Crisis of Faith/Crisis of Love

 by Fr. Thomas Keating

Chapter 2

Deepening Levels of Commitment

The new principle of life won for us by Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, is dynamic and hence must grow and come to maturity. We must give it room to grow.

      This new life is not superimposed on our natural powers like a penthouse on a lovely apartment house. Quite the contrary, for this new life to grow, it has to make use of the place where the old building is standing. This involves a mammoth demolition project, or at the very least, a thorough top-to-bottom renovation.

      Suppose you had a piece of property on Wall Street with an old dilapidated tenement standing on it. It would be too expensive to buy a new piece of property and build a new building alongside the old. You would remove the old building and put the new one in its place.

      Now we have only one small plot in the whole of creation over which God has given us full control and responsibility, that is, our own being. There is room for only one building: the one we have constructed, or the one God wants to construct. We must choose.

      The crisis that we are speaking about is not limited to one or two events. Like coming to adolescence or adulthood, there are a series of experiences, one building on the other, the whole producing a new and stable level of life.

      There are two great crises in the process of spiritual maturity. The centers of gravitation around which these two crises revolve are faith and love. Of course, the theological virtues are organically connected—growth in one is growth in the others. It is rather a question of emphasis. The emphasis in the first crisis is on the growth, purification, and strengthening of faith; in the second, on the growth, purification, and deepening of love.

      For the present let us consider only the first crisis, that of faith. In John’s gospel we have the following scene.[1]

      Jesus was on his way to Cana. Along came a royal official from Capernaum, pleading, “Come down and heal my son!”

      Jesus showed great reluctance to go, saying, “Unless you see striking signs of power, you do not believe.”

      But the man cried out in desperation, “Sir, come down now. My son is on the point of death!”

      Jesus replied, “You go. Your son is healed.” The man went down and at the same hour—the Gospel is careful to bring that point out—the very moment Jesus uttered the words, the fever left the boy.

      Another scene.[2] This time it was at Capernaum. Along came a centurion and said to Jesus, “My slave is sick and is suffering frightfully.”

      Jesus said, “I will come down right away and heal him.” The centurion objected, “On no! Just say the word and my servant will be healed. I am unworthy that you should come under my roof.”

      In these two instances we see Jesus adjusting himself to men possessing different degrees of faith. The first man believed in the power of Jesus’ presence. His weak faith required the physical presence of Jesus. He did not apparently believe that Jesus could heal his little son without coming down and physically laying his hands upon him. He is a symbol of those who need to feel the sensible presence of the Lord, at least from time to time, to sustain their faith. And what does Jesus do? He refuses to go down.

      Why? Because the absence of his physical presence is to be the occasion of increasing this man’s faith. When the royal official went back to Capernaum believing in Jesus’ word and found that everything was as Jesus had said, then he came to believe in the power of his word alone. I repeat, the absence of the felt presence of the Lord is his normal means of increasing our faith and of getting us to the point of believing in the power of his word alone, without “signs and wonders,” that is to say, without the feeling of his presence or external props.

      It is a crisis of faith that he puts the royal official through, and with great success. From that time on, he believed. In fact, his whole household got the benefit of his growth in faith.

      The centurion had a greater degree of faith. He already believed in the power of Jesus’ word alone. That is why Jesus was quite willing to go with him. Jesus showed himself most accommodating. This gave the centurion the opportunity of manifesting his high degree of faith.

      Jesus was astonished and delighted with this manifestation of faith. “I haven’t found such faith in all Israel!” He cried out.

      Then he said to the centurion: “My dear friend, since you believe, you can have anything you want.”

      Jesus reveals his secrets in the ins and outs of these two gospel narratives. They are worth studying carefully. He wants very much to give us his gifts, but our weakness and our individual psychology requires that he proceed with caution, with a certain diplomacy. He can only give us what we are capable of receiving at the present moment. The events that he allows or causes to happen, if we respond with faith, give him the chance to increase our faith. He did not go down to the bedside of the royal official’s son because the man needed to have his faith increased before Jesus could put himself, so to speak, at the disposal of his desires.

      We are not much different from our friends in the gospel. Each of us is more or less a problem, Jesus responds to us according to the degree of faith which we have right now.

      The crisis of faith does not just revolve around our relationship with the Lord, it revolves around all our relationships. With our neighbor, our boss, those we are trying to help.

      Take a concrete example. Here we have someone in the same spiritual state as the royal official. He has great faith in Jesus, great courage in the service of God, an exemplary Christian; but only so long as he is sustained not by faith alone in Jesus’ word, but by consoling experiences. He gets hopped up once in a while at the liturgy over some feast or other, especially if the hymns are well sung.

      Jesus says to himself: “I think this person has been long enough in the stage of infancy. Let’s see if he can exercise his muscles a little bit and those legs of his and walk on his own feet.” And so, he removes his consoling presence.

      At the same time there may be someone who is a great help to this good soul, but too much so. And Jesus asks himself, “I wonder how much this lad is really serving me, or how much he is relying on this other guy? Does he really put his faith in me? Well, I think I’ll find out.”

      He may cause a little rift. By way of example, let us consider a crisis of obedience in the life of a young religious. The superior asks him to do something which interferes with the little program of sensible consolations that he has lined up for himself. He wants peace and quiet and that requires a job with no responsibility. So along comes this assignment that threatens his little plan. And so he cries out to the Lord: “My little nest is threatened! Come down and save me!”

      But the Lord replies, “Unless you have all those consolations, I doubt if you would serve me. I doubt if your faith would hold up.

      He cried out louder and louder, “Come down! Come down!”

      Jesus answers, “I’ll take care of the situation without coming. Just believe that I am handling the situation, and go your way in peace.”

      Then he is presented with this dilemma: “Shall I believe the Lord? Shall I base myself on his word or not?” That is the crisis.

      There is not just one of them. There are a whole series of them, one right after the other. Out of the first ten, he may miss eight. Fortunately God keeps asking, keeps returning, keeps leading him on like a father his little son whom he is trying to teach to walk. He takes a few steps, falls down, gets up and takes a few more.

      How many have the courage and faith of his royal official, and as soon as Jesus says, “Well now, that’s the end of all of these sensible consolations and props,” turn around, square their shoulders, and walk right back to Capernaum?

      One more incident which exemplifies the way God works, this time in the case of those very close to him. I am thinking of the family of Bethany that Jesus loved so much. Lazarus had fallen desperately sick and Mary and Martha sent Jesus a message saying: “Please, Lord, your dear friend is ill.”[3]

      Lazarus was actually close to death and the two sisters wanted him very much to be cured. Yet they did not really ask for anything. They just laid the problem before him. They believed in the power of Jesus’ physical presence. They evidently believed too in the power of his word alone, because they didn’t ask him to make the trip. He was busy and they did not want to bother him. All they wanted to do was say: “Here’s the problem. You handle it.”

      The gospel says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus.” But the next sentence has a strange ring to it: “When he heard, therefore, that Lazarus was sick, he tarried there two days.”

      A plan was forming in the back of his mind. He knew he could trust these special friends. He recognized in this event a good occasion to raise their faith and love to new heights. Perhaps he had been waiting for this occasion for a long time. He knew they desperately wanted him to come. He loved them. And yet, “He tarried there two days,”—that is, he ignored them for two days.

      If God loves you very much, do not expect that he is going to be on the job the moment that you have need of him. On the contrary, he appears not to be on the job. But he is on the job more than you think. He has things all planned in the back of his mind. He feigns disinterest. He ignores you for the moment. But that is the surest sign of something wonderful about to happen. When Jesus finally came to Bethany, he raised Lazarus from the dead.

More information can be obtained by reading the book Crisis of Faith/Crisis of Love by Fr. Thomas Keating.  It is offered in our bookstore.