Tag Archives: Eucharist

Things not seen

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If you’re thinking about becoming Catholic, the emphasis the Church places on the Eucharist means you have to come to terms with this whole it-may-look-like-bread-but-believe-me-it-isn’t-bread thing.  What the Church calls transubstantiation.  How can a modern, educated person with at least some understanding of science and evidence possibly buy into Middle Ages Catholic voodoo about eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood?  For what it’s worth, I’ll tell you how I came to terms with it.

 The central question

The central question is whether Jesus meant for me to understand the Eucharist as really and truly his body.  Was this his intention?   If Jesus wants me to believe when I go to Mass I really do eat his body and drink his blood, then that is what I will believe.

Here’s some context.

 I’m a Christian – with all my heart I believe Jesus was raised from the dead, literally got up out of a grave after being dead for days.  I believe it based on historical evidence, evidence that seems undeniable to me.  If a fellow can do that, then I have no particular problem with other things that he says, even if those things seem improbable. 

 Here are some examples:

  • Jesus says that a person who is baptized and who surrenders his life to Jesus is a person whose sins are forgiven.  That doesn’t make much sense.  When I was baptized (I was an adult), I didn’t have physical evidence my sins were forgiven.  What I had was Jesus saying so (it’s in Mark 16:16 and Matthew 28:20) and that was all I needed.  Something Jesus says can be completely without corroborating evidence, yet still be true and still be believed.
  • Jesus says my prayers make a difference.  That’s one I cannot demonstrate with scientific rigor.  Nor does it make all that much sense when you think about it.  About all I can tell is this — sometimes my prayers get a “yes” and sometimes it’s a “no”.  Sometimes I seem to get an answer right away, other times it seems to takes weeks and months.  Sometimes I pray and the sense I have is that God is absent and my prayers are unheard.  But none of that keeps me from believing Jesus when he says my prayers make a difference.  Remember, he’s the one who got up out of a grave.  If he says a thing, I trust him and believe.  Something Jesus says can relate to the physical world (like answering prayers) in a complicated way, but that doesn’t keep me from believing him.
  • Jesus says if I love him and obey him, then both he and the Father will come to me and make their home with me.  It’s in John 14:23.  I’ll be honest… I’m not even sure what that means.  But I don’t have to understand it for it to be true.  What in the world makes me think I have to understand a thing for it to be true?  That would be a crazy thing to believe!  Something Jesus says may involve an interaction between the realm of God and this world I live in and I may not understand it.  More likely, there’s about zero chance I’m going to understand it.

 So, the summary of all this is that Jesus can say something without corroborating evidence, something complicated, something that relates this world to the “other” in a way I cannot understand.  Yet, I will believe simply because he says it.  He is powerful and reliable.

 So did Jesus mean for me to take his words literally when he spoke of his body and blood?

Yes, he did.  The Bible says Jesus made the statement at the Last Supper “This is my body” and “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”.  The earliest recording is here starting in verse 23  from St. Paul.  The same words are also in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke.

Here are the reasons I find most persuasive for taking Jesus literally when he talks about his body and blood.

 A literal belief is ancient.    

I figure the folks nearest the apostles in time would know what it is that Jesus means by his words. 

For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, we have been taught, the food that has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic Prayer set down by him and by the change of which our flesh and blood is nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus.  St. Justin Martyr   Apologia   148-155 AD

 

But what consistency is there in those who hold that the bread over which thanks been given is the Body of their Lord, and the cup his Blood, if they do not acknowledge that he is the Son of the Creator of the world, that is, his Word, through whom the wood bears fruit, and the fountains gush forth, and the earth gives first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain on the ear?  How can they say that the flesh which has been nourished by the Body of the Lord and by his Blood gives way to corruption and does not partake of life?  Let them either change their opinion, or else stop offering the things mentioned.    St. Irenaeus       Adversus haereses    circa 180 and 199 AD

 Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Cyprian also left writings expressing the faith of the Church in a literal understanding of Jesus’ words.  If the 2nd Century Church is dead wrong about something as fundamental as the Eucharist, then Jesus’ promise to the apostles that he would guide the Church into all the truth seems to have no meaning.  To conclude the leaders nearest in time to the apostles made an error of this magnitude calls into question the entire role of the Holy Spirit and the Church in the world.

 By no means was the 1st and 2nd Century church biased toward what we call “fundamentalism”.

The early Church Fathers were not what we would call today “fundamentalists” or literalists.  They often viewed the Scriptures as allegory and analogy given by God for our instruction.  

What this means is that I cannot just reject out of hand the early Church Fathers as being naively literalistic with Scripture.  They were more likely not to view things simply as literal statements.  So when they take a statement that is as difficult as “This is my body” and they interpret Jesus as meaning exactly and literally those words, I really must pay attention to that.

A literal interpretation is the only way I can make sense out of John 6.

In John 6 is the so-called Bread of Life discourse of Jesus.  It’s one of the longest discourses we have and it is definitely one of the strangest.  Without analyzing the chapter verse-by-verse, I’ll just make two observations, then draw a conclusion.

 As the chapter progresses, Jesus becomes more and more insistent on the necessity of eating his body and drinking his blood.  These are strange, even repulsive, words and yet Jesus would not let go.  Instead, he bore down harder and harder.  He begins by saying the people must eat his flesh.  He ends by saying they must grind his flesh between their teeth.  And he says this is the only way they will have life in them.  The words are so repellant and shocking that most of his disciples leave him.  Jesus is even concerned that the Twelve may leave him, but good old St. Peter saves the day.

The other thing is that if these words are simply analogy, if the words speak of the body and blood only in a symbolic way, then why in the world does Jesus not say so?  What possible motive would he have in driving away his disciples with language straight out of a horror movie, if that language is simply a symbol?  That would be the behavior of a crazy man, and Jesus is definitely not crazy.

 My conclusion is that Jesus considers the teaching regarding his body and blood as so important, so central to his entire mission, that even if these words drive people away he will not teach them less than the full truth.

 For a very, very long time a literal understanding is the only thing anybody believed.

Look at the quote above from Iranaeus.  It is remarkable that his argument is based on even the heretics believing in a literal presence of the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.  Even the heretics!

 The first big controversy over whether the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus is in the late 11th Century, precipitated by a fellow named Berengar of Tours.  My point is it took a 1,000 years for there to be a major challenge to the Church’s faith that bread and wine are wonderfully changed in the Eucharist.  That’s a long time to go without a challenge from within the Church.

 This is not because there were no challenges to the faith of the Church.  This same 1,000 years saw tons of controversy over doctrine, but not over the bread and wine.

Then it is another 440 years before the Reformation challenges the accepted faith regarding the Eucharist.

 So here’s my question.  Am I supposed to believe that the 16th century reformers and protestors, who could charitably be said to have operated in a complicated time and with complicated motives, understood the teaching of Jesus and his apostles better than did the Early Fathers and 1,400 years of uninterrupted history?  I guess it’s not impossible, but it is so unlikely I can’t believe it.  Instead, I must suspect the philosophical and cultural and intellectual milieu of the times.

I come to the conclusion the alternative to a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words is unacceptable

 I understand my alternative to Transubstantiation to be this: in order to reject Catholic teaching I must conclude Jesus purposely drove away disciples based on a misunderstanding of his choice of words.  I must conclude the 16th Century understood the apostles better than the 2nd Century.  I must conclude the Catholic and Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist species, an understanding that has been crucial in holding these groups together for 2,000 years, is wrong – and instead conclude that somewhere within the almost bewildering division of Protestantism on this subject lies some group who has the right understanding.

 I can’t do that.

Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.   John 6:53

What did the disciples believe?

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It seems to me that people who deny what Catholics call the “Real Presence” of Jesus in the Eucharist are forced to believe something really unlikely about the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples.  They are forced to believe the disciples thought Jesus was using a figure of speech when he said “This is my body.”  Yet, there are reasons this is not what they thought.

The truth about Holy Eucharist is a stumbling block.  Whether converting to Catholicism from another Christian fellowship or from no affiliation at all, the idea that Jesus gives himself to us in a physical way at every Mass is a hard thing to accept.

Yet… once a person believes what the Bible and Sacred Tradition and the Church have always taught about the Lord’s Supper, there is almost no reason not to become Catholic.  If Jesus really offers himself as nourishment in the Catholic Mass, why would I want to be anywhere else?

So this thing is pretty important.  Did the disciples at the Last Supper believe the Real Presence or did they think Jesus was drawing some kind of literary image?

Several persuasive arguments exist

First let me say there are many reasons, strong ones, to believe Catholic teaching about Holy Eucharist.  The reasons break into two groups – what the Bible says and what the church has believed since the earliest times.  Here’s a good summary of all the usual arguments from a group at Columbia University.  Here’s the article that started my own journey to the Catholic Church.

What I want to offer you in this post is a non-theological argument that tries to mirror our reaction in the 21st century to the reaction of the disciples on the night of the Last Supper.

First, a little background music

All four Gospels record Jesus feeding of 5,000 people by simply creating food for them to eat.  Jesus was teaching a huge crowd of people in a place away from the cities, away from where food could be purchased.  So the question comes up where these folks are going to get food.  Long story short — Jesus took a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish and multiplied them into food for the entire crowd.

It’s obvious anyone who can feed people out of thin air during a time of permanent food insecurity is going to generate interest, to say the least.  So what happens is the people decide Jesus would make a great king, which is actually pretty logical.  First, Jesus can feed you with a miracle, and then he can heal people the same way (which comes in handy if you want to form an army to fight a war of independence against the Romans!).  So Jesus leaves the scene.  He is a king, but not that kind of king.

The next day, the people whom Jesus fed saw that he was gone and they figured out he was in Capernaum a few miles away.  They find him.  And there is a confrontation between them and Jesus over how he fed them the day before.  Jesus starts by talking about himself as the manna from heaven, a part of the discussion that everyone agrees is metaphorical.  But as the confrontation escalates, Jesus really bears down on the idea of himself as food.  And in shocking language, he eventually tells the people they must eat his flesh (the word he uses means to chew – they must chew his flesh) and they must drink his blood.  He tells the people if they don’t do this, they will not have life.  They freak.  They leave and they don’t come back.  I mean, think about it – he must have seemed out of his mind to these people.

Even more strange, Jesus lets them leave.  This is an important feature in the whole incident.  He does not say “wait a minute, come back, you don’t understand – this is a metaphor.”  He lets them leave.  Things are so tense Jesus actually wonders out loud whether his own disciples will leave him, too.  There is no other conclusion we can reach: the words about chewing his flesh and drinking his blood are exactly the words he wanted to use and he will not alter them.

So what you have is an astounding miracle involving food.  Then the very next day comes a teaching that is hard to distinguish from cannibalism.  This teaching drives away the crowds that follow Jesus, all of them.  His twelve disciples cannot possibly forget this.  This whole incident is as confusing and striking a thing as they encounter anywhere in his ministry.  They will remember vividly that he told them they would eat his flesh and drink his blood.  It’s the sort of thing you don’t forget…

Fast forward to the Last Supper

The night he was arrested, the twelve disciples know something is up.  Events are building up to something that Jesus has been warning them will result in his death.  They are all at the table and they are eating.  Jesus picks up a piece of bread and tells them to eat it after he says “This is my body, which is given up for you.” (I Cor. 10:24)  Then he picks up a cup of wine and he says “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” (Mark 14:24)

How could anyone believe these disciples would fail to remember the confrontation with the crowds over Jesus saying they would eat his body and drink his blood?  The master holds a piece of bread and says “this is my body.”  He holds a cup and says “this is my blood.”  He is no ordinary man.  He raises dead people.  He calms storms with a single word.  He creates food and wine out of nothing.  And they hear him say these strange words to him as he tells them to eat.  At this critical time before he dies, he returns to the same language that so offended the crowds.

Does anyone think these disciples muttered under their breath that this was just bread and it sure looks like Jesus is losing his mind?  Taste it, look at it, and you know it is only bread?  Can anyone imagine Peter raising his hand to correct Jesus by saying that Jesus’ blood was still in his body reclining at the table and the wine in the cup was merely what they bought earlier that day in the market?

 

This is the Hopkins translation of what Thomas Aquinas wrote in Adoro te devote:

Seeing, touching, tasting are in Thee deceived.

What says trusty hearing?  That shall be believed.

What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do.

Truth Himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true.

 

These disciples believed what Truth Himself said.  They did not understand it, but they believed it.  They knew Jesus first hand, they knew his power, and if Jesus said something they believed it.  What thoughts must have been theirs as they ate the body and drank the blood…

The same response is all the Church asks of us

When it comes to Holy Eucharist, you and I are not called to do anything more than those twelve disciples were.  We are asked to believe that Jesus has power to make what he says true.  We are not called to understand how these words become true or why Jesus chose such a remarkable way to give himself to us.  How could we understand such things?  But we can surely believe them, because we know Jesus and his power.

Over the last 2,000 years, great Christians have thought deeply on Jesus’ words at the Last Supper.  And the Catholic Church has preserved the significance of the teaching with language that defines dogmatically the truth of what Jesus said.  Nevertheless, we are not called on to understand.  Only to believe, just like the disciples.

At Mass, a priest or other minister holds a consecrated Host in front of you and simply says what the Lord said.  You hear “The Body of Christ.”  And your response says all there is to say.  “Amen.”

We cannot imagine the disciples at the Last Supper saying Jesus’ words were incorrect.  They remembered he said they would eat his flesh and now they hear his words at the table as they eat.

These same words of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit in answer to our prayer to the Father at Mass make present for us the same body and blood.

Amen.

Funerals

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Because I have a flexible schedule, I get to assist at the altar at quite a few funerals.  These funerals do me good in several ways.  In an odd way, funerals even “speak” to conversion, particularly Catholic funerals.  The sacraments and the liturgy comfort and strengthen us.  They draw us to God.

There is a constant reminder of Christian baptism

In a Catholic funeral, baptism is front and center in the rite.  The coffin is blessed with holy water as a reminder of the baptism of the deceased.  The coffin is covered with a white cloth called a funeral pall.  The pall represents the baptismal garment of the deceased.  

During the funeral, next to the coffin is perhaps the most significant of our Catholic symbols, the Easter Candle.  “During the year it is lit at all baptisms and funeral services; the candle is placed next to the casket during the funeral Mass.  In this way it symbolizes baptism as a death and resurrection in Christ, and also testifies to Christian certainty in the resurrection of the dead as well as to the fact that all are alive in the risen Christ.”  From Fr. Edward McNamara  Regina Apostolorum Univ. 

Why is baptism emphasized?  Because it is through baptism we are “in” Christ (Galatians 3:27) – we live a new life in Christ because of baptism (Romans 6:4,5) – do you need your sins forgiven? Better get baptized! (Acts 2:38) – St. Peter is willing to go so far as to say that baptism saves us (I Peter 3:21). 

Baptism has life all over it, yet it’s the single most prominent thing at a Catholic funeral.  How can that be?  Because the one who is being mourned and who has died in Christ has not lost her life.  Her life has been changed, not ended.  In fact, now she has embarked on life so strong we dare to call it eternal. 

Whether as a convert or a child, every Christian begins his career in Christ in the waters of baptism.  The terror of death is eliminated when we are “in” Christ and the way we get there is baptism.  

The sermons

Funeral sermons are just great.  The best and favorite traits and events of a person’s life are recalled.  I am exhorted to spend my life on things that matter, things that build up rather than tear down. 

Do you ever think about that phrase “spend your life”?  It’s not just an idiom.  It really is what we are doing.  Just as surely as when I was 10 years old and had my birthday money and could spend it however I wanted, it is a certain thing that day-by-day I am spending my life.  

Catholic funerals smell good

At my parish, we have a red powdered incense that makes a lot of smoke and smells straight out of heaven.  It fills our small church with the aroma.  After the funeral, even hours after, the incense lingers in the church. 

When I assist at the altar, in handling the incense boat and spoon and in standing in the smoke in the sanctuary, that smell is left on me and in my clothing.  Later I may be at my desk or eating a meal and I’ll smell the incense on my sleeve or my hand.  I love that.  There is something so Catholic, so sacramental, about carrying the scent of solemn worship out of the church on my body. 

This is something St. Paul said to the Corinthians:

Thanks be to God, who always leads us in his triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of him in every place.  For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.     II Corinthians 2:14-16 

No one thinks St. Paul is talking about how I smell after a funeral!  And yet… the incense at a funeral reminds me I always want to bring the sweet smell of the knowledge of God to people around me. 

To receive communion is to receive life

The Eucharist gives us Jesus himself as nourishment.  The one who said “I am the life” and “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” – this one of whom John says “In him was life and the life was the light of men”.  Through the hands of his priest, this one gives himself to us as food to nourish our own life in him. 

It’s such an irony how everything in a Catholic funeral points toward life and its increase. 

Ignatius of Antioch is one of the early church fathers.  He flourished in the 90‘s and the first years of the second century.  It is beyond doubt that he had at least an indirect association with the apostles themselves, and perhaps may have had direct contact.  This is one of the things he wrote about the Eucharist: “breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live forever in Jesus Christ”.  

Just as an aside, the early Christians believed as firmly as we do today that the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist gave to them the body and blood of Christ.  It is one (out of many!) of the excellent reasons to trust the teaching of the Catholic Church. 

The almost incomparable words of In Paradisum

At the final commendation in a Catholic funeral, the priest has several choices of words in a part of the rite I usually hear referred to as In paradisum.  Here is part of what he may choose from.  To my sensibility, these words are as beautiful as any I have ever heard.

 

May the angels lead you into Paradise,

May the martyrs come to welcome you

And take you to the holy city,

The new and eternal Jerusalem.

May choirs of angels welcome you

And lead you to the bosom of Abraham;

And where Lazarus is poor no longer

May you find eternal rest.

 

“Where Lazarus is poor no longer” is exactly where I want to rest.  If you don’t know what the reference is to, read the passage from Luke 16 here.  Start with verse 19. 

Funerals remind me I will die

I’m not too good at reading myself, but I suspect that after a funeral I’m a bit more patient, especially about things that don’t matter all that much, anyway.  A little less grouchy.  I do know I’m more generous when I get out of a funeral.  Those are good things, of course, and I think it’s because the reminder of death improves my perspective. 

In thinking about converting to Jesus or about some major improvement in what is already your walk with Jesus, perhaps the most tempting failure is just to delay things awhile.  “Give it a little time” they say.  A funeral reminds me maybe I don’t have even a little time.  Maybe tomorrow, it’s me in the ER, or maybe it’s me who simply doesn’t wake up.  Whatever the amount of time left to me, there’s no doubt I will die.  Once I die I must explain my life to Jesus, I must stand in judgment before him and there will be no excuses, no second chances.  Here’s a sobering verse from Hebrews 4 that talks about God’s judgment: “No creature is concealed from him [God], but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account.” 

It is good for me to know that nothing I do is hidden from God.  Funerals help me remember always to be ready to “render an account” to God. 

Be aware of the whole of your life, not just today or just this week.

Be ready to die.

If you know something must change, then change it.

I don’t get it.

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Is it necessary to understand a thing completely before you believe it?  That sounds like a stupid question, but on several levels it’s not at all stupid…  Sometimes people will refuse to believe what God says or even refuse to become a Christian because of something they cannot understand.  Belief and understanding are not the same thing.

It’s exactly what Jesus asked John the Baptist to do

John began his ministry of preparing the way for Jesus with some amazingly confrontational statements.  For instance, after he called the people he was preaching to vipers (vipers!), this is what he said: “Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”  It’s in Luke 3.   John understood that the vipers of his day were in for a bad time.

Later in the same chapter, he says this about the judgment Jesus will bring with him: “His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So it’s pretty clear John thinks Jesus will do some serious ax-cutting and chaff-burning just as soon as he gets to town.

Yet not much later and much to his surprise, it is John who is in a dungeon and Herod will soon lay an axe to John’s head, not the other way around.  John is understandably confused about how things have worked out.  So confused that he sends a few of his followers to ask Jesus if he is really the Messiah.  John the Baptist is confused about what John has been preaching himself!  That’s interesting.

And just as interesting is the answer Jesus sends back.  This is in Luke 7.    He tells John’s disciples, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.  And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”

Notice that Jesus does not tell John why he is in Herod’s dungeon, nor does he explain how Jesus can still be the Messiah when it sure doesn’t seem like much chaff is getting burned up.  These are things John doesn’t understand and Jesus doesn’t explain them.  Instead, Jesus reminds John of a prophecy in Isaiah 35 that is obviously being fulfilled in Jesus (about the lame and lepers and all that) and he tells John he will be blessed if he does not “take offense” at Jesus.

Stripped to its essence, Jesus tells John to rely on what he does understand (the Isaiah 35 prophecy) and then trust and believe what God says (in John’s case, things he said as God’s prophet) in regard to the things he doesn’t understand.  Jesus did not think it necessary to render a full understanding to John.

Use what you do understand to influence your reaction to things you don’t understand

Let’s look at two examples.

If you are considering conversion, then maybe baptism is a sticking point for you.  It is for a lot of people.  Trusting God and living a good life and repenting of sin and having faith in Jesus as the Son of the Father and showing up at church on Sundays and all that… those things are usually not much of a problem.  But baptism might be a problem (most Protestants do have some “issues” with water baptism).

Baptism doesn’t make a lot of sense when you get right down to it.  You contact water in the context of Acts 2:38 and Mark 16:16 and Romans 6:3ff and Matthew 28:19 and Galatians 3:27 and that contact somehow washes away your sins??  Are we kidding??  That makes absolutely no sense.

But even if baptism doesn’t make sense and even if that gives you a problem, nevertheless you do understand that the claims of Jesus to be God’s only begotten Son are well-founded.  You understand that his teaching on baptism is clear (I mean, look at that list of Bible passages above).  You know the Church has taught baptism in its creeds and other documents all the way back to the earliest fathers.  You know that millions of people for a couple of thousand years have given their lives to Jesus and he definitely keeps up his end of the bargain.  Use the things you do understand to help you with the thing you do not understand – and be baptized, even if you don’t understand it.

The same conditions are present in what Jesus and Paul and the early fathers say about the Lord’s Supper.  Jesus says “this is my body” and “this is my blood” while he holds what sure looks like bread and wine at the Last Supper.  Paul says in I Corinthians 11:23-29 that eating these holy things “unworthily” makes a person answerable for the body and blood of Jesus.  Writings from the early fathers consistently refer to the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice and speak of the elements in the sacrament as changed.  You don’t understand that and neither do I.  But for the reasons I list above for baptism, plus the fact that this same Jesus performed miracles merely by speaking a word, I believe that what a priest hands me at Mass is the body and blood of Jesus regardless of whether I understand it.

The choice seems to be whether I believe Jesus and his church or whether I believe my senses.  I’ll take Jesus.

This is not unique.  Everyday, constantly, we do the same thing – we believe things we do not understand

For instance, I don’t understand why my friend loves me.  For one thing, there are so many things about me that are not lovely.  For another, I cannot really perceive the inmost thoughts of my friend.  And lastly, the huge majority of people I know do not love me in any sort of special degree.  Yet in the experience of our friendship, I believe my friend loves me, even though I cannot understand it.

Part of what makes me believe my friend loves me is feelings, I suppose, and feelings can be pretty flimsy things to rely on.  But the larger consideration is that I know my friend quite well – I know he can be trusted – I know he tells the truth – over and over again, he has proven to be reliable.  So when he tells me he loves me, I do believe it, even though I do not understand it.  Whether I understand it is almost beside the point, almost irrelevant.

A second example is what happens when I have a difficult decision to make.  I always “sleep on it”.  I always give a hard decision the chance to work itself out in the back of my mind (whatever that means) and most of the time the decision is improved compared to what I would do the first day.  During that time, I’m not consciously thinking about the issue.  I’m not gathering more facts or consulting other people.  I’ll usually pray about it some, but to be honest I don’t roll around in sweaty prayer over most decisions.  I don’t understand what’s going on to make the decision better.  But I always do it and I’m certain this kind of patience improves my decisions.  I believe it, so I do it, even if I don’t understand it.  It honestly doesn’t make any difference if I understand it – I just know it’s true.

Use what you do understand to help with what you do not understand.

Do not make your own understanding the criterion for whether you believe a thing.

Trust Jesus and his church even when you really don’t “get it”.