XI.

FAITH.

Sola fides sufficit!

What mainly hinders the freedom and happiness of our intercourse with Christ our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is the account we make _of feelings_. In spite of all that can be said to us, we persist in applying this untrustworthy test to our relations with God, the result being discouragement and all its evil consequences.

Feelings are wayward children, all the more refractory often for blandishments and coaxing. Our wisest plan is not to notice them overmuch; to be glad certainly when they show themselves friendly, and when they are unpropitious to let them alone.

Feelings we may dispense with, but faith never. Faith we must follow, lean upon, cling to, with all the more tenacity as the days draw on of which our Lord said: “The Son of man when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth?”[45] With the vehemence that will take no refusal we must constrain her, saying: “Stay with us, because it is towards evening”.[46] Where faith enters and takes full possession, all good things enter with her. We need not go about to seek anxiously for anything else: _Sola fides sufficit!_

* * * * *

Give me, my God, a deep and lively faith in all Your Holy Spirit has revealed and Your Church teaches. Give me this one thing necessary, and it is enough for me. _Sola fides sufficit!_ The faith I ask is a living faith that must needs prove its vitality by good works. Give me the faith that lit up the lives of Your saints. Strengthen my hold on all revealed truth. But give me above all an intense, ever-growing realisation of the mystery of the altar, the central Mystery of our faith.

Realised by me as it was by Your saints, what a change that Presence would make in my life! Mind, heart, imagination, will, views, aims, desires directed to it, absorbed by it--O Jesus, what a transformation this would be! _Sola fides sufficit!_ Lord, increase my faith!

Thou Who of old didst love Thy hand to lay On the dull, vacant eyes that craved for light, Behold, I come to Thee, and crying, pray: O Christ, O Son of David, give me sight! A faith scarce clouded by the mists of earth, A faith that pierceth heaven I ask of Thee, Faith to prize all things by their lasting worth: Thou canst, Thou wilt--O Lord, that I may see!

If we would think more about arousing our faith than exciting our feelings, would not our visits and our communions be the gainers? And would not the affections of the heart often follow the lead of faith? A few minutes spent in trying to bring home to ourselves that He Who is really present a few yards from where we sit or kneel is the world’s long-promised Messiah, Whose advent kings and prophets desired to see; Whom in His own time all men desired to see and hear; He at Whose feet Mary sat at Bethany, unmindful of all but that Face and that Voice; He Whose words--“Peace be still,” “Thy brother shall rise again,” “Go, and now sin no more”--brought hope and joy to the troubled heart; He Who fell on His Face under the olive trees, crushed to the earth by my sins; Who died with the thought and the love of me in His Heart that Good Friday long ago; Who is to come again in the eastern sky where every eye shall see Him--a few minutes of earnest dwelling on thoughts such as these will rouse in our souls faith and hope and charity, will kindle humility, sorrow, gratitude, desire--for fuel is furnished for the fire.

“Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” I believe that beneath Your humble veils You are here truly present, O hidden God! I believe the day draws near when You will be the hidden God no more; when I shall see You coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and majesty, all nature trembling at Your approach; whilst the elect lift up their heads because their redemption is at hand.

O Judge of the living and the dead, in that awful day remember me! Remember me when You come to gather Your own into Your kingdom! Remember, I beseech You, in that second coming, how often I have welcomed You at Your hidden coming, and let my heart welcome and leap up to meet You then.

Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, Oro, fiat illud, quod tam sitio, Ut, Te revelata cernens facie, Visu sim beatus Tuae gloriae.

O Jesu, Whom by faith I now descry Shrouded from mortal eye; When wilt Thou slake the thirsting of my heart To see Thee as Thou art, Face unto face in all Thy glad array, ’Tranced with the glory of that everlasting day.

--G. T.

[45] Luke xviii.

[46] _Ibid._ xxiv.