Committing to faith

An excerpt from John Main OSB, Letter Four, LETTERS FROM THE HEART (New York: Crossroad, 1988), pp. 63-64.

[The] commitment of faith is not merely intellectual or dialectical. It is not that we decide to believe in the ideas of the Christian tradition. It is much rather that we have the courage and, in a real sense, the recklessness to open ourselves to the unknown, the unfathomable and truly mysterious. . . .We allow ourselves, in the full biblical sense, to know the mystery or, even better, to be known by it. To allow ourselves to do this (a better way of putting it than to say make ourselves do it) is to follow the fundamental gospel precept of becoming simple, of becoming childlike, of becoming awake. It is no small cause for wonder that despite the fact that. . .it is so easily forgotten by those in [the tradition’s mainstream,  that these are the fundamental tenets of the gospel—faith is not a matter of exertion but of openness. 

We need to see faith . . .as openness, and to see it as a positive, creative, sensitive way of being—miles apart from mere passivity or quietism. The effectiveness of all doing depends on the quality of being we enjoy. And to be open implies certain other qualities: such as being still, because we cannot be open to what is here if we are always running after what we think is there; such as being silent, because we cannot listen or receive unless we give our whole attention; such as being simple, because what we are being open to is the wholeness, the integrity of God. This condition of openness as the blend of stillness, silence and simplicity is the condition of prayer: our nature and being in wholesome harmony with the being and nature of God. . .

Meditation is our way to this condition of being fully human, fully alive [the] condition we are all called to.