These words are from the late Baptist preacher S. M. Lockridge.

In the videos that follow, the always masterful Fr. Barron explains the relationship of trust to a growing faith, using the analogy of falling in love with a person. They may not instantly change anyone’s mind on the respect that a faithful intellect deserves, but they do invite the honest skeptic to consider that the trust demanded of the believer is something that they have both experienced and given at some point.

Commentary from Fr. Barron on what Faith is and what Faith is not

Additional commentary:

Seeing the #OccupyWallStreet protests (whose cause I know little to nothing about) brought that fond memory back to my mind, and in the same spirit of whimsical bewilderment, I want to share and celebrate some playful works of protest:

Remy has many more awesome songs on his Youtube Channel

Moments before freak lightning killed everyone pictured…

Life can be disappointing that way.

A message I’d be delusional not to agree with.

‘The Fourth Watch of the Night’

The background for this event is sinister and brooding, soon after Jesus and His disciples learn of the execution of John the Baptist. Jesus attempts to withdraw to a deserted place, but is accosted by a large crowd, whose sicknesses He heals, and whose stomachs He miraculously feeds, despite the fatigued request of his disciples to send them away. These are uplifting moments within a dark context. We return to that darkness once the crowd is fed, and Jesus again seeks to be alone:

Then he made the disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone. Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles offshore, was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night, he came towards them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. ‘It is a ghost,’ they said, and they cried out in fear. (Matt 14:22-26)

Here, from the vantage point of trying to stay awake through the dead of night, one can imagine all the darkest moments in the spiritual life. For me, this kind of dark, sleepless moment is always an invitation for the the worst kind of doubt, fear, and spiritual apathy to enter my mind. I’m still relatively new at this, but I cannot identity with one popular image of the religious believer: the poor unquestioning soul, whose skull no rational argument against his belief system can penetrate, lest reason bring ruin to the consoling belief in a higher power and life after death. These individuals must exist, for they have clearly antagonized most proactive, clear-thinking atheists I’ve known, but it describes no one I have met so far.

Describing the view from the inside, and giving lie to this particular stereotype, then-future-Pope Benedict XVI’s Introduction to Christianity (written in 1968) deals empathetically and bluntly with a moment, or even a phase of life, that visits every believer:

First of all, the believer is always threatened with an uncertainty that in moments of temptation can suddenly and unexpectedly cast a piercing light on the fragility of the whole that usually seems so self-evident to him… That lovable Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who looks so naïve and unproblematical, grew up in an atmosphere of complete religious security; her whole existence from beginning to end, and down to the smallest detail, was so completely molded by the faith of the Church that the invisible world became, not just a part of her everyday life, but that life itself. It seemed to be an almost tangible reality that could not be removed by any amount of thinking. To her, ‘religion’ really was a self-evident presupposition of her daily existence; she dealt with it as we deal with the concrete details of our lives. Yet this very saint, a person apparently cocooned in complete security, left behind her, from the last weeks of her passion, shattering admissions that her horrified sisters toned down in her literary remains and that have only now come to light in the new verbatim editions. she says, for example, ‘I am assailed by the worst temptations of atheism’. Her mind is beset by every possible argument against the faith; the sense of believing seems to have vanished; she feels that she is now ‘in sinner’s shoes’. In other words, in what is apparently a flawlessly interlocking world someone here suddenly catches a glimpse of the abyss lurking – even for her – under the firm structure of the supporting conventions. In a situation like this, what is in question is not the sort of thinking that one perhaps quarrels about otherwise – the dogma of the Assumption, the proper use of confession – all this becomes absolutely secondary. What is at stake is the whole structure; it is a question of all or nothing. That is the only remaining alternative; nowhere does there seem anything to cling to in this sudden fall. Wherever one looks, only the bottomless abyss of nothingness can be seen. (p. 42)

We are all sometimes in that boat with the disciples, surrounded by ‘The bottomless abyss of nothingness’ keeping the ‘fourth watch of the night’. The fourth damned watch. Where is your God, the memories of the day ask. These memories include the almost casual martyrdom of John the Baptist (beheaded by Herod over a rash vow to reward a dancing girl with whatever she wished) – might that be the bitter, lonely end of a zealous life? They include a miraculous feeding of thousands by the man we’ve chosen to follow; but centuries later, liberal theologians will write this off as His ‘miraculously’ having moved the people to share what they had with each other. And anyway, didn’t this miracle rebuke us, his disciples, who moments earlier had asked Him to send away these very crowds who were adding to an already long day in the religious life? And finally, after sharing so amazing a gift with thousands who would probably later forget Him as one forgets a magician, Jesus sends us away in the boat, while He disappears up the mountain as impersonally as the god of Deism.

And there in the boat are we, in the midst of the Christian life, at odds with the world, at odds with fellow believers, and at odds with God. Every person who has sincerely tried to follow Christ has been in this boat, and this experience is a far more effective argument against the life of faith than any atheist can deliver.

Click to read the second part of this post

‘Come’

Faith is not given as a wave of signs and wonders that forces us to abandon our reason and accept things on the same level that a child accepts a fairytale. Certainly, the Bible is filled with incredible miracles, after which one would think the people who were exposed to them would be filled with unshakeable faith; but faith based simply on signs is merely reactive, an emotional high at best. The same Jews who were led out of Egypt by a fiery cloud through a parted sea forgot within a few years about God’s power and providence, and then complained to Moses that their lives in slavery were in fact more comfortable than following the Lord in the desert. Similarly, after every answered prayer and every beautiful moment in religious life, I ask myself why I would ever doubt the Lord again; but in time, the more worldly routines of life take over, and I try to face struggles my way and forget the Lord, who led me out of my personal Egypt. That is why Faith cannot simply be one attitude overridden and replaced by a spectacular sign or insight. It has to sink into our bones through tests, and become ingrained through relationship with the one who gives us Faith.

Peter asks Jesus to beckon him to do something impossible, to act out of faith and come towards Him on the water. I imagine Jesus with a slight smile at Peter’s impetuousness, as He tells him, “Come.” But come he does, and as long as he was focused on Christ, Peter did walk on water.

But when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:30-31)

When we ask God to prove himself, He responds by asking us to do the impossible. Perhaps it will be to defy physics, as Peter did. More often, God’s test of our faith comes as exhortations to love that go beyond what we feel equipped to do. What I have seen in my own life, and in the lives of genuine believers I know, is that the one true God demands and equips us to make these acts of love. He asks us to give when it seems we have nothing. He asks us to forgive what seems unforgiveable. He asks us to be virtuous and honor His name in a world where so often sin is rewarded and righteousness is a punchline. In short, He asks us, amidst the stormy waters of doubt and fear, to give up whatever fragile security we feel we have in our boats and come to Him, walking on water.  And when we fall, He is there to catch us, to set us back on the right path and to show us that He is the truest power and reality in our lives.

That is how faith is born and strengthened; through the initial inspiration, sign , or wonder that comes from outside ourselves, and the response we offer to God from the place inside us where He resides. We get out of our boats and whatever safety they afford and trust in Him, and as long as we keep our eyes on Him, we do what we think is impossible. Faith is not simply accepting that certain incredible events happened thousands of years ago, or being comforted that somehow life has a meaning that will be revealed after death. Faith is this passionate relationship with God, put repeatedly to the test in the laboratory of our lives, and made stronger for each doubt it conquers.

When we see this, we share in the experience of the characters in this brief passage, and we share in their exhilarating realization of who it is they are following.

After they got into boat, the wind died down. Those who were in the boat did him homage, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

‘It is a ghost!’

Not every sign is true, not every true sign is a miracle, and not every miracle is from God. The unbeliever asserts that what seems like providence is simply coincidence, and what seems miraculous is simply the presently unexplainable. The serious believer must deal not only with those possibilities, but also with a third; that a sudden inspiration or sign may be misleading. That healthy skepticism is not a compromise we make with our faith – secular reason breaking through, if you will -, but a commandment  of faith found in our scriptures:

Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to god, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. (1 John 4:1-3)

This maelstrom of doubt and skeptical reaction is normal and common for most people when God beckons in some way. The disciples in this passage initially react with fear and suspicion to the sight of a strange figure walking towards them across the sea, and their first conclusion is that it is a ghost.

God may not always come to us so theatrically, but when He does, it is usually with the same fundamental effect; breaking the structure, routine, and expectations we have in a way that demands a response. Maybe it is a person in need whom we cannot easily dismiss for some reason. Maybe it is a word of fraternal correction that sticks in our conscience. Maybe it is an event that shatters our security or completely changes our perspectives. To any of those, and other possible signs, we can respond that they are random and meaningless, that their significance can be adequately grasped without changing our present mindsets, or that they are ‘ghosts’ – simply random evils that we cannot get a handle on or explain.

I have written about how the believer faces this doubt, but the experience of doubt for the unbeliever is no less profound. Again, Introduction to Christianity lays out simply and compassionately the dilemma of the unbeliever:

If, on the other hand, the believer can perfect his faith only on the ocean of nihilism, temptation, and doubt, if he has been assigned the ocean of uncertainty as the only possible site for his faith, on the other, the unbeliever is not to be understood undialectically as a mere man without faith. Just as we have recognized that the believer does not live immune to doubt but is always threatened by the plunge into the void, so now we can discern the entangled nature of human destinies and say that the nonbeliever does not lead a sealed-off, self-sufficient life, either. However vigorously he may assert that he is a pure positivist, who has long left behind him supernatural temptations and weaknesses and now accepts only what is immediately certain, he will never be free of the secret uncertainty about whether positivism really has the last word. (p.45)

At this point, Cardinal Ratzinger cites a story from the works of Jewish philosopher Martin Buber that demonstrates a simple and devastating vocalization of this uncertainty:

An adherent of the Enlightenment [writes Buber], a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him too, and shatter his old-fasioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi’s room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly and said, “But perhaps it is true after all.” The scholar tried in vain to collect himself – his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yetschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: “My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.” The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible “perhaps” that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance. (p.46)

Up until about three years ago, I was quite content that no organized religion rose above simple superstition and medieval moralizing. I was quite proficient in laying out sharp rhetoric and strong arguments against adhering to any one of them, particularly the most dogmatic and structured ones. Since then, I have realized that many of those arguments were misguided and immature, but the initial step towards where I am now was taken in being confronted with a series of small events and moments that stated, “perhaps it is true.”

I believe that when faced with doubt in the face of a sign, both the believer and unbeliever have recourse to the same divine assistance. Both can ask, with as much openness as they are sincerely capable at the time, for God – if it is Him, if He exists, if He loves us – to guide us through doubt. Both of us, when we have seen what could be a sign, or a ghost, can ask with Peter, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” (Matthew 14:28)

Click to read the conclusion of this series.

This kind of love and heroism is humbling and breathtaking. Please keep this young widow and her husband in your prayers.

‘He’s my hero’: Wife talks about moment husband gave his life to save her during tornado.

I think May 21st will pass without incident, but perhaps I will avoid driving by the same route that day.

Still, whether Christ returns nine days, years, or minutes from now, this sign does call to mind the following:

“Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:7-8)

Going much beyond my drive home, it is good, in light of this verse, to be reminded that the United States of America in particular, and the West in general, are not the last word in human civilization. All of this will pass away, and whether that comes by divine judgment or economic/cultural decay, one pauses at the thought of what God or even just posterity will find on examining a people so much and routinely enthralled by that which they knew in their hearts to be wrong.

RealCatholicTV as usual has a great commentary on this matter.