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Faith and the Family

Fr. John Powell, S.J.

(Excerpted from 1981 December Worldwide Family Spirit magazine, an excerpt from Fr. Powell’s Presentation – August 10, 1980)

What I want to talk about is faith. I have a friend who’s very nearsighted, and he's been that way since he was a small child. When he went to school, he couldn't see what the other children could see, so he figured out everything according to his nearsightedness.

For example, he wondered why the teacher wrote on the board in school, and he figured it out. You know why she wrote on the board? She was writing notes to herself, so she would know what to say. It couldn't be for anyone else, because they couldn't read it. He wondered why they put street signs up so high, because no one could read them. And he figured out that it's because the bus drivers could see them. The bus drivers are high up in the buses and they can announce to the people the name of the streets.

It wasn't until he was twenty years old that he went to an eye doctor who kept putting the lenses in the machine and testing him. Finally, he had the right corrective lens in his little machine and he told my friend to look out the window. When he looked out the window, he saw all those people out there and he saw the trees with their magnificent branches and their leaves playing in the sunlight. He saw the blue sky and the white clouds for the first time.

"WOW!" he said, "What a magnificent moment in my life. In fact, it was the second most beautiful moment of my whole life." I asked him what was the MOST beautiful moment, and he said, "the day I said 'I believe.’When I said I believe, oh, God, I believe you, it was like putting on a new set of lenses; the whole world looked different; I looked different. I wasn't $9.00 worth of chemicals, I was a child of God and I looked out at everybody else and they weren't my competitors, they were my brothers and sisters, and God, He was my father. Oh, that was the most beautiful moment of my life. The day I said yes to God."

You know, if you ask an average group of Americans if they believe in God, the answer would be a resounding yes. Over 90%' of the people in our country believe in God. But if you ask them why they believe in God, then the answers start to get interesting. Some say it came with the family inheritance, "I'm Italian, I'm Irish, I'm Mexican, naturally I believe." I think of this as piggybacking or hitchhiking on your ancestry. There comes a moment when you've got to make your own act of faith and not hang on to somebody else's traditions. Other people say that it's a good hunch. But faith is more than a hunch.

Other people say, "Look at the world, look at this vast solar system, you've got to believe that behind this magnificent beautiful world is a beautiful and magnificent creator.” That's a valid line of reasoning. I think that's true. You can reason from the world to a creator, but it's not faith, that's reasoning.

The essence of faith, the whole nature of faith is when you take the word of someone else for something you can't prove. If I tell you that two and two are four, you don't have to believe me, you can add that up yourself. But if I tell you I love you, then you have to believe me, you have to make an act of faith in me, because there is no way I can prove it to you, is there? Oh, I could give you gifts, but I might just be setting you up. I might be trying to do something for you so you will do something for me, so it doesn't mean I love you. There's no way I can prove that I love you. You have to take my word; you have to make an act of faith in me.

The Word of God
The word of God comes down to us through the patriarchs and prophets of Judaism. Then God uttered His definitive Word into the world, His son Jesus, who has spoken to us. In Jesus, God says everything that He has to say. Through the centuries of the preaching and the teaching and the living of the Word, the Word comes to you and to me. And it's time now for an act of faith or the rejection of faith.

What does God say to us? Well, He says many things. He says things about Himself, He says things about us, He says things about our relationships, but I would say, the most important thing that God says in His word to us is I Love You. God says, "I have carved you on the palms of my hands so that I would never forget you. If a mother were ever to forget the child of her womb, I would never forget you." This is what God says to you and to me. God says, "I could have made a world without you. When I was creating the world there were many choices and some of them didn't have you in them. But I didn't want a world without you. Do you believe that? I could have made a world without you, but I didn't want a world without you because I LOVE YOU. No world would have been complete for me without you."

If you ever really believe that . . . it's like putting on a new set of lenses. You say WOW, WOW what a magnificent thought that is! What a warming, life-changing thought it is that God, who made this world, loves me like that. But that's what God's Word says. And in Jesus, God says His act of love even more dramatically. Jesus is hanging on a cross, and the caption under the cross reads, "This is what I mean when I say I love you."

If I tell you I love you, you've got to make an act of faith in me. If God says I love you, you have to make an act of faith.

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of very intelligent people who do not believe? And there are a lot of very intelligent people who do believe. And I conclude from this that faith is not a matter of intelligence. What is it a matter of if it's not a matter of intelligence? It's a matter of experience.

Faith: An Experience
Faith is a matter of experience. Do you know how many things there are that you can know only by experiencing them, like the taste of chocolate ice cream? You've got to eat chocolate ice cream. You've got to taste it; you've got to experience it before you know what chocolate ice cream tastes like. There are many things in life that you have to experience.

Do you know the most educational moment of my whole life? I have four master's degrees - and a doctorate degree, but the most educational moment of my life didn't happen in a classroom or reading a book. After I finished all that academic study, I went to be a hospital chaplain and for the first time in my life, I saw people die. I saw the raw grief that follows death. And I learned. The most educational moment of my life came from a little nun, who was about 95 years old, (we joked that she was the waitress at the Last Supper,) and she called me "Fella" and I called her "Little Nun" and one day she said to me, "Fella," and I always saluted, and I said. "Little Nun."

She said, "You know what you've got to see before you leave here?"

"What's that Little Nun?"

"A delivery."

And you won't believe this, with my four masters’ and one doctorate degree, I said, "a delivery of what?"

"The delivery of a baby."

And I, who am rarely at a loss for words, was standing there saying, "a ba...ba...baby! Little Nun, you're wearing your wimple too tight. I can't see a baby delivered."

"Why not?"

"What's the lady going to think when they bring a priest into the delivery room? She'll think a) she is dying; b) the baby is dying; or c) the doctor is dying; or, d) all of the above."

"Oh," she said, "relax fella, we'll tell her you're coming."

So I was saying my prayers one day after Mass and Little Nun tippytoes up the aisle of the chapel and dropped a note on my prayer book that said, "A delivery will begin in ten minutes, you are invited, RSVP." So, she led me up to the delivery room and I got a crash course in gynecology and obstetrics. The doctor was explaining things to me and then everything grew very quiet as the baby began to come into this world. There wasn't a word said, and when that baby cried for the first time, I was numb. From the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, I turned numb.

The reason I turned numb. I think, was that my mental computer was saying, "Cannot compute, cannot compute, cannot compute. It's too big for you, it's too magnificent, it's too beautiful, this new life."

I remember when I went out in the corridor, I was stumbling along and Little Nun gave me a little bump and she said, "Well fella?" And I said, "Little Nun, I can't even talk," and she said, "I know. I know. I've been at this business a long time and it happens every time. Because that little fella that you welcomed into the world is a unique and unrepeatable image and likeness of God. In the whole history of the human race, he has never occurred before and in the rest of the history of the human race, he will never occur again."

It's something you have to experience.

There're so many things that we can know only by experiencing them. And one of them is love. The only way you can know what love is, really, is to experience it.

Love: An Experience
I remember one time I was teaching a course to a group of older students, most of whom were married, and the course was entitled "Christian Marriage." (They always pick a celibate priest to give married couples instruction in what it means to be married.)

Well, the fellas in the back row laughed at me every time I talked about love. So one night when they were laughing very heartily, I asked them if they would tell me what was so funny. And they said, "Well, father, it's just not like that. You're up there and you're describing the kind of love that makes someone else's happiness as important or more important to you than your own. That kind of love doesn't exist. When you love someone, you set them up, you do things for them so they will do things for you, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

And so I asked the class what they thought about that. The class was divided. Some of them thought that there was that kind of love, but other people in the class were sure there was no such thing. That it was something priests talk about, but it didn't exist in the real world. I remember telling them that it's a matter of experience. If you have ever loved someone this way then you know that this kind of love exists, because it exists in you. Or, if you've ever received love like that, then you know it exists, because you have experienced it. But if it has never existed in your life, then I can understand why you would think that it's only an idea that priests talk about. Love is a matter of experience, and so is faith.

Faith is a matter of experience, like love, like the birth of a baby, like chocolate ice cream. Faith is a matter of experiencing the touch of God in your own life. There's no proof for it. The essence of faith is to take someone's word when you can't prove it.

Family and Faith
Now, how does a family prepare a person for the touch of God? How do they cooperate with the grace of faith? The first thing you have to say is that faith is the work of God. You can't produce a believer; God has to produce a believer. It's a matter of experience. But a family can help to produce a believer, help cooperate with God's grace. How do they do this?

The first thing is that we tell people this is what faith is and then God has to empower them to accept it, but you have to be sure that what you're telling them really is accurate. If you tell children that God is a punishing, wrathful God, "that he's going to get you, don't think you're fooling me, you're gonna burn for this," then God can't give that child the grace of faith, because you've given that child the wrong God. You have got to give him Abba God.

When they asked Jesus, what should we call God, He said to call him "Abba." That was the first time the Jews ever heard anyone say that, to call God "Abba." Abba means father, Abba means daddy, poppa. It scares up all the images of a child crawling up into his father's arms and feeling very secure.

If you give a child the wrong version of faith, God can't grace him with the grace of faith. God can't confirm that with His grace, with His touch. If you tell a child you're nothing but trouble, you'll never amount to anything, you're no son or daughter of mine, how can God grace that with faith, when God is saying if a mother were to forget the child of her womb, I would never forget you. I carved you on the palm of my hands.

So the first thing a family does, of course, is to produce an accurate version of faith. But, if it doesn't sound like good news, it isn't true. When you're catechizing young people and telling them what faith is, if it isn't beautiful, it isn't faith. It isn't right. When we tell people what faith really is, just remember this, if it doesn't sound like good news, it isn't right. Because what God says to us is really good news, "I have always loved you."

The second thing that a family can do to help a person believe, to cooperate with the grace of God which alone produces believers, is to give someone the experience of love. Now I want to ask you a question. Can you count mentally, the people who really love you just for yourself? Unconditional love. They didn't want to love you so you would behave better and so that it would be easier on them. They didn't want to shake you up, they just loved you.

Can you count the number of people who loved you and were interested in you in this way? I was talking to a fellow priest one time and we said very few people have ever loved us that way. This is what you do in a family. If a person doesn't experience this in a family, I don't know where they can experience it. You have to give the person the experience of being loved, but you also have to give the person the experience of being lovable. You are lovable. Now, you've got to ask yourself and I must ask myself, are we saying that to the people around us?

You know what they've just discovered? Well, they've discovered that a family has a corporate self-image. It's hard for any individual to rise above the level of the self-image in the family. Why? Because insecure people don't like secure people. If your self-image is better than mine, I try to cut you down. I'm uncomfortable with self-images that are better than mine. On the other hand, people tend to rise to, but not above the level of the family self-image.

Now could I ask you to ask yourself this: You are contributing to your family self-image, what are you contributing? Someone who says, "hey, you know, this is a really neat family to live in -you guys are really something!' is contributing to the self-image. But if your whole attitude is how do you get out of this, how do you get out of this family, you're pulling down that self-image. One of the requisites for experiencing God's love on a purely human level, a purely separational level is to feel lovable. So you've got to ask yourself that question. And remember whatever you are saying now to the people in your family is going to be a memory to them the rest of their lives.

If there's any one thing I would like to say to the whole world - it's you are the beloved of God. You are each a unique and unrepeatable image and likeness of God and if we don't hear this in our family where we feel like we are best known, then we're not going to hear it anywhere else. We won't believe it.

The last thing I think a family can do is practice openness. Have you ever noticed as dialogue in a family increases and people are emotionally open, when they can be themselves without fear of rejection, God walks in? Once I spoke at a Jewish Marriage Encounter in Long Island. When the Jewish couple picked me up at the airport and was driving me to the convention I said, "What’s the biggest difference that the Marriage Encounter and dialogue has made in your lives?" The man said, "For me that's simple. I used to be an atheist'

When you open yourself to the members of{ your family, when you run that terrible risk of emotional openness, when you own your own emotions and realize that you're not blaming them on anyone else, when you realize that this is who I am . . . God walks in.

The poet laureate of the University of Minnesota, John Berryman, once wrote a line, "we are as sick as we are secret'.' The more self-enclosed we are, the sicker we are. But when we open ourselves, God walks in.

Tommy
I'm sure that most of you have heard or read my famous story about Tommy. Tommy was a kid in my class with long hair, who was the resident atheist in my Theology of Faith course. At the end of the course he asked if I thought he would ever find God. And I said, "No Tommy, you're not going to find Him, but He will find you!' Shortly after he was graduated, for which I was duly grateful, Tommy fell victim to cancer and I asked, "Can you talk about it?" And he said, "Sure!"

"What's it like to be 24 and dying?"
"Oh, it could be worse."
"What could be worse?"
"Thinking that booze and broads and money are the biggies in life. To be fifty years old and not really love anyone.
That would be worse."

And I started to look through my file case. When I first saw the kid I filed him under C for Creep. I swear that everybody I tried to reject, God sends back into my life to educate me.

So Tommy said, "You know I really prayed when they first removed the cancer, the first nodule of cancer was in the groin, now it's in both of my lungs. I have only weeks to live. When they first removed the cancer I really prayed to God and I said, 'God, God, come to me, I'm dying, I'm dying God,' and I beat my fists against the bronze doors of heaven and nothing happened. Did you ever try something for a long time and nothing happens and you give up? One day I woke up and I gave up and I said to myself, 'but there's something else that that guy Powell said in class. What a terrible waste it would be to go through life and not to be open with those you love. 'Well that's what I'll do. I went to my father-the hardest nut of all to crack. He was reading his newspaper and I said, 'Dad,' and he said 'yes'-he didn't even lower the newspaper. I said, 'Dad I want to say something very important' - He said, 'what is it, say it,' and he lowered the newspaper 2 inches.

“‘Dad I love you. I love you Dad.' "The newspaper fluttered to the floor and my father stood up and he did two things I've never seen him do – he hugged me and he cried. And I did the same thing with my mother and my little brother and then I turned around one day and God was there. God was there. I'm going to die real happy. I'm beginning to think that when you reach out to God in His heaven and say 'come to me, 'it's like an animal trainer saying 'jump through my hoop'-come on God. He doesn't come. But when you reach out in love, when you run that risk of openness, when you put your heart on the line and say I really love you, God is there."

Isn't that what St. John said? That God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God.

I said, "Tommy, Tommy, listen, you know when you were in my class, you were a real pain in the back pew. But you can make it all up if you come into my present Theology of Faith class and tell them what you've told me. Would you do that?"

"I don't know, “he replied, "I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class."

I told him to call me whenever he was ready. He called about a week later and said he was ready. We set a date, but he didn't make it.

As he was dying he said, "I'm not going to make it to your class, would you tell them for me? Tell everybody for me, will ya? When you reach out in love and open yourself up, that's God's port of entry into your life. Then you open yourself to the touch of God."

"I will tell them Tommy."

I have told you. I have loved you. I thank you for listening. God bless you.

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