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Good
Friday, Cycle B
St.
Francis De Sales Church
April 3,
2015
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 dark 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 like to go, nor is it a place we want
to go.
And here we find ourselves on Good Friday, and of
all the days of the liturgical year, Jesus teaches us today that we have to
arrive at that difficult point where we don’t know what is going on or what we
can do.
Yet, it is precisely this point that becomes for
us the sprouting shoot of a true faith.
