A Little Faith Is Enough

I want to share an essay that I have come to hold close to me since it captured so much of what my journey of faith has been about in recent times. The essay is entitlted "I Believe, Help My Unbelief" by Brother Roger Francois from the Taize Community. It is a deeply reflective piece of writing and I encourage you to read it that way. I have read this article over and over and have found myself encouraged by it each time.

For those of you of the Evangelical faith who get freaked out by anything Catholic, I encourage you to always test what you read or encounter. There are many things Evangelical today that are not worthy of our reflection.

The essay is an honest exploration on how doubt often exists side-by-side with faith. Brother Francois asks who can believe without sensing the limits of his or her own faith? And yet even just a little faith is enough for us to go forward. That conviction, often expressed by Brother Roger, provides the starting-point for the reflections in this essay.

For a song that similarly captures my current journey of faith, I share this:


Here are some portions of the essay that struck me the most:

"We can say that faith is everything in our life, and in, in the finaly analysis, we can say with equally good reason that it is almost nothing...Doubt follows closely on its heels, as the father of the epileptic boy expressed so well in his request."

"Whoever believes in him still takes a concrete step, but this step involves abandoning oneself to him, handling oneself over and leaving room for him. The paradox of faith thus becomes more evident: it is practically nothing and it is what matters most more than anything else. It is a matter of opening the door of our heart to him constantly, while at the same time knowing that he is already inside."

"A total faith can be at the same time be a very little bit of faith."

"Faith focuses entirely on the one in whom it believes....It has only him."

"Those people with the most discernment have never stopped repeating that it is not feelings or extraordinary experiences that guarantee communion with God; this communion always begins with the simplest openess, since all it can do is offer itself freely and it will go infinitely far beyond all we have been able to make our own"

"The heart of faith will always remain the discovery of Christ, the relationship with him, the striving to see his face."