Daily Meditation: Monday, March 22, 2004

Faith - founded on an experience of the divine world

03/22/2004

We meet people who claim to be atheists, and yet they say they envy those who have faith. But this is as far as they go. They behave as if having or not having faith has absolutely nothing to do with them, as if faith were a gift that either does or does not come to us naturally. No, faith is in fact the crystallisation of past knowledge; it is based on the experience of the divine world, an experience which has left indelible traces in each of us which we must bring to life. It is when people feel the presence of such traces within them that they regret their lack of faith; they understand that something essential is missing. But if they do nothing to rediscover their faith, they will suffer this lack even longer, and more and more intensely. In spite of their gifts, even the greatest mathematical or musical geniuses would have accomplished nothing, if they had not worked, and with what unremitting effort! Therefore, do not imagine that without any effort on our part we can simply discover faith, all of a sudden, as the result of an unforeseeable divine grace. This is impossible, because faith is the result of work you have already done.