Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Faith Is A Thing That Holds

Faith Is A Thing That Holds

Last updated on: May 1, 2020 at 3:02 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Faith Is A Thing That Holds 2020-05-01T15:02:56-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It’s the first day of May.

The narcissus have bloomed, fallen over and died, as quickly as they always do in the Ohio Valley. The magnolias dropped their petals and had to be raked like leaves. Lilacs are blooming now, and Rosie cuts me a fresh bouquet from the ancient bush outside every afternoon. I’m supposed to be working on my garden, if it ever stops raining.

We have been in lockdown since mid-March.

The governor has announced that the stay-at-home order is still in place, but certain businesses deemed non-essential will be allowed to open gradually this month, as we go along, as long as we can maintain our social distance and wear our stuffy masks. Public church services are probably not included on that list, not for most of us, because it would involve a crowd bigger than ten people. The Ohio bishops announced that Masses will not resume until the twenty-ninth at the earliest. Hopefully, in some form, there will be a public Mass at Pentecost, but what form we don’t know.

It’s no secret that I don’t often like going to Mass in the first place– I am a survivor of spiritual abuse, and I have trauma associated with the prayers and rituals of my church. Sometimes it’s agony to go to church. I go because I love Christ and I want to do what He asks, and He sustains me somehow. This lockdown has been a unique torture. We watch liturgies on livestreams now– all the triggering, painful music and imagery with none of the consolation of Holy Communion and knowing I’m actually at Calvary and in Heaven at the same time. That’s what Mass is, after all. A livestream is just noise.

I’ll deal with the noise, which is one issue, for at least another month. Next month, perhaps, I’ll have to deal with all my other issues again.

I live my life at home, writing, breaking out once in awhile to buy groceries and drop food off at the Friendship Room, spending far too much time on social media. Last night I had some fun as my atheist friends all watched the abysmal “God’s Not Dead” film at the same time, and live-snarked it for us. I snarked too. I don’t know how anyone can take that film seriously.

We bantered about how Nietzsche didn’t actually mean what the Newsboys and David A. R. White apparently think when he said “God is dead,” and about how nobody actually grooms themselves or dresses that well for a 100-level philosophy class, and how philosophy classes aren’t actually about whether God exists or not. The whole dilemma was made up.

My atheist friends are mostly ex-Evangelicals who were also spiritually abused as I was. They have a different notion of faith than the one I’ve found– as if faith were something you were supposed to hold onto with all of your might, and if you let go before you died you’d fall directly into hell, but if you held on until Jesus came for you He’d save you.

Some Catholics were raised with that notion of faith as well. I was. I was supposed to hold onto my beliefs as if they were a climbing rope and I was suspended over a lake of bubbling lava at all times. I had a brother who was far more intelligent than I am, passionate and relentless in his thirst for understanding, adamant in his refusal to accept anything that sounded like manipulation. I wasn’t at all like him. I was a brown-noser desperate to please my teachers. I dissolved into tears and hysterics when I found I couldn’t please them because they didn’t like me. My brother didn’t care if he was liked. My brother was a real philosopher. He never let anyone get away with anything. He needed to understand and to know why. For that, he was told he had a “rebellious spirit.” His questions were shot down again and again. He was regarded as a reprobate. People used to put little statues and prayer cards of Saint Jude near his computer, to show him he was a hopeless cause. One of the ladies in our community, a woman regarded as a prophet, said to the rest of us children, in front of his face, “Don’t worry. If he goes to hell, you will still be perfectly happy in Heaven.”

I didn’t believe her, because I loved my brother. I couldn’t imagine being happy if he was suffering– that would make me a bad person, a person without compassion. But I tried to hold on.

I am far, far away from my family and the people I grew up with. I don’t expect to see them again and they don’t want to see me. I am trapped in a town I don’t like, in a region of the world that is overwhelmed with cruelty and darkness, in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic, in a world that is slowly burning to death because of the greed of men. I can’t go to Mass or receive the sacraments because if we as a community do that, we might cause mass deaths. And when I’ll finally be able to, I won’t find much comfort there.

I would never say anything as simple as “I still have faith.” But Faith does have me.

I don’t really think of faith as some kind of climbing rope that you must hold onto, or you fall and die. Not anymore. It’s more like this: here is a climbing rope, not very comfortable to hold onto. Here is the mountain, which in some places is sunny and beautiful and covered in wildflowers but in some places it’s sheer rocky cliffs like this one. Here is the air all around me and the ground I mustn’t look down at or I’ll lose my nerve, but of course I do. Of course, in the course of climbing, I panic and look down and then panic even more, and then I let go of the rope.

I fall, my stomach lurches, the wind whistles through my ears, I smash like a ripe peach on the ground a mile below and it hurts like literal hell. The medics sweep me up onto a gurney and take me to the hospital, where I am stitched back together like a messier version of the dry bones in Ezekiel. Life is breathed into me. I go back to the mountain and climb again. This time, by some miracle, I make it to the top. At the top I look up and see Heaven so impossibly far above me that I might have just stayed on the ground for all the good I’ve done.

And then the mountain turns into mist, and God reaches down from Heaven and tells me that He Himself, everywhere present and filling all things, was there in the rope and the stone and the sheer cliff and the wildflowers, the air whistling by. He was suffering with me when I smashed on the ground, He Himself was the One Who swept me up and put me back together, He is the mountaintop and everything else. And then I see the face of God and live, Heaven dissolves me like cotton candy thrown into a swimming pool, and then I open my eyes and that’s my daily meditation over with, and then I have to go about the rest of my day. That’s what Faith is.

I’m not saying I have that exact experience whenever I pray. Sometimes when I pray I just sit there and try not to think about how much I hate myself. But that journey I’ve described is something like the experience of contemplative prayer, and to me, that contemplation encapsulates and makes visible what’s happening at every moment of our day-to-day lives as Christians. We journey, we fall, we die, we rise, we don’t know what we’re doing, and then Heaven sets us right again. All of that is Faith.

Faith takes us in and out of the church building itself, into the street, into the wilderness, to whatever Calvary our vocation demands of us, and every time we fall and die we rise and are exalted.

I used to be annoyed by happy clappy Charismatic priests who would not say “The Mass is ended, go in the Peace of Christ.” They would say “The Mass never ends, it must be lived, go in the Peace of Christ.” But I am meditating on that now. The Mass goes on and on, because the Mass is the junction of Heaven and earth where all our journeys are one, and our journey hasn’t ended yet.

It’s not so much a matter of holding fast to your faith, which is too big to grasp anyway. Faith holds you. It cannot do otherwise. Faith is a Thing that holds on. By faith, we can hold on, but it won’t look the way we think it’s supposed to. And even if we fall, faith holds.

I don’t know if we will be back in churches by the end of the month, but the Mass never ends.

Faith never ends.

Faith is a thing that holds.

Image via Pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

Previous Post

April 28, 2020

Dandelions are the Poor Man's Marigolds

Next Post

May 3, 2020 To All Who Grow And Bake And Sew

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the oldest person in the Bible?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Abraham Methuselah Adam Noah