Love and Faith
Towards the end of 2008 Fr Michael was diagnosed with motor neurone
disease. Even for someone who has spent the best part of his life reflecting on
the human condition, Fr Michael still struggles to make sense of his illness.
In a series of articles he reflects theologically on what it means to be ill.
Love and faith have much in
common. Just as you can fall in love, so the beginnings of faith can come
suddenly and unexpectedly. And, just as for the survival of love it is
necessary to work at it, so faith does not grow by itself. For us to have a
mature faith, it must be nurtured, cherished and allowed to blossom.
When I was first diagnosed with
motor neurone disease, I realised that my faith could easily wither, just as a
loving relationship can die if it encounters problems. To suffer from a serious
illness leads you to question whether God can be loving or, indeed, whether a
loving God can exist at all.
At that time, it was as if I was
standing at a crossroads. To turn to the left would be to deny the existence of
God. To turn to the right would be to direct a vitriolic anger towards him, and
to cut him out of my life. In the event, I decided to take the hardest road: to
continue straight on and work out how I could accept my illness while at the
same time maintaining faith in the existence of a loving God.
To my surprise, I found that it
was easy to maintain a strong faith despite my illness. Far from destroying my
faith, the increasing weakness of my body led to an increasing strength of
faith.
Do not misunderstand me; I would
far rather be fit and active as I was before. But as my MND has stripped away
the things that once dominated by life – ambition, concern about my public
image, a determination to be successful in what I do – I have found a deeper
reliance on my faith and a greater awareness of the loving support of God.
I have felt no need to abandon
my faith or to allow anger to dominate my relationship with God. Faith need not
be destroyed by misfortune. Indeed, misfortune can lead to a deeper faith.
There is something else I have
discovered: it is not simply (as I remarked to my opening sentence) that love
and faith have something in common. At a deeper level, faith and love are the same thing – like two adjacent
islands that merge beneath the sea and reveal themselves to be part of the same
landmass. To grow in faith is to be more aware of the love of God. That is why
faith should be nurtured and cherished.