By Kathy Berken
On Deck
Theologian Paul Tillich argued that the word faith “belongs to those terms which need healing before they can be used for the healing of men [sic].” He means that the word faith has become so misused and misunderstood, that it has become a hurdle to spiritual wellness, and that the word itself needs to be healed.
I could not agree more! Conversations around faith tend to fall into two categories: our Catholic faith, and faith in God. In the first, our Creed states our beliefs, and our religious practices fulfill those beliefs. Here, faith is the same as belief. However, generally, belief is intellectual while faith is active. We don’t say we believe that one plus one equals two; we simply know it. Belief is not quite knowing. We believe in God because of what we have learned from the Bible, movies, stories, images, etc.
Faith in God goes in a different direction and is the word Tillich calls problematic. Faith in God begins with a foundation of belief and builds an unshakable monument comprised of real-life, heart-felt experiences.
When we confidently say, “I am in the presence of God!” we create a building block for that monument. We start with the times that feel most familiar, those religious practices and traditions where the default is God’s presence: sacraments, holy hour, prayers, sacred music, Scripture, rituals, sacramentals, stations of the cross, etc. It’s almost a given that we are in God’s presence in church. We feel something powerful that is beyond us, and we know that we are on holy ground.
However, our lives are usually not focused on church and religious practices, and yet it is in everyday experiences where we have so many opportunities to feel that God is present. Some examples: walking in the woods, sensing the breeze and the birds; rocking a grandchild; feeling your pet at your side when you feel sad or lonely; sitting at the family table where everyone is talking respectfully and quietly, enjoying each other’s company; witnessing an act of kindness.
Remember that faith in God is not dependent on outcome. You have added to your faith when you have acted on your awareness of God’s presence, and often that is simply by acknowledging the experience. When the man in Mark 9:24 takes his son to Jesus for healing, the man’s faith is already established by his belief in Jesus and his subsequent asking for help. Even if Jesus did not heal his son, the father’s faith was increased by his actions.
We are building our monument of faith from all of our experiences when we feel something that is outside of us; when we feel peaceful, joyful, or grateful. At this moment of awareness, we acknowledge that we are in God’s presence, that is when we add our building block to our masterpiece. It is a profound spiritual practice to build our faith in a way that is solid and real, placing faith stones on our structure, held together with the mortar of awareness. Growing our faith in this way is a progressive set of actions that remind us how profoundly evident it is that God is always with us.
As our monument of faith grows taller, it stops being just a thought, an intellectual belief. It becomes visible to the people around you, and is a beacon of hope to others. Once you decide to create your monument of faith, you will never be able to say that you have no faith or that you lost your faith, because you have concrete evidence right in front of you that can never go away.
We can help Paul Tillich heal the word faith as we discover it as a virtue of action, based on our belief in God and deep emotional awareness of God’s presence.
(Kathy Berken is a spiritual director and retreat leader in St. Paul, Minnesota. She lived and worked at L’Arche in Clinton — The Arch from 1999-2009.)
