Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter

by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light.”

(EPHESIANS 5:8)

“Imagine yourself lying in bed some night. You have just had a very good time of prayer and are flooded with feelings and images about God. You have strong, clear feelings that God exists. On that particular evening you have no faith doubts; you can feel the existence of God. 

Now, imagine another night, a darker one. You wake up from a fitful sleep and are overwhelmed by the sense that you don’t believe in God. You try to convince yourself that you still believe, but you cannot. Every attempt to imagine that God exists and to feel his presence comes up empty. You feel an overwhelming emptiness inside because of that feeling. Try as you might, you cannot shake the feeling that you no longer believe. Try as you might, you can no longer regain the solid ground on which you once stood. Try as you might, you can no longer make yourself feel the existence of God.    

Does this mean that on one of these nights you have a strong faith and on the other you have a weak one? Not necessarily. It can just as easily mean that on one night you have a strong imagination and on the other you have a weak one. On one night you can imagine the presence of God and on the other night you cannot. Imagination isn’t faith.

We all have had the experience of being inside of certain commitments (marriage, family, church) where, at times, our heads and our hearts are not there, but we are there! The head tells us this doesn’t make sense; the heart lacks the proper warm feelings to keep us there. But we remain there, held by something deeper, something beyond what we can explain or feel. This is where faith lives, and this is what faith means. 

For long periods, St. Teresa of Calcutta suffered anguish inside of her head and heart every time she tried to imagine the existence of God. Yet by every indication she lived her whole life in function of God’s existence. Her problem was with the limits and poverty of the human imagination. Simply put, she couldn’t picture how God exists. 

But nobody can because the finite can never picture the infinite, though it can sense it and know it in ways beyond what the head can imagine, and the heart can feel.  

Not being able to imagine God’s existence is not the same thing as not believing. Our actions are always a more accurate indication of faith than are any of our feelings about God” (31).