How many glasses of water did you drink yesterday? For the sake of good health, we are advised to drink eight glasses a day but few of us really keep track. When water is ample, we give little thought to its value, but when it is scare, we treasure every drop for without water, we cannot live. Habakkuk is suggesting that without faith we cannot live either.
Fr. Daniel Barrigan, a Jesuit, once said, “The attitude of faith is no more easily described than a glass of water: colorless, tasteless, and odorless, but still mysteriously refreshing, and held up to the light of day, a prism that captures all the delight and mystery of the world.” What a beautiful reflection on water and faith! So ordinary yet at the right temperature, water can be so refreshing. Faith can be described in much the same way.
Contrary to popular perception, faith is not necessarily religious, nor even an element to be equated with belief. The first definition of faith is confidence. If we don’t have much faith in something, we are saying that we lack confidence in it. Faith is a person’s way of leaning into and making sense of life. Everyone who chooses to go on living operates by some basic faith, whether he is an atheist, an agnostic or one who believes in God.
The apostles said to Jesus, “Increase our faith,” and he answered, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Instead of answering their plea, Jesus is suggesting that what matters in life is not the quantity but the quality of their faith.
Faith should not be seen as a commodity that someone else has but you don’t. To the contrary, we all have faith or we would not even be alive for faith is as essential to the being as water is to the body. What matters is how readily we value and nurture the faith we have.
Years ago, while in the seminary, I ran across a book entitled, The Precious Present, by Spencer Johnson, co-author of The One Minute Manager. “What might that be?” I wondered as I opened the book. Instead of being a physical object, Dr. Johnson made the point about how precious this moment in time truly is.
He wrote, “The present is what is. It is valuable. Even if I do not know why. It is already just the way it is supposed to be. When I see the present, accept the present, and experience the present, I am well, and I am happy.
“Pain is simply the difference between what is and what I want it to be. When I feel guilty over my imperfect past, or I am anxious over my unknown future, I do not live in the present. I experience pain. I make myself ill. And I am very unhappy.
“My past was my present. And my future will be my present. The present moment is the only reality I ever experience. As long as I continue to stay in the present, I am happy forever; because forever is always the present.”
St. Paul urges us, “Beloved: I remind you, to stir into flame the gift of God you have through the imposition of my hands.” This reminds me of embers in a fireplace. If you stir them, flames burst forth, but if the embers are left untouched, they slowly go out. Likewise, we are urged to stir the embers of our faith, God’s gift to us today. What we did yesterday or plan to do tomorrow will not keep our faith alive today when it matters most for this is the moment when God is most present to us.
Last week, I heard on the news that in a survey on religious knowledge, when asked what best describes the Catholic teaching on Eucharist, barely a majority of Catholics responded that the gifts of bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. Forty percent see the bread and wine as symbols, as did the majority of other Americans surveyed.
Perhaps they wonder how we can believe that bread and wine become something else when they remain for all outward purposes still bread and wine. That is where faith steps in. I remain confident in what Jesus proclaimed at the Last Supper when he said the words, “This is my body…this is my blood of the new covenant.” If God can create the universe out of nothing, who am I to limit what God can do and if God says that our gifts become the body and blood of his Son, my faith and hopefully yours responds, “Amen!” to what takes place during the consecration. With faith, we believe in a deeper transformation than our senses can perceive.
We also hold that we too are transformed when we receive Eucharist in a state of grace. By uniting us even closer to Jesus, Holy Communion separates us from sin for just as our gifts are transformed into Christ, he in turn transforms us into him. By virtue of our faith, we become the body of Christ, his presence in the world today.
For those who demand proof, I can offer none but the awareness that not everything can be proven, certainly not faith, yet as I said earlier, faith is very much a part of our human existence. In Hebrews, we read, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Blasé Pascal had this to say about faith, “It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.” Like water and the present moment, faith is a gift from God that is to be appreciated and put to use in our lives. With the help of the Holy Spirit, faith can make us strong, loving and wise, giving us what we need to move the “mulberry trees” in our lives.