Faith as Journey

Guest blogger Paul MacAlester… 

My pendulum of faith has taken me from the uninspired to the scrupulous; from doubt to enlightened visions of heaven. Through all of the swings, the one constant I knew was that I was attached to the Almighty by an unbreakable thread. I knew (and know now) that no matter wherever life would take me, I have been stamped with the image and likeness of God and that truth would always bring me back to the middle, where true virtue lies.

In my journey, I have sought out extra things (books, devotions, etc) to pick up or do that I thought would make me ‘holy.’ It wasn’t until I understood that what was right before me eyes contained all the grace needed for my sanctification that holiness became something attainable and attractive.

This was the faith of the Fathers of the Church before there were things like spiritual directors or rosaries or specific devotions. It was in the gritty, wrenching everyday following of God’s Holy will in all things. God has called me to be a husband and father and there are AMPLE opportunities presented to me on a daily basis to die to myself, take up my cross and follow Him. As much as I think about this and pray about this, I often fall. But saints are only people who got up one more time than they fell down.

I have had the opportunity to trust in God in ways that I would have never dreamed of doing (e.g. in Missionary work) and I have never been let down. I have learned over the years that my timing is often imperfect but God’s timing is always perfect.

I know that Christ’s gift of Himself in His Passion, Death and Resurrection is reverberating throughout history, into the future and right down to the present even as I write this post. If I choose to follow His holy will, I place myself (only by His grace) into that great River of Life that has coursed through the rise and fall of human empires and kingdoms without ever seeing its own demise. The Church and the Sacraments are the easiest way for me to put myself into that River.

I have experienced God calling me deeper into a relationship with him in what He has done for, through, to and with me. That the Creator of the universe, the God who penned the Book of Life cares deeply about my existence is something that will always escape my understanding.

Some of the most moving experiences in my life have been at the end of a climb, on the top of a mountain looking at the grandeur before me. But it was not the vision that took my breath away. It was in the small whispering wind, a beauty infinitesimally smaller than my beating heart, that captured my breath. Beyond the firmament of heaven, through the Incarnation of God, beats a human heart not so different than my own.  A Heart that has journeyed before me.

That is a rabbit hole I will never get to the bottom of; and I never want to.