Weekly HOMILY for April 22, 2011: Good Friday -- Doubt, an Essential for Mature Faith

Good Friday, Cycle A
Chestnut Hill College
April 22, 2011

Doubt: An Essential for Mature Faith
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


SR. MARIANNA

A sister friend of mine, Sr. Marianna, once shared with me her story of an intense struggle of faith. She had studied the religious life rigorously and had always sought ways to make it more intense and keep it up-to-date.

Four years ago, Sr. Marianna discovered that she had a rare, painful, and fatal disease. For several years she suffered intense physical pain and discomfort. Eventually everything she believed in collapsed into a deep, dark hole and she lost her faith.

In all her studies and training in spirituality, she never believed she could have such a crisis.

In the days that followed, Marianna was led to a place devoid of spirit, emptied of all spiritual ambition and all satisfaction in what she had accomplished in her life. In this space she found no guides, no hints at where to go next.

But it was precisely in these depths she eventually discovered a new kind of faith, a faith that rose directly out of her depressive thoughts and emotions.

Marianna was shocked to feel faith stir in that deep, empty pit within her. With that stirring she uncovered a new and profound sense of peace: she no longer craved comfort from the hospital chaplain, from me, or anyone else.

This new faith was so deep and different from the faith she had been cultivating in her previous spiritual practices. There was more individuality in this faith; it was tied close to her own identity and to her illness.

Not long after she told me the story of her loss and rediscovery of faith, Sr. Marianna died peacefully in the Lord.


TWO KINDS OF FAITH

From her I learned that there are two kinds of faith: one is faith up here in my head as the holding of certain beliefs. It’s the faith we profess each Sunday in the Nicene Creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty …” Let’s call it head faith.

In many ways head faith is an easy faith; it centers in my rational and mental abilities and gets expressed on my lips.

But I would propose that there is a second kind of faith, a more mature, heartfelt faith. This faith is borne in utter darkness, of the soil of inner struggle and personal suffering, of going one-on-one against the very power of evil. We might call it soul faith.

The transition from head faith to soul faith is the journey that Marianna made in her final months of life. It is the journey of faith Jesus makes, in working through his own passion and dying.

It is the journey that each of us will make one day; a journey some of us are already in. it is the journey that is lived “de profundis,” “from the depths,” as we used to say in Latin.


THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO

What is different between the two is that in the second we admit to the shadow side of our faith.

In it can be found the believer and the disbeliever. What appear as weakness: questioning thoughts, drifting from my commitments, and change in understanding what my faith is actually strengthen faith.

Both the Angel of Belief and the Devil of Doubt in us play constructive roles in soul faith.

Notice that in both Jesus and in Sr. Marianna, their experience of soul faith – complete with the doubts, shadows, and dark side of the human condition – was present. In Jesus it gets expressed with his use of the words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”


CONCLUSION

What Jesus and Sr. Marianna teach us is that the mystery of human suffering and death cannot be comprehended with reason.

It is only understood and embraced in the confronting of that inner darkness and living out of that, with a confidant trust that God will see you through.

Suffering then, forces our attention to the very depths of our souls where we normally don’t want to go.

On this day, of all the days of the liturgical year, Jesus teaches us that we have to arrive at that difficult point where we don’t know what is going on or what we can do. But it is precisely that point that becomes for us the sprouting shoot of a true faith.