Raised from the Dead
Issac of Stella's Easter sermon--deep, deep intuition of faith as a resurrection because it is an act of obedience to God considered as supreme life. What matters is the act of submission to infinite life, to the authority of Creative and Redemptive Life, the Living God. Faith is this submission. The interior surrender of faith cannot have its full meaning except as an act of obedience, i.e., self-commitment in submission to God's truth in its power to give life, and to command one to live.
Hence Faith is not simply an act of choice, an option for a certain solution to the problem of existence, etc. It is a birth to a higher life, by obedience to the Giver of life, obedience to the source of life.
To believe is to consent to a creative command that raises us from the dead.
December 5, 1960, IV.72
Immediately the father of the child cried out, "I believe; help my unbelief!" Mark 9:24
ReplyDeleteI am struggling mightily, sometimes seemingly impossibly, with an act of obedience. This is my prayer and this reflection of Merton's helps me more deeply examine my understanding of obedience.