In his autobiographical work, Confessions, Saint Augustine admits that although he thinks he understands the concept of time, when asked to actually explain time, he finds himself at a loss. Something similar occurs with regard to Christian faith: We may think we understand what faith is, until someone asks us to explain it. We have just heard the apostles’ plea that Jesus increase their faith, and Jesus’ enigmatic reply: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. Both the apostles’ request and Jesus’ response suggest that faith has a quantitative quality such that one may be said to have great faith or little faith. Thus, Jesus says to the Canaanite woman: Great is your faith; whereas to Peter sinking beneath the waves he laments: O you of little faith, why did you doubt.
Now, although Jesus admonished Peter for doubting—and thus having little faith—we also know that possessing great faith does not preclude doubts and temptations to unbelief. And so the father of the boy possessed by an evil spirit cries out: I do believe, help my unbelief. This, in turn, highlights the fact that although we consider faith a gift we receive, it is a gift we have to actively accept, and then use or exercise so that our faith can be strengthened and deepened. And, indeed, faith seems to be best strengthened and increased precisely by those aversive temptations that threaten to undermine faith. For some, the intensity of temptations against faith—and their persistence—can lead to feeling that they no longer have faith and that they are simply deluding themselves.
This highlights the paradoxical fact that faith can sometimes be strongest when it feels nonexistent, and perhaps weakest when it is felt to be strong and unassailable. Jesus’ own anguished cry on the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, captures this harrowing experience, with his final, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit nevertheless manifesting the incredible depth of his faith. This profound experience of Jesus is one that has been shared—albeit to a lesser degree—by so many courageous martyrs whose faith was tested to the outer limits of endurance. And in what John of the Cross termed the “Dark Nights” of the soul and spirit, it is only a naked and blind faith that can carry one through the terrifying darkness associated with the soul’s radical and complete purification.
Accordingly, imploring God (as did the apostles) for an increase of faith is a worthy prayer—one inspired by the very faith we seek to deepen. However, God’s answer to this prayer will not necessarily be something we will feel. Instead, faith will be manifest in our wills as we choose to resist temptations to unbelief, and repeatedly and untiringly turn towards God in love and renewing our trust in his goodness and care for us—especially in those times of great suffering, darkness, confusion, and fear. For, at its heart, faith is simply that direct living relationship we have with God. Thus, faith isn’t so much a power we possess to enter into that relationship, but rather constitutes that living and dynamic relationship with our Creator. And although this faith presently permits us to only “see” and experience God as through a mirror, dimly, faith will eventually be taken up into that Love by which we will become like God. Then faith having served its noble purpose faith will, along with hope, yield to love—which alone endures—and having become Love, we will finally “see” God as God truly is. For, as Saint Paul affirmed, now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then