This semester, like all my previous ones here, is absolutely flying past.  The days are blurring into weeks and the weeks are quickly becoming months.  It's awesome, because the reason for this "warp-speed" semester is that I am constantly doing something, and, to be quite honest, I'm enjoying every bit of it.  But, it is also scary because this is my last semester in college (and college-seminary) and that means that next semester I'll be moving onto the next stage of seminary - theology - and it also means that I am quite possibly only 4 years away from ordination.  Is that exciting? - for sure!  But it is also scary.  I've come a long way since entering seminary (an incredibly long way), but I am nowhere near ready - humanly, spiritually, pastorally, or academically - to be a priest.  Yeah, I'm 4 years off - I still have time - but the more I'm in seminary the more I realize that this is not about me.  Everything I am experiencing is making me better, more balanced, more educated, more confident, more loving, and more self-knowledgeable.  I am having a blast with everything - every day brings new challenges, new adventures, and new knowledge - all things that aid me in the process of self-growth.  However, the more important thing that I am learning is total reliance on God - completely giving myself to Him.  The thing is that being a priest isn't about being a great version of myself, but conforming myself more and more to Christ.  Obviously, becoming more like Christ means becoming better myself (because He is the epitome and perfection of what it means to be a man), and being a priest doesn't mean losing one's specific, unique, personality, traits, talents, and what-not.  But it does mean directing oneself completely to Christ and for Christ.  It means trusting Him completely in everything, in having that childlike faith.

When I first entered seminary, I think I was under the impression that I was pretty good.  I mean, I knew that I had things to learn, places that I could grow, areas that I needed to work on, but I almost always thought about it as me working on these things - if I put in enough effort in all these areas I'd eventually make myself capable of being a priest.  Well, long story, that's something that seminary quickly made me rethink.  Philosophy is great, it allows you to explain things and understand things that I had no conception of before studying it.  It also makes you think about things more logically, more reasonably, more completely, but one thing it can't do is replace faith.  This is something that I have been especially struggling with over the last semester or two, but haven't been able to put into words really.  About a year ago I did a post about faith (part one) and skimming back through it I think I did a pretty good job of explaining the virtue.  But looking back, at the time I had never struggled with faith, it was just something that I had been blessed to have.  Now, for whatever reason, it isn't nearly as easy.  

In one of my philosophy classes, the professor has reiterated again and again that humans are unique in that we have intellect and will.  Some really basic definitions: intellect is our capacity for reason, will our capacity to choose.   He keeps teaching that becoming excellent (virtuous) means perfecting both of these powers of ourselves.  Intellect is perfected through learning and reasoning - in other words, everything I am learning in school plus the common sense and practical wisdom that I learn in everyday life.  Will, however, isn't nearly as easy to perfect.  It requires not only choosing to do good and avoid evil (hard enough, right), but also to choose to accept those things that are beyond our intellect.  We have to consciously choose to accept, for instance, the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Resurrection.  These kinds of things, what Aquinas calls the articles of faith, can't be proven by reason.  Certainly, they aren't irrational (contrary to our intelligence), but we can't rationally show that God became man, or that God is three persons.  We can think about them in such a way to know that they aren't impossible - as in, we can know that God is loving and all powerful, so He is certainly capable (and it makes some sense) that He would become a man to redeem us.  But, there is always some sense that these truths of faith are beyond our reason.  Without God revealing these truths we would never have known them.  

Alright, back to where I was going originally.  Rationally, I understand that there are certain things, Aquinas calls them the preambles of faith, that we can figure out about God using only our reason - thing like God being perfect, good, simple, eternal, etc. - and rationally, I know that the mysteries of faith aren't irrational, they make some sense.  However, it isn't easy to connect these rational arguments in my intellect to my will, to believe them out of faith, to hold them in my heart.  I have relied on myself - my ability to grow, my ability to know, my ability to overcome - so much that I have, to some extent, forgotten just how important it is to rely on God, to just accept some things on faith.  In class, when we're talking about the will, it seems so easy to choose to accept the truths of the faith.  To decide that I will believe.  But then I get to Mass and it's so hard to believe, so hard to just accept, so hard to not rely on my reason, my knowledge, my senses, and just accept, just trust, just abandon myself completely to God.

Thankfully, there are a bunch of saints who have struggled with the same sort of thing.  Peter doesn't just waver in His commitment to Christ (like most of the other apostles) he denies Him.   Thomas the Apostle doesn't believe that Jesus rose from the dead until he saw it with his own eyes.  Blessed Mother Theresa, famously, struggled to feel God's presence throughout most of her "career", while living one of the greatest witnesses of Christianity that the modern world has seen (of course there are other great such witnesses, but her's always seems to stick out).  Now, by bringing up these examples, don't think I'm experiencing some huge crisis of faith but, I do think they are inspiring examples of how faith sometimes is tough, but sticking with it leads to even greater sanctity later on.  Our Lord offers St. Peter the chance at reconciliation - which he accepts - and keeps him as head of His church.  Jesus comes directly to St. Thomas, offering proof that He did rise from the dead and this apostle goes on to preach the Gospel as far as India.  Blessed Mother Theresa, as mentioned, despite her doubts, lived one of the saintliest lives of the last few centuries.

One more Biblical example, then onto a conclusion for this post!  A few weeks back, and again recently, the ending of the Gospel of Matthew jumped out at me:

"Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.  And Jesus came and said to them, "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." [Matthew 28:16-20]

Here are the apostles, all having already met Jesus after His resurrection, and yet in what would be their last meeting with Him (on earth), they still doubted.  And despite their doubt, despite their reservations about worshiping Jesus, He still gives them the mission to found His church, proclaim His message.  I heard a talk once in which it was mentioned that Jesus didn't have a plan B, He entrusted the gospel of salvation, and the grace that He had just won on the cross, to 11 bumbling, arguing, doubting, guys.  Doesn't look like it will work does it?  Yet it does, and the Church continues to this day.

Back onto topic: I just got an email from Ignatius Press which had a quote from G.K. Chesterton: "A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is." [The Well and the Shallows]  That, precisely, is the idea that I have been trying to outline in this post.  It hit me at Mass a few days ago - I was serving (something that I usually get to do when I am home on break) and right at the Consecration I just prayed that I have the faith and trust in God to submit my intellect, my reason, to His.  Seriously, there is no way I will ever be able to prove the Eucharist.  There is no test - scientific, philosophical, whatever - through which I can prove that Our Lord is present - Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity - in the Blessed Sacrament.  Still, this lack of evidence isn't proof that He is present there, just that He is beyond me, and all my empirical abilities.  This realization isn't easy, and it isn't easy to carry it into the rest of my faith life, because - as humans - we really want to rely on ourselves, our rationality, our abilities, our technology, but the message of Christianity is precisely the call to go beyond that - to believe in God becoming man, to believe that God loves us so much that He is willing to die for us, to believe that He wants to give Himself to us so much that He becomes present in what looks, and tastes, and feels like bread.  That's tough!  That's faith!

Now, of course I don't want to just end on this note saying that faith is hard, that just isn't very helpful...  This Sunday we hear of the Transfiguration, which in Mark's gospel is immediately followed by the story of Jesus healing the boy with the evil spirit (we'll hear the story from St. Matthew's Gospel, but it turned out to be a great segue into what I wanted to say):

"and someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.”  And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me. And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.  And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.  And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”  And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”  Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”  And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”  And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.”  But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.  And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”  And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” [Mark 9:17-29]

Sorry, that is a pretty long passage, but it makes precisely the point that I wanted to conclude with.  Faith, as you know, is a theological virtue, it's something that we receive from God at Baptism; we can't acquire it on our own.  This is exactly the thing that I am finally realizing in seminary - that I can't do it all on my own, that I can't prove everything with my own reason - and this is exactly what the distraught father in this Gospel has realized in his prayer: "I believe, help my unbelief!"   This prayer is what I have been especially praying this Lent, that I can become more reliant on God and less on myself, that He might increase and I decrease.  As I began this post, this is exactly what being in seminary is all about, but now I have realized that the all-important bit here is prayer.  The increase of faith, the greater trust and reliance in God, all comes along with prayer.  The man in this story, by his very prayer - "I believe, help my unbelief!" - indicates his humility, his willingness, to completely abandon himself to Jesus.  Of course, prayer isn't magic, it doesn't just increase faith spontaneously, but it is precisely through prayer that we make ourselves open to receiving the grace of faith.   

Of course, this grace is most profoundly received in the Eucharist.  Here, though appearing like bread, we receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is the fount of all grace, the greatest gift that Jesus died to give us, and this must be the source of our faith.  I guess I previously kind of forgot that the Eucharist, while, of course, being the Body of Christ, is also the food for our journey, the sustenance that supports us on throughout this life.  I was like, gosh Lord, I'm sorry that I am struggling to believe, help my unbelief...  But then I realized that thinking of the Eucharist only in terms of how difficult it was to believe at times was missing the point.  The Eucharist is not only the true presence of Our Lord, but it is also the source of that Faith for which I was longing.  The Faith is not only about the Eucharist, but is also supplied by the Eucharist.  With that realization, I have found myself making progress, my faith is strengthening, I am finding it easier to place my trust, and my future, in the Lord.  His call to "be not afraid!" continues to ring true despite the times when I doubt it.  Am I ready to finish this semester, to move onto major seminary, to become a priest? - of course not.  But with His strength, courage, grace, love, commitment, hope, and everything else, I am confident that all will be well. 

Like the Apostles at the Transfiguration, it is good that we are here, it is good to have those moments when our Faith is strengthened so that we can remain strong when things aren't going as well, when the world distracts or discourages us.  

Stay strong folks!