XIV — FAITH

Presence of God. — O Lord, let me understand the great value of faith.

Meditation

1 — “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11, 6), because faith is the foundation of our relations with Him. For the man who has no faith, God has no meaning, no place in his life. On the contrary, the more living faith is, the more God enters our life, until He becomes our all, until He is the one great reality for which one lives, for which one courageously faces pain and death. Only when faith has penetrated deeply into a soul can it exclaim with St. Paul: “if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for Him” (Rom. 14, 8). We do not lack faith, but we lack the liveliness, the concreteness of faith that makes us always see God in all things, above all things; that gives us the sense of his essential, transcendent, and eternal reality, infinitely surpassing all the immediate, contingent, passing realities of this life. Faith does not rest on sensible data, on what we see, what we touch; nor is it reduced to what our intellect understands by itself. On the contrary, surpassing all this, it makes us participants in God’s very knowledge, in his thought, in his science. Having raised us to the state of his children, God has made us capable of participating in his intimate life, a life of knowledge and love. For this purpose, together with grace, He has given us the theological virtues: faith makes us share in his life of knowledge, and charity in his life of love. Faith makes us capable of knowing God as He knows Himself, though certainly not exhaustively. God knows Himself not only as Creator, but also as Trinity, as Author of grace, and thus faith presents Him to us. By faith we know creatures as He knows them, that is, in relation to Him, in dependence on Him. Our intellect can give us only a natural light, both about God and about things; faith, instead, gives us supernatural light, as it is a participation in God’s light, in the knowledge He has of Himself and of the world.

2 — St. Thomas says that “faith is a habitual disposition of our mind by which eternal life begins in us”; it is a “principle of eternal life” (QD. de Ver. I, q. XIV, a. 2). In fact, through faith we begin to know God as we shall one day know Him in heaven: there we shall know Him unveiled in the light of glory; here below we know Him veiled through the truth faith proposes for us to believe, and yet it is the same God. Faith and the beatific vision are like two stages of the same knowledge of God: faith gives us an initial, veiled, imperfect knowledge; the beatific vision, in which faith will end, will give us full, unveiled, perfect knowledge. Now “we know in part” - as St. Paul says - “and we are united to knowledge by faith; but when what is perfect comes” - that is, the beatific vision - “what is partial will pass away” (1 Cor. 13, 9-10). St. John of the Cross has a brilliant comparison to make us understand that faith already holds in itself the vision of heaven. He refers to the scriptural fact of Gideon’s soldiers who carried “lighted torches in their hands, hidden inside jars; when the jars were broken, the light immediately appeared. So faith, symbolized by those jars, contains within itself the divine light, that is, the truth of what God is in Himself; and, consumed with the breaking of this mortal life, it will at once let shine forth the light and glory of the Divinity that it contained” (A. II, 9, 3).

The more living our faith is, the more we already enjoy here below an anticipation of the knowledge of God we shall have in heaven. The more living our faith is and informed by love, the more we shall enjoy for all eternity a high degree of glory and therefore of vision of God. Today’s faith must prepare us for tomorrow’s beatific vision; it must make us enter, even now, into communion with God’s thought and knowledge. See how faith raises us immensely above our reasonings and our human thoughts.

Colloquy

“O faith of Christ, my Spouse, I turn to you as to that which encloses and covers within itself the most beautiful figure of my Beloved. You are a clear and limpid fountain free from error, from which flow into the soul the waters of every spiritual good. Thus it is that You, O Christ, speaking to the Samaritan woman, said that in those who would believe in You there would spring up a fountain whose water would rise up to eternal life.

“O faith, so great is the likeness between you and God that there is no other difference than that between God seen and God believed. For as God is infinite, so you propose Him to us as infinite; as He is three and one, so you manifest Him to us as three and one; as God is darkness for our intellect, so you too darken and blind it. And thus, O Lord, by this sole means of naked faith, You manifest Yourself to the soul in divine light that surpasses all understanding. Increase, therefore, O Lord, my faith, because the more faith I have, the more I shall be united with You.

“My soul, since God is inaccessible, seek not to be satisfied with what your powers can understand and your senses perceive, lest you remain content with less and lose the lightness necessary to ascend to God. But walk in faith, naked and pure faith, because only faith is the proximate and proportionate means to your union with God” (cf. J.C. 12, 1-3; A. II, 9, 1; AM. 52).

“O infinite Wisdom, O eternal and infinite God, You will to be understood by your creature because You are supreme Good; and she is capable of You and understands You in the measure You show Yourself to her under the veil of faith; a veil, yes, but luminous, since your word enlightens and gives light to the humble. Yet, as it is impossible that You not be God, so it is impossible that You be fully understood by your creature. O Lord, whoever wishes to ascend to the sublimity of your nature must therefore have great faith. Since You are the highest Good, infinite, immense, and inscrutable, who cannot be understood except by Yourself, the more the soul believes in You, the more it comes to be united with You and to participate in your goodness” (cf. St. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi).