August 1, 2021 (Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

by Fr. Xavier Lavagetto, O.P.

This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent?

In chatting about faith with others, I am amazed how often faith is opposed to reason. Dr. Richard Dawkins said it bluntly, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think.”

As agnostics and atheists outnumber believers at university, one wonders if disbelief hasn’t become the socially accepted default position. We are all tempted to be intellectual chameleons to fit in.

Harvard University reported that 39% of its 2019 frosh class identified themselves as agnostics or atheists, while Catholics & Protestants combined numbered only 34%. And these are frosh!

Don’t get me wrong! I deeply respect those who wrestle with questions of God and faith, but sadly most make that choice with little or no reflection. … They slip into it! … That slide is made easier when faith is relegated to the spiritual only as if it were foreign to ordinary living.

Faith and reason are not enemies! Let me suggest that one can have neither faith nor knowledge without the other.

Stanford is rightly proud of its research. It feels mature to view oneself as rational and evidence based. In this view, faith seems a relic of primitive time if not an outright hindrance to science. Let me suggest that faith is imminently rational, and necessary for reason’s achievements and scientific growth. The scientific endeavor begins with the faith that reality is consistent and knowable.

Surprisingly the opposition between faith and reason really took root with the Reformation. Martin Luther betrayed 1,500 years of Catholic thinking when he wrote: Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has. And again: Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding. So much for sola fides.

We can say we know something when it is either (1) evident to our senses, or (2) evident to our reason. … I don’t say I believe it is raining when I am getting drenched. I know it. Nor do I say I believe that one plus two is three if I can count. These are items not of faith but of knowledge.

A moment’s reflection tells us that almost all we say we know is only a belief held on because of the testimony of another. It is a rational trusting of the trustworthy. It is not knowing!

We believe something to be true because we trust another’s experiences or reasoning. Would that we pursued knowledge more often, but we would never get on with living if we had to prove everything from scratch; life is too short. But never to question and verify is self-betrayal.

Such is the division that bedevils our country! … Truth by some is their assertion without evidence or reasoning. We easily accept without question or reflection. Is it any wonder that the nation is divided by group think! … This is not Catholic! Faith is not believing something without evidence! And it is certainly not, using Dawkin’s words, “substituting emotion for evidence.” … That is irrational.

But that is the problem posed by today’s Gospel. Christ says: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. … Too many Americans hear that as a call to blind faith and cognitive castration.

Let me quote a 3rd century Catholic voice. St. Clement, of Alexandria: Do not think … that [Christian doctrines] are only to be received by faith, but also … to be asserted by reason. It is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason. And therefore, he who has received these things fortified by reason never loses them; whereas he who receives them without proofs, by an assent to a simple statement of them, can neither keep them safely, nor is certain if they are true; … he who easily believes, easily yields. (Recognitions of Clement II:69)

The Catholic instinct is faith and reason. The Catholic process is faith seeking understanding by reflecting and questioning. The Catholic goal is truth, that is ultimately God himself!

Catholic moral theology does not rest on raw law, but on right reason in a determined pursuit of truth. Conscience is neither feeling nor instinct, but a reasoned judgment.

Catholic spirituality does not rest on mere emotion, but on that illative sense that connects all the dots, looks for the larger pattern that discovers a larger insight that explains. Our goal is not some transaction, but a relation with God as befits those who are made “in the image and likeness of God himself.”

What was Christ asking when he said: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent? Not some blind faith, but an act of trust in someone they knew. Faith is really a process, advancing us toward greater understanding. It enriches reason, never denies it.

This is where our culture gets in the way. Jesus is not saying what most hear. It is that fidelity to truth discovered and guiding. It gives birth to a reasoned solidarity, loyalty and commitment. Jesus is asking those who knew him, saw him, heard him, ate with him: “Will you trust me? … Will you trust me?

It is not unlike walking on a dark night on an unlit path with a weak flashlight. We don’t see the whole path, but we see enough for the next step and with each advancing step, there is assurance for future ones. … Faith is a rational stepping forward.

In today’s Gospel, the people acknowledged they had eaten the loaves and fishes. They didn’t question the experience. They knew from their very senses, and so they chased him down. … “Hey free food! Let’s make him king!” ... But their knowledge did not give birth to that biblical faith that is trust that connects and guides. Their experience didn’t take them forward because they didn’t reflect and question. Our question is why they went no further and make an act of trust and fidelity. They didn’t ask, Who is Jesus or what it meant?

This is not so different from a great friendship or marriage that advances in mutual understanding and appreciation. It begins with an act of trust, it grows with shared experiences and shared thinking, and it is lived out in fidelity. It is immediately rational.

Yet too many friendships and marriages fail because of a rigidity of mind and heart that failed to reflect and questioning, and learn and become.

The people wanted what Jesus could give, not who Jesus was. … Isn’t that the prayer of so many now? …. God, fix this and I will believe! … These are the same issues of too many failed friendship and marriages. We looked for what we can get, not to the person in front of us. No wonder our hearts starve for some bread of life.

Bottom line: faith is at the very core of our being, a dynamic learning, and our most valued relationships. But if we can’t appreciate how important faith is in the everyday, how do we learn from it for when faith is about what is most important. Our impoverished language impoverishes our experiences and our learning. Be amazed at the important of ordinary faith and it becomes the ground for the extraordinary.

Where do we begin? Let these words from my favorite Rabbi, Abraham Heschel, become your prayer. He wrote:

The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin. Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature. One attitude is alien to [the religious man’s] spirit: taking things for granted, regarding events as a natural course of things. To find an approximate cause of a phenomenon is no answer to his ultimate wonder. He knows that there are laws that regulate the course of natural processes; he is aware of the regularity and pattern of things. However, such knowledge fails to mitigate his sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all. [...]

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder. …. Awareness of the divine begins with wonder