“At Mass, the liturgical spiel makes me feel like I’m in a parallel world. I feel like a stranger.” Claire, mother of three young children, has had a “crisis of faith” for two years, which has kept her away from Sunday practice. The Christian community? “I heard xenophobic remarks there,” she grumbles. Often, it is a charity of the self. My non-believing middle school colleagues who get high for struggling students are more consistent. »
When the crisis started, she read good books. The classic Joy of believing, joy of living, of Father François Varillon, for example, but without finding any connection with his life. Claire, a model believer, had nevertheless ticked all the boxes: youth camps, commitment to the synod of her diocese, prayer and daily reading of the Bible. Is her announced break addressed to Catholic culture, to the community or to a God she does not name? She herself does not know.
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faith surpasses reason
The adventure of faith is punctuated by crises. Nothing new: the portraits of believers with chaotic trajectories – Moses, Saint Peter, Saint Paul… – dot the Bible.
But what is faith, really? Getting to the bottom of the question helps to live the adventure in its happy or dark phases as well as possible.
what she is not, first of all : intellectual certainty. Even if believing is an intelligent and reasonable act, which theologians show, faith goes beyond human reason. It coexists with questioning, doubt. And then, “faith never completely delivers from the abyss, but it allows us to endure there in patience and trust”, as the Benedictine Jean de la Croix Robert wrote.
Chantal, 57, knows something about it. She was a believer, non-practicing and catechist when she got married. Her husband has dragged her into a world of nocturnal debauchery with degrading practices. “I fell into obscurity for twenty years. But I didn’t stop praying,” she recalls. When her husband abandoned her, she attempted suicide twice. “Each time, the image of my children held me back. I believe that God was with me,” she says. Psychological support, walking on the paths of Saint-Jacques, the unconditional welcome received in an Alpha course (a session of listening and evangelization over ten evenings) participated in its reconstruction. “I know today that someone supports me in my difficulties. I can’t do without going to mass for a week,” she says.
What Chantal saw, the lay theologian Robert Cheaib (1) specifies: “Faith is an act of trust in the love of God. It is based on an experience and on the memory of the believers who preceded me. It opens up to a relationship, and implies fidelity. Jesus is not only the friend of spring, but also of winter. » The journey of Isabelle Le Bourgeois (2), auxiliary nun and psychoanalyst, supports the words of the theologian: « At 17, I sent everything crashing down, she says, the God of indulgences, the accounting God. Fifteen years later, in search of meaning, she enters a church and hears a priest say: “God loves you and you don’t know it. She rediscovers the God of Jesus Christ. “This sentence was full of promise. And it is the reality that has kept me alive ever since! We chat all the time. I trust him, and he trusts me. It works both ways, that’s very important! she insists.
To love disposes to believe
“We chat all the time. Sister Isabelle’s habitual conversation with the One in whom she believes is within the reach of all believers. And it turns out to be vital for faith: unkept relationships fray. Meditating on the word of God, in the liturgy or in private reading, is the most common practice to nourish the exchange with the One we do not see. But faith is not just a matter of intimacy with God. It sounds powerfully on life, on relationships. Putting one’s trust in God commits to new relationships with one’s neighbour. “True faith involves a transformation of the believer. Without works done with love, faith dies,” Robert Cheaib even dares.
Saint Cardinal John Newman went even further, in a way: “We believe because we love. »
In other words, to love disposes to believe. And believing without converting to love amounts, in the long run, to sterilizing faith. “Faith, if not exercised, is dead. […] you believe there is only one God. Very good ! But the demons, too, believe it”, already affirmed the epistle of James (Jc 2, 17. 19).
Over the course of a lifetime, persevering faith leads to other changes: the God of childhood is not the same as that of adulthood or old age. Isabelle Le Bourgeois’ experience as a psychoanalyst opens up interesting perspectives on this subject. “When people tell me ‘I believe in God’, or when they affirm this or that truth of faith, it can refer to an abstract God, to an idea, she discerns. For example, if my parents always demanded the best from me, if they were never happy with what I was doing, I can imagine God as a tyrant to whom we must always ask forgiveness,” explains the psychoanalyst.
Such depictions stand in the way of a living relationship with the God of Christian revelation. But Sister Isabelle observes happy outcomes to this type of impasse: “When, in analysis, people clear up, clear up what hinders their human relationships, then their relationship with God changes. They discover someone else,” marvels the nun. However, this renewal of faith progresses through crises with an uncertain outcome. “To be continually alive, our faith must continually die. For God is infinitely beyond what we can say about him, and our mental concepts are idols that must be broken,” warned the Metropolitan Bishop of Great Britain, Kallistos Ware.
The help of dialogue
This is why the tradition of spiritual dialogue figures prominently in the panoply of weapons for enduring in the faith: it is good to speak about one’s faith to an experienced believer. Pierrot, 83, offers this service as a lay chaplain at the hospital. He meets people who are generally distant from the Church, or atheists, or Muslims. “They speak to me freely, they express their questions about the meaning of life and that makes them feel good,” he remarks. It happens then that faith awakens: “I propose to pray together, if I feel the person is willing. One day a lady prayed the Our Father, forgotten since childhood, repeating it phrase by phrase after me. »
Faith is also a grace to be desired. ” I believe ! Help my lack of faith! (Mk 9:24) the father of a sick child asked Jesus one day.
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1) A human God, Ed. Salvador, 184 p. ; €18.
2) The God of the depths. Listening to broken souls, Ed. Albin Michel, 192 p. ; 17 €