WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAVOR FAITH
Maybe one of the greatest disgraces of contemporary Christianity is the lack of «religious experience». There are many who call themselves Christians and yet don’t know what it is to enjoy their faith, feel at home with God and go about savoring their adhesion to Jesus. How can they be a believer without ever enjoying God’s welcoming love?
The development of a theology that has a marked rational character and the importance that has been given in the West to conceptual formulation have frequently led us to understand and live our faith as a «doctrinal adhesion»” to Jesus Christ. All too many Christians «believe things» about Jesus, but don’t know how to joyfully communicate themselves with him.
Something similar sometimes happens in the celebration of the liturgy. The external rites are correctly observed and beautiful words are pronounced, but it all seems to happen «outside» of the people. They sing with their lips, but the heart is absent. They receive the Body of the Lord, but it doesn’t bring about any living communication with him.
It’s also significant what happens in the reading of the Bible. The advances in modern exegesis have permitted us to know better than ever the composition of the sacred books, the literary genre or the structure of the Gospels. Yet we haven’t learned to savor the Gospel of Jesus.
All this produces a strange sensation. You may say that we are moving about in the «outer skin of the faith». In the Church there is no lack of words or sacraments. There’s preaching every Sunday. The Eucharist is celebrated. There’s also Baptisms, First Communions and Confirmations. But «something» is missing, and it isn’t easy to say exactly what it is. This isn’t what the first believers were about.
We need a new experience of the Spirit that makes us live from within and teaches us to «feel and savor things internally», as Ignatius of Loyola said. We lack the enjoyment of what we say we believe; the taste within ourselves of the silent but real presence of God. We lack spontaneity with God, joyful trust in God’s love.
This experience of God isn’t the fruit of our efforts and works. For the Spirit you need to «make room» in our life and in our heart, in our celebrations and in the Christian community. The Church of our days must also listen today to Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman: «If you would have known the gift of God…» Only when we’re open to the action of the Spirit does the believer discover the water promised by Jesus, that becomes within us a «spring of water welling up to eternal life».
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
