XIX — LIVED FAITH

Presence of God. — O Lord, grant that faith may be the light that guides me in every circumstance of life.

Meditation

1 — Faith must be the light that illumines all our life and not only our hours of prayer. In prayer you say, “I believe in God the Father almighty,” but a few moments later, faced with a difficult duty, an importunate person, a circumstance that upsets your plans, you forget that all this is willed, is disposed by God for your good. You forget that God is Father and, as such, thinks of your good more than you yourself can think of it. You forget that God is almighty and, as such, can help you in every difficulty. Losing sight of the light of faith, which makes you see all things as depending on God and ordered by Him for your advantage, you get lost in purely human reflections and protests, as if God had no part in your life, or only a very small part. You lose yourself in thoughts like those of one who has no faith. Yes, you believe in God the Father almighty, but you do not believe to the point of recognizing his will, or at least his permission, in every circumstance. Yet until faith penetrates your life to the point of making you consider everything in relation to God and in dependence on Him, you cannot say that the light of faith is the guide of your life. That is, it is, but only partially; how often this true light, which participates in God’s own light, remains hidden under the bushel of your mentality still too human, too earthly! Jesus said that “a lamp is not lit to be put under the bushel, but on the lampstand, so that it may give light to all in the house” (Mt. 5:15). The lamp of faith was lit in you on the day of your baptism, and you must place it high, above all your thoughts and all your reasonings, so that it may illumine your whole life, your whole house: the inner house of your soul, the outer house in which you live, the environment in which you move, the persons with whom you deal.

2 — Whoever lives by faith can repeat the beautiful words of Elizabeth of the Trinity: “Everything that happens is for me a message of God’s excessive love for my soul.” To arrive at this living and profound gaze of faith, you must accustom yourself, in your relations with creatures, to go beyond secondary causes in order to rise to the first Cause, to God, who with his Providence governs all and orders all to his most holy ends. Knowing and believing that He who guides all things is your Father, you will entrust yourself to his government with full confidence and know how to remain serene even in adversity, well convinced that He knows how to use even evil, even men’s errors and even their sins and malice for the good of the elect: “all things work together unto good for those who love God” (Rom. 8:28). The gaze of faith is the most comprehensive and concrete gaze because it takes account of the whole reality of creatures and events, considering them not only in their material entity but also in their relation of dependence on God. The more you know how to look at everything in this light, the more you will approach God’s infinite wisdom, and the more you will judge according to God’s infallible truth. Thus the gaze of faith will make it less difficult for you to accept certain painful situations, certain bitternesses of life, because even in them it will make you perceive the fatherly hand of God, who orders everything to your sanctification. If, judging these things from the human point of view, you are tempted to protest, to assert your reasons, your rights, to rebel against treatments unjust in themselves, then, by raising your gaze to God and considering that He permits all this to exercise you in virtue and to urge you to holiness, you will have the strength to accept everything in peace and to remain benevolent toward those who make you suffer. At the same time, remember that faith is a dark light for your intellect, and therefore it will often ask you to believe in God’s wise and loving governance without understanding anything of it, indeed while things seem rather the contrary. Precisely in this consists true life of faith, and the “just man lives by faith” (Rom. 1:17).

Colloquy

“My God, to please You and obtain much from You, I must simply believe in your love, your power, and the sweetness of your gifts. I must believe that You desire to communicate them to me and that your desire far surpasses mine to receive them. I must believe this, because the just man lives by faith. I want to be like a loving daughter who does not want to see or know what means You will choose to bestow your ineffable goods on me. I must only believe it, because the just man lives by faith.

“O Lord, You penetrate everywhere with your goodness, with your individual and infinite love, and with your omnipotence. Give me a faith so simple that, without any reflection, I may move and remain in this truth as in my center and in a refuge of peace where nothing can strike me if I remain well hidden there. O Lord, You love me more than I love myself and You can do all things. You will, before every other thing, my good; I must believe that You desire it more than I do. Here I am before You constantly and at all times, because I know that acts of perfect adoration and abandonment are all the more true, humble, and simple when, deprived of every feeling, they are expressed with the sole support of faith... above all when the soul, in its lower part, sees and touches the profound void in time and in eternity. Well then, O Lord, grant that in these states I may remain, through faith, more than ever present before You. O wonder! When it pleases your divine goodness, the soul can, in its higher part, feel itself flooded with peace even while the storm continues. O ineffable peace that surpasses every feeling, you forever detach us from the sensible and make us run toward pure faith as toward the only source of a divine good of which you are the ineffable and thousand-times-blessed fruit” (cf. Bl. M. Teresa Soubiran).

“O Lord, how sweet it is to serve You amid the darkness and the pain, having only this life in which to live by faith” (cf. T.B.G. CR.).