Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.
St Augustine, St Julius Gospel

Faith is the basis of all human endeavour. It gives substance (or assurance) to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we do not see (Heb. 11.1). If we did not have faith in the rational running of the universe, we could not plan our day-to-day activities. If the scientist did not have faith that the phenomena being investigated were rationally organized, his scheme of research would be random, not merely ill-conceived but devoid of all credibility. Since the human mind is a powerful intellectual organ, it can work creatively in a milieu of intelligence, both discovering new facts and moulding the outside world progressively to suit its own concerns. As we are all learning, perhaps too late, the organizing power of the human can be disastrously selfish, destroying in the process of its activities vast expanses of nature, polluting the atmosphere, and finally precipitating its own destruction. It is a sobering thought that unqualified understanding can lead to wholesale suicide.

But there is a higher, nobler faith, the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis. This definition was propounded by Frederic Myers, a nineteenth-century scholar and poet, who was also concerned about the rational investigation of psychical phenomena. Such faith involves values, the three ultimate ones being truth, beauty and goodness (or love). There is no fundamental reason to believe that any one of this triad is authentic; certainly there is often a triumph of falsehood, ugliness and cruelty in our human counsels. And yet we are all strangely attracted to the great philosophical and spiritual ideals inherent in the world's higher religions; even hardened criminals have their own code of justice, unless they are so mentally disturbed as to be incapable of moral judgement.

This higher, nobler faith seems to be a natural quality of the soul. Tertullian wrote, "O witness of the soul naturally Christian" (Apologia, 17), and until we realize the Christ presence within us, we can never be whole people. In the process there may have to be immense suffering, so that the worldly idols that cloud our faith with false understanding, the wisdom of man which is less wise than the foolishness of God (1 Cor. 1.25), are cleared from our vision. Quoting again from Tertullian, "The more they mow us down, the more we grow; the seed is the blood of Christians" (usually rendered, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"). The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, in chapter 11, celebrates the acts of faith of the saints of the Old Testament: against all odds they followed the inscrutable calling of God, and later they understood more and more of the divine purpose; but, like all of us, they had to wait until they died to see the full import of what they had done in pure faith.

In our own lives we may have to proceed in darkness, sometimes acting in a way quite inconsistent with what our peer group, even our family and closest friends, would expect of us. How fortunate we are if we have even one soul friend, a genuine spiritual director, to encourage us on the path! But if we follow the noblest way, learning to get ourselves out of the picture, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, the prophets of Israel, and Jesus himself at Gethsemane, we will understand. Every experience is here to bring us closer to our own completion, which is Christ in (and among) us, our hope of a glory to come (Col. 1.27). Tertullian once again stretches us: "It is certain because it is impossible" (De Carne Christi). For what is impossible for humans is possible for God (Luke 18.27).

Help me, Lord, to be diligently about my business, ever aware of your voice calling me on to new endeavours. Even when I am led into an untravelled path may my faith hold firm, confident that in the end I will see you more fully and do whatever else you require ever more worthily.