Salesian Literature

Letters on:

Prayer, Faith, and Accepting Your Vocation

1. Thy Will be done   ::    2. Do the will of God joyfully  ::    3. Serve God where you are  ::    4. Let us be what we are, and let us be it well 

5. Our faith should be naked and simple  ::    6. There are two principal reasons for prayer  ::    7. Little virtues prepare for contemplation of God

8. We must remain in the presence of God  ::    9. Never does God leave us save to hold us better

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5. Our faith should be naked and simple

To a nun, on Christian faith

 

My dearest child,

 

… The truths of Faith are sometimes agreeable to the human spirit, not only because God has revealed them by His word and proposed them by His Church, but also because these truths suit our taste, and because we enter into them thoroughly, we understand them easily, and they are according to our inclinations.

 

Consider, for example, the fact that there is a Paradise after this mortal life.  This is a truth of the Faith that many hold much to their satisfaction, because it is sweet and desirable.  Tat God is merciful the greatest part of the world finds to be a very good thing, and easily believes, because even philosophy teaches us this; it is conformable both to our taste and to our desire.

 

Now, not all the truths of the faith are of this kind; consider, for example, the fact that there is an eternal Hell for the punishment of the wicked.  This is a truth of the Faith, but a bitter, terrifying, fearful truth, and one that we do not willingly believe, except by the force of God’s word.

 

And now I say first, that naked and simple faith is that by which we believe the truths of the faith, without considering any pleasure, sweetness, or consolation we may have in them, but solely by the acquiescence of our spirit in the authority of the word of God and the proposition of the Church.  And thus we believe the terrifying truths no less than the sweet and agreeable truths.  Then our faith is naked, because it is not clothed with any sweetness or any relish; and it is simple, because it is not mingled with any satisfaction of our own feelings.

 

Secondly, there are truths of the faith that we can apprehend by the imagination: for example, that Our Lord was born in the manger of Bethlehem, that He was carried into Egypt, that He was crucified, that He went up to Heaven.  On the other hand, there are others, which we cannot at all grasp with the imagination: for example, the truth of the most holy Trinity, eternity, the presence of Our Lord’s body in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.  For all these truths are true in a way that is inconceivable to our imagination, since we cannot imagine how these things can be.  Still, our understanding believes them firmly and simply, on the sole assurance it has of the word of God.  And this faith is truly naked, for it is divested of all imagination; and it is entirely simple, because it has no sort of action except the action of our understanding, which purely and simply embraces these truths on the sole security of God’s word.  This faith, thus naked and simple, is that which the saints have practised and continue to practise amid sterilities, dryness, distrusts, and darknesses. 

 

To live in truth – and not in untruth – is to lead a life entirely conformed to naked and simple faith according to the operations of grace and not of nature.  This is because our imagination, our senses, our feeling, our taste, our consolations, and our arguments may be deceived and may err.  To live according to them is to live in untruth, or at least in a perpetual risk of untruth; but to live in naked and simple faith – this is to live in truth.

 

So it is said of the wicked spirit, that “he abode not in the truth” (Jn. 8:44).  Having had faith in the beginning of his creation, he left it, wishing to contend, without the Faith, about his own excellence, and wishing to make himself his own end, nor according to naked and simple faith, but according to natural conditions, which carried him on an extravagant and disordered love of himself.  This is the lie in which we live all those who do not adhere with simplicity and nakedness of faith to the word of God, but wish to live according to human prudence, which is nothing more than an ant’s nest of lies and vain arguments…

 

Francis

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