Transitional Faith

Visiting Duke this week was glorious.  I was able to see many of my friends and spend three straight days of non-stop catching up with people.  I was back in a community I spent years building, and it was so comfortable.  As much as I am really loving law school, I wouldn’t call it comfortable.

A lot of it’s just that I’m a horrendously bad transitioner.  It took three, if not four, years for me to finally feel established and comfortable at Duke.  Almost as soon as I felt comfortable, suddenly I’m in Boston, with a completely new set of people, communities, classes, and challenges.  Sure, new places are exciting, but I have to admit I really like having friends to come home to, people I can text when the thought crosses my mind, and can get a hug from when stress crops up. 

But even if I loved visiting for a break, deep down, I knew college isn’t where I’m supposed to be anymore.  I’m meant to be in law school.  See, faith doesn’t promise us comfort. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, proof of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1).  Sure, the “substance of things hoped for” might be nice, but if I’m hoping for a job to pay off my debts, I want an actual job—not its “substance” (whatever that is).

As nice as it would be, faith doesn’t promise us that job—that comfort.  Catholic mystics have taught that when you’re getting comfortable, God does something to unsettle you, to make you think and pray.  Get too comfortable, and our faith becomes tepid—lukewarm.  God has some pretty strong words against a tepid faith (Revelations 3:16).  God’s solution?  Remember St. Paul’s thorn (2 Corinthians 12:8)?  Despite his pleas for relief, God’s response is not comfort and bliss, but an assurance to faith—“My grace is enough.” 

As we enter the Year of Faith the Pope has called in honor of the 50^th anniversary of Vatican II, I hope we are able to separate comfort and faith.  I pray we are able to look at darkness and fear, and know that for God “darkness and light are but one” (Psalms 139:12).  That we never forget, the “visible came into being through the visible” (Hebrews 11:3), and that it is through darkness and discomfort—not comfort—that God’s grace enters our lives and changes our world.