I’ve lost my faith – What can I do?
Every so often one comes across people who will tell you sorrowfully that they have lost their faith. My immediate reaction is to inquire when it was lost. Believe me, after many years of being a priest, if I haven’t at times experienced the absence of God, then I would be living in cloud cuckoo land. We do lose track of him and mistakenly think we no longer believe.
Personally I don’t think faith can ever be lost, but God can be hidden from us. We imagine that he has gone away and left us. It’s much more common than most of us would care to admit. Paradoxically the people who have come to me with this problem haven’t abandoned either their prayers or Eucharistic worship. This is always a hopeful sign. Seeming loss of faith is a Christian affliction. I speak from experience.
In his Talks of instruction, Meister Eckhart said –
“Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure (in faith). I can give you no better advice than to find God where you lost him. As it was when you last had him, so let it be now that he has disappeared and so you will find him again.”
Meister Eckhart was born in 1260 and died in 1328. He was German and a member of the Dominican Order of Preachers. Although he lived so long ago, he has been a constant companion and over the years I have turned to his German Sermons over and over again.
All of us have had peak moments when we have experienced God’s presence. It’s often that which has started us on the Christian journey. In my own life it was a moment in St Paul’s Cathedral when God called me to the priesthood. Nothing was further from my thoughts at the time. It was a hot July day and I was walking back to my digs in Bloomsbury. I happened to go into the Cathedral to cool down. It was the moment that changed by life.
We also need to remember that God is free and there are times when he withdraws his presence and it is for our good. It’s also for our growth. Imagine a parent that never allowed a son or daughter to experience his or her individuality. Instead of bemoaning that we no longer believe we must take a positive step and ask God what he would have us do. It’s a question that St Paul asked God in Acts. “Lord what would you have me to do? We may not receive a direct answer. God doesn’t work in that kind of way. He works more often than not in an oblique way, rather as the setting sun casts a long shadow.
God is absent, dead, or so it seems to us, until round the next bend of the road, we find him again alive. Once again he makes himself known.
“Lord I want to touch the hem of your garment. I know you’re still there and I will go on trusting and loving you
Thank you – just thank you Malcolm
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Thank you Jessica. XX
I trust everyone had a happy and safe St Boscomas. No drinking and driving.
Malcolm – It seems to me that the key here is ‘sorrowfully’; if they really have lost their faith they probably wouldn’t be so sorrowful about it.
I enjoyed Ingmar Bergman’s movie ‘Nattvardsgästerna’ (literal translation The Communion Guests – English title ‘Winter Light’). In one scene, Max von Sydov (playing the part of a parishioner) approaches Gunnar Björnstrand (playing the part of the priest) explaining that he has lost his faith. Shortly after the encounter, Max von Sydov shoots himself. That scene in the movie may well be an object lesson for priests / pastors on how not to treat such encounters.
That, of course, is simply a character from a movie.
I read somewhere that Bergman found the making of that movie extremely liberating; he was finally liberated from the religion that had been oppressing him.
Thanks for adding that interesting comment Jockmcsporran.
The priest had also lost his faith due to the loss of his wife.
In the cold winter in the countryside of Sweden, the pastor Tomas Ericsson is a bitter man living a crisis of lack of faith in God after the death of his beloved wife two years ago. After the mass, Karin Persson seeks out the pastor with her husband, the fisherman Jonas Persson, and tells that Jonas is tormented by an existential crisis when he learns that China has an atomic bomb and intends to commit suicide. Tomas unsuccessfully attempts to comfort Jonas but he is not convincing due to his lack of faith and Jonas kills himself with a shot of rifle in his head. Meanwhile, the schoolteacher Märta Lundberg is in love with Tomas, but the widowed pastor rejects her love with bitter and tough words. In the end, Tomas discusses with the sacristan the true suffering of Jesus Christ in the Passion of Christ.