I wrestle with a tide of issues that continually circulates in ecclesial circles. So many of these relate to the Church as institution: policies and procedures, legal matters and public positions, things the Church ought or ought not to be doing.
At bottom, though, I think people find themselves members of this Church for a more intimate reason. Apart from the swirl of issues and the din of debate, people seek God. And while some of us stick our noses in where we have little savvy beyond bluster and gall, we, too, stand before God, silent and alone.
There is, it seems to me, a kind of economy of religion akin to Gresham's Law. This principle, set forth by the 16th century financier Thomas Gresham, holds that when two coins have the same debt-paying ability, yet one has more intrinsic value, people will pay their debts with the less valuable coin and hoard the other one. For one modern example, people will pay their bills with federal reserve notes, but keep their silver certificates.
So, too, with the two coins of religion. I will enter the public debate with my reasoned arguments and righteous reasoning — all very lofty and irrefutable. My public coin reads "Our Faith teaches..." However, my personal coin reads "My faith is..." While both will buy me a place in the debate, spending the personal one costs me more. Besides, I may find myself bumbling and sputtering when I speak from the intimate hold of my faith, wherein what is of authentic value is often ineffable.
To put it plainly, it scares me to plumb the misty, vulnerable realms of my faith, the point at which I have union with God. At least in public, it is a coin too valuable to spend. Yet I know it is there, and there alone, that my faith is.
It is one thing to quote the great teachers and theologians, to point to the papal documents, to call up the philosophical treatise or the wise dictum; it's quite another to experience and to share from the faith in which intellect fails: to say with Mary: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior;" or to say with the psalmist: "From out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord..."
I'm no anti-intellectual; but I'm also no gnostic. My faith is edified by knowledge, but it is my unknowing which has brought me to God. My faith has been formed in the classroom, to be sure, but more, I think, outside of it: in the patient, inexplicable acceptance of a caring priest; in my mother's enduring reliance on God through unbearable pain; in the recognition of holiness in a friend broken by sin; in the victories only God could have gained in my powerless life.
Publicly, I'm ever at the ready to say what I know. Inside, though, in the tender and precious sanctum of a child before God, there linger awe and struggle, fear and comfort, a magnificent reality that informs my intellect better than my intellect informs you. It says, "Be still." -T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor in 1990
At bottom, though, I think people find themselves members of this Church for a more intimate reason. Apart from the swirl of issues and the din of debate, people seek God. And while some of us stick our noses in where we have little savvy beyond bluster and gall, we, too, stand before God, silent and alone.
There is, it seems to me, a kind of economy of religion akin to Gresham's Law. This principle, set forth by the 16th century financier Thomas Gresham, holds that when two coins have the same debt-paying ability, yet one has more intrinsic value, people will pay their debts with the less valuable coin and hoard the other one. For one modern example, people will pay their bills with federal reserve notes, but keep their silver certificates.
So, too, with the two coins of religion. I will enter the public debate with my reasoned arguments and righteous reasoning — all very lofty and irrefutable. My public coin reads "Our Faith teaches..." However, my personal coin reads "My faith is..." While both will buy me a place in the debate, spending the personal one costs me more. Besides, I may find myself bumbling and sputtering when I speak from the intimate hold of my faith, wherein what is of authentic value is often ineffable.
To put it plainly, it scares me to plumb the misty, vulnerable realms of my faith, the point at which I have union with God. At least in public, it is a coin too valuable to spend. Yet I know it is there, and there alone, that my faith is.
It is one thing to quote the great teachers and theologians, to point to the papal documents, to call up the philosophical treatise or the wise dictum; it's quite another to experience and to share from the faith in which intellect fails: to say with Mary: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior;" or to say with the psalmist: "From out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord..."
I'm no anti-intellectual; but I'm also no gnostic. My faith is edified by knowledge, but it is my unknowing which has brought me to God. My faith has been formed in the classroom, to be sure, but more, I think, outside of it: in the patient, inexplicable acceptance of a caring priest; in my mother's enduring reliance on God through unbearable pain; in the recognition of holiness in a friend broken by sin; in the victories only God could have gained in my powerless life.
Publicly, I'm ever at the ready to say what I know. Inside, though, in the tender and precious sanctum of a child before God, there linger awe and struggle, fear and comfort, a magnificent reality that informs my intellect better than my intellect informs you. It says, "Be still." -T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor in 1990
