Living with Uncertainties and Discoveries

Living with Uncertainties and Discoveries

In a world filled with uncertainties, facing constant questions, we live with many challenges.  Yet… it is from our questions and often doubts, that we come to discovery, to finding new ways and new understandings of our world, our lives and even our faith.

The disciples who walked and talked with Jesus were engaged in a journey of faith.  It was a long and arduous trek and it was filled with much uncertainty, many doubts and a host of questions.  Any journey of faith will be this way.  We do not know everything and we never will.  The journey of faith is about uncertainty. It is also about discovery.

Several years ago, I met a student who had many questions – questions about faith, questions about the Church, questions about our traditions and practices.  She thought that she could no longer be Catholic, because she had these questions.  She felt she did not believe everything and so was not Catholic.

In fact, to have faith is to have questions, and we all have them, lots of them.  To believe is to want to understand and this necessarily raises questions in us.  Such faith discovery is not unlike any of our relationships.  When we first meet someone and enter a relationship, questions arise, maybe even doubts about them, about us, about our relationship.  To question is part of human life and certainly part of faith.  Like all relationships, faith is alive, dynamic.  It grows over a lifetime.

When Jesus asks his disciples, in Matthew’s Gospel “Who do you say that I am?” there are a variety of responses (Matt 16:13-20).  Peter gave a remarkable one, but we can be sure that he did not fully understand what he said.  Every expression of our faith is more a beginning than a conclusion.  It leads us to more uncertainties and further questions.  As well, like a couple in a marriage, the commitment of faith will take us to action and to places that we would not otherwise have gone.  When it does, then we can say we have a “living faith”.  In doing so, we discover the wonder of building a new world in which we live – the Reign of God takes on a reality for us and for others around us.

What we sometimes refer to as “blind faith”, might also be referred to as “dead faith”.  Living faith, faith that is dynamic will be in constant change or growth.  It will be the route to discoveries and new ways of acting and living.  The challenges, uncertainties and questions open the door to discovering new life.  Peter and the other disciples were discovering this in their relationship with the person of Jesus the Christ.  We are these disciples.