farm. But they also increasingly incorporated regular Mass attendance, the Rosary and other prayerful devotions into the rhythms of their daily life, along with significant involvement in their local parish. It was a time of fruitful spiritual growth for the couple.

In 1938, Austria officially joined the Third Reich, with the support, at least outwardly, of the Catholic hierarchy. Jagerstatter went away in 1940, as most men did, for a stint of military training, aware of the cruel and unyielding goals of the growing Nazi movement. While the hateful, anti-Christian agenda was apparent to the Jagerstatters, there was little opposition voiced by the local bishops or priests. 

His letters home during military training - and later from prison after being arrested in 1943 for his refusal to serve - showed a deep bond of love with his wife and children.  They also revealed Jagerstatter’s absolute conviction that to serve in the Nazi regime would be antithetical to his faith and cause him to fall into a state of sin.  He was unwilling to jeopardize the hope of eternal life with his heavenly Father, even for the joys of earthly happiness with his family.

In many ways, Jagerstatter was alone.  Apart from learning of a Catholic priest, Fr. Franz Reinisch, who had been held in the same prison and executed for holding similar convictions, most of his spiritual mentors, and even his wife, begged him to reconsider his position.  His wife ultimately supported him, a testament to her own deep faith.

 But during his months in prison, three of them in solitary confinement, Jagerstatter knew he was not alone. Aware of the pain his family would experience, he nonetheless trusted in God’s faithfulness to care for his soul and the family he would leave behind.

In his last letter home, Jagerstatter wrote, “I thank our Savior I could suffer for Him and may die for him…I trust in His infinite mercy.  I trust that God forgives me everything and will not abandon me in the last hour.” The priest who accompanied him to his execution later recounted that Jagerstatter faced his execution at peace, and believed Jagerstatter to be the one true saint whom he had ever met.  

Jagerstatter traded the earthly for the eternal, drawing from a deep well of abiding trust in the steadfastness of God’s infinite mercy, and inspiring Christians decades later to draw closer to Him who offers the same gift to us.

For further study:  Jagerstatter’s witness to faith may have remained largely unknown if not for author Gordon Zahn, who brought the story into public consciousness with his 1964 book, “In Solitary Witness.” It subsequently influenced The Second Vatican Council’s more in-depth treatment of the topics of war, peace, conscience, and individual responsibility.  “Franz Jagerstatter: Letters and Writings from Prison” and the 2019 film “A Hidden Life” also offer insights into Jagerstatter,, who was beatified by the Catholic Church in 2007. Unknown to Jagerstatter, his time at Berlin-Tegel prison briefly overlapped with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Protestant pastor and theologian, who was arrested and later executed for assisting Jews and resisting the Nazi regime.

A central aspect of faithfulness in practice is letting go of our own will.

Living a life of faithfulness calls us to yield to the will of the Father, trusting in His sovereignty and plan.

This is, perhaps, the hardest part of a life of faith.

It's one thing to embrace a loving God who saves us, guides us, and blesses us. But it's another to trust a sovereign God who allows pain, suffering, and injustice, for reasons we don't understand, or wouldn't agree with even if we did.

But faith isn't about knowing everything; rather, it's about trusting in the One who does. And Christian faith, specifically, is about following Jesus Christ.

His example is both comforting and terrifying.

He fostered love and compassion, blessed others, served those in need, and shared profound wisdom.

He also allowed a traitor to sell Him to the people who sought His destruction. He remained silent in the court of appeal. And He allowed Himself to be tortured and executed in one of the most horrific and humiliating ways ever devised.

It's impossible for us to see into the mind of Christ. But we do know this much: in the garden at Gethsemane, He cried out to the Father in desperation. In a moment of uncensored agony, He asked that "this cup pass from me."


And yet, in the end, He said, "Thy will be done."

When we contemplate the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, we are gazing at the ultimate example of yielding one's own will, so that the will of God can be accomplished through us.

Faithfulness in practice begins, and ends, in yielding to our Sovereign Lord. Though this, we experience deeper trust in God, intimacy with Him, and become a meaningful part of His work to redeem and restore creation.