Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”

“Although the fig-tree does not burgeon, the vines bear no fruit, the olive-crop fails, the orchards yield no food, the fold is bereft of its flock and there are no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord and rejoice in the God of my deliverance” (Habakkuk 3:17-19). Profound faith or infinite deception? Is the writer expressing an incredibly pure faith in God, one free of all this-worldly assurances, or is he an example of believing at any cost and despite every bit of counter evidence?

We believers will tend to see this as evidence of great trust. Skeptics will say that this is typical of what faith means: believing despite the lack of evidence. As Mark Twain said: faith is believing what you know ain't so.

The last words of Habakkuk do hint at something he has to go on. He speaks of the “God of my deliverance.” Possibly something in the past justifies his trust; God has come through in some crisis. Most believers would be likely to have some such assurance. There are, however, many much more desperate situations where, like Habakkuk, we hang on to our belief in the midst of what seem to be signs of God's absence and indifference. In times of abandonment by friends and family, times of incurable disease, times of devastating sorrow.

A mature faith (which is fundamentally a great trust) persists in trusting God in whatever happens. On second thought mature may be too weak a word. This kind of trust in God is more than ‘mature’, possibly we should say ‘heroic’. Undeniably we are helped when there are some happy experiences in the past that justify such faith.

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

Watch Daily Mass online at: SaintJohnsAbbey.org/live

Send your prayer requests to the monks