Quote of the Dei (# 7)

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"Faith is what gets you started.

Hope is what keeps you going.

Love is what brings you to the end."

 

– Mother Angelica

Only a Real Risk Tests the Reality of a Belief

photo courtesy of Gallo Quirico

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box.

But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice.

Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?

The title and above quote are taken from “A Grief Observed” – a book written by C.S. Lewis that documents the crisis of faith and the grief he experienced after the death of his beloved wife.

Indeed, only during moments of despair do we truly discover the real depth of our faith or lack thereof.

I offer a prayer for anyone who stumbled upon this entry and is undergoing a personal ordeal.

And, if it’s not too much to ask, can you please send one this way as well?

May God grant us the grace to find our ropes strong enough to hold on to during our times of need.

Faith and Grace

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A recent survey reveals that around 90% of the scientists from the prestigious United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS) are either atheist or agnostic. I wonder why belief in God’s existence is rejected by today’s most brilliant minds. A few years back, one of the most successful entrepreneurs I know told me his reason for unbelief: “the problem with faith is that it has so many gray areas”. A sharper man I’ve never met, but I plainly can’t bring myself to agree with his logic; for me, faith simplifies and paints everything in black and white.

I remember a joke I heard: “It’s good that being smart is not necessary for salvation, otherwise we’d have to get a master’s degree to get into heaven”. Kidding aside, faith and reason are equally essential in the quest to know God. Pope John Paul II wrote: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth”; we simply can’t hope to see God, hence Truth, without one or the other.

Discussing the correlation (or lack of) between intelligence and a/theism with a friend, I proudly shared my conclusion: “Faith is a gift”, only to be humbled seconds later by my friend’s: “Faith is not a gift but is rather a grace”. “The difference?” I asked. “A gift is something that can simply be given to anyone; grace is given only to those who ask for it.”  I couldn’t have been happier to be corrected.

“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.” – Blaise Pascal

A Father Who Keeps His Promises (by Scott Hahn)

Everybody felt it: a moment of eerie silence, a low rumble and then the ground began to shake. Buildings swayed and buckled, then collapsed like houses of cards. Less than four minutes later, over thirty thousand were dead from a magnitude 8.2 earthquake that rocked and nearly flattened Armenia in 1989.

In the muddled chaos, a distress father bolted through the winding streets leading to the school where his son had gone earlier that morning. The man couldn’t stop thinking about the promise he’d given his son many times: “No matter what happens, Armand, I’ll always be there.”

He reached the site where the school had been, but saw only a pile of rubble. He just stood there at first, fighting back tears, and then took off, stumbling over debris, toward the east corner where he knew his son’s classroom had been.

With nothing but his bare hands, he started to dig. He was desperately pulling up bricks and pieces of wall-plaster, while others stood by watching in forlorn disbelief. He heard someone growl, “Forget it, mister. They’re all dead.”

He looked up, flustered, and replied, “You can grumble, or you can help me lift these bricks.” Only a few pitched in, and most of them gave up once their muscles began to ache. But the man couldn’t stop thinking about his son.

He kept digging and digging – for hours … twelve hours … eighteen hours … twenty-four hours … thirty-six hours … Finally, into the thirty-eight hour, he heard a muffled groan from under a piece of wallboard.

He seized the board, pulled it back, and cried, “ARMAND!” From the darkness came a slight shaking voice, “Papa…!?”

Other weak voices began calling out, as the young survivors stirred beneath the still uncleared rubble. Gasps and shouts of bewildered relief came from the few onlookers and parents who remained. They found fourteen of the thirty-tree students still alive.

When Armand finally emerged, he tried to help dig, until all his surviving classmates were out. Everybody standing there heard him as he turned to his friends and said, “See, I told you my father wouldn’t forget us.”

That’s the kind of faith we need, because that’s the kind of Father we have.

Reference/s:
Hahn, Scott (1998). A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God's Covenant Love in Scripture. Servant Books.

An Atheist's Faith

An atheist and a priest debating about the existence of God...

Atheist: "Prove to me that there’s a God and I’ll become a Christian."

Priest: "Oh, no, you don’t. You’re in the minority in this world. You prove to me that there isn’t a God and I’ll become an atheist!"

Atheist: "We’ll, I can’t."

Priest: "What? You believe in something you can’t prove? My dear, that means you have faith. Faith is believing in something you can’t prove. And if you’re right, if there is no God, you’re never going to know it. But if I’m right, and there is a God, you’re going to know it forever and ever!"

Reference/s:

Angelica, Mother M. and Christine Allison (1996). Mother Angelica's Answers, Not Promises. Ignatius Press.