Center for Action and Contemplation ~ Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation: ”Jesus Praises Faith Even More Than Love” ~ Sunday, 3 November 2013

Center for Action and Contemplation ~ Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation: ”Jesus Praises Faith Even More Than Love” ~ Sunday, 3 November 2013

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy

Sixth Theme: The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines (Process).

“Jesus Praises Faith Even More Than Love”

Meditation 46 of 51

Without the sign of Jonah—the pattern of new life only through death (“in the belly of the whale”)—Christianity remains largely an impotent ideology, another way to “win” instead of the transformative pain of faith. Or it becomes a language of ascent instead of the treacherous journey of descent that characterizes Jonah, Jeremiah, Job, John the Baptizer, and Jesus. After Jesus, Christians used the metaphor “the way of the cross.” Unfortunately, it became “what Jesus did to save us”—or a negative theology of atonement—instead of the necessary pattern that is redemptive for all of us. Yes, love is always the final goal, but faith seems to be the way you get there. It is the only way to keep your mind, heart, and body open—when it wants to close down.

Faith is thus an end in itself. Faith is not what we do in order to get to heaven. Faith is not belonging to a group or believing a set of intellectual truths. Mutual perfect faith would be a bit of heaven now! To have faith is already to have come alive. “Your faith has saved you” (Luke 18:42) is the way Jesus put it to the blind man. Faith is the opposite of resentment, cynicism and negativity. Faith is always, finally, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faith actually begins to create what it desires. Faith always re-creates the good world. Without faith, we will inevitably sink into various kinds of despair. Faith is a matter of having new eyes, seeing everything, even our most painful suffering, through and with the eyes of God. It is the only way to keep on the path toward love.~~Adapted from The Good News According to Luke: Spiritual Reflections, pp. 152, 178 The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, And . . . .

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