PaddlingPadre

Night is a thing that we are, I think it’s safe to say, almost systematically incapable of truly appreciating. We live in a world that is absolutely filled with lights: streetlights, lamps, the lights of televisions and computer screens and mobile phones – it isn’t really true anymore, for us at least, that night is a time of darkness. Of course, the more primitive experience of night is something that can be easily enough recovered, and it is something that often strikes me if I am ever camping, usually as part of a kayaking trip, namely that, in the wilderness, away from our artificial lights, the darkness can be truly dark. And once darkness falls, there really isn’t that much that you can do, other than sleep and wait for the dawn. In such circumstances, one can feel in an especially strong way the primordial truth that we are creatures of the light, of the day, and that we are not really at home in the darkness, which consequently brings our activity to a pause.

And yet for all of the disadvantages of night, few, I think, have ever despaired at its coming, for we all know, from long experience, that the darkness which comes with the night is merely passing – that just as day is followed by night, so night is, in its turn, followed again by a new day. And so even in the blackest darkness, off in the mountains somewhere, far from city lights, even if one were to lack so much as a watch by which to mark the hours, that stifling darkness would be no cause of great fear, so thoroughly do we trust in the coming of the day.

Now considering this situation, considering the state of one who waits for the dawn in the wilderness, or of a watchman of an earlier age waiting for the coming of the sun as he guards the camp or the city, would we not say that in their waiting they are exhibiting faith? Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews teaches us. And surely in the night, the dawn is not seen, but rather hoped for; believed in, and yet a ways off.

But in proposing this patient waiting for the dawn as an example of faith, the objection might spring to mind that surely the dawn is too certain a thing to be an object of faith. After all, we know that day must follow night, that even as the spinning of the earth hides the sun from us, that the same spinning will also face us towards it again, and we know this so certainly and with such assuredness that we can even predict the exact time, to the very second, of the sun’s rising and setting. Faith, on the other hand, seems to involve a greater uncertainty. Especially given its relationship to hope, it seems that faith has as its object things that might not be, or, at least, that it concerns things that, for all we know, might not be, and hence, for example, one might say that one does not know how something can be, but that one nevertheless has faith that it will be so.

 And while there is a degree of truth in this, at least insofar as faith very often does involve trusting in that which we cannot explain, for example, trusting that the goodness of God will triumph even in the face of suffering and seemingly inexplicable evil, it is not true, as some of our critics might have it, that such lack of understanding implies an uncertainty as to the outcome, or that faith in such a situation is unwarranted by the facts. For, truly enough, one might know something because one understands its causes; we understand, and thus have faith, that the sun will rise tomorrow because we understand the motion of the earth with respect to the sun. Yet one might also have faith that something will be the case because of personal trust in a promise. And so, if a parent promises her child that she will pick him up after soccer practice, the child may be certain in his faith that she will do so, even if he doesn’t know her schedule or what traffic is like or the way she must take to get there. His faith is not based on these things, not based on the understanding of the particulars involved, but is rather based on his knowledge of who his mother is, on his trust, and a very rational trust it is, that she will do as she has promised.

Of course, there is in this last example a clear disanalogy as regards our stance to the promises of Christ. For there is always the possibility, however horrible to consider, that something might go wrong and hence prevent the mother from realizing the promise that she made to her son. She might have to work late, or traffic might be bad, or, God forbid, she might herself be in an accident. But for God it is not so. He, unlike his creatures, is never a victim of happenstance. Indeed, as we were saying, we almost think that the dawn is too certain a thing to be an object of faith, so well do we understand the workings of nature that render it a thing of necessity, and yet: which is more to be trusted? The laws of nature, or a promise made by the author of those laws?

Thus we see with respect to the ancients, who were so well attested on account of their faith. Abraham did not know the land he was to receive as an inheritance, nor how he was to receive it, when he abandoned the city of his fathers, but he sojourned there as a foreigner because he believed in the promise he had received, as did his sons, Isaac and Jacob. He did not know how he would be the progenitor of offspring, so old was he and his wife, and yet he trusted that he would be. And even when Isaac had been born, that child through whom the promise was to be fulfilled, neither Abraham nor his son were fearful of offering the life of the latter as a sacrifice, for both alike trusted and knew that through Isaac the promise would be fulfilled, for so the Lord of the universe had promised.

And so we come to the words of our Lord in this gospel: Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servant who await their master’s return. Now it is our turn to the play the part of Abraham, to trust in the promise that we have received, the promise that Christ shall indeed come again. For many centuries now we Christians have been waiting in this swiftly passing night for the coming of that dawn, knowing not the hour, like a watchman on a starless night or a modern adventurer without a watch, certain that, though we know not when, the hour is indeed coming. For Christ has declared it to us, the one who is God made man, who died and rose and ascended into heaven: that at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.