COUNSELING THE DOUBTFUL

As human beings it is often evident that out material needs always have a priority over our spiritual needs. We must feed the body before we can feed the soul. When we are hungry or in pain or in circumstances beyond our control, all we want is for the hunger to be quelled, the pain to abate and the situation we are in to be rectified. Once those material-bodily needs are taken care of, we can get on to dealing with the spiritual issues that afflict us, but not until then.

Sometimes we try, of course. During the penitential seasons of the year the Church asks us to set aside some special times in our day to reflect on our spiritual life. But as we have all learned, even when we attempt to do that, oftentimes simply making it through the day taking care of our physical health needs consumes us and we never get to asking ourselves about our spiritual health.

Yet, just as our physical needs never go away until this physical body is in the grave, so, too, our spiritual needs stay with us until we die. What adds to the burden of this life, of course, is that we are not only required to take care of our physical and spiritual needs, but our faith demands that we are often asked to help care for the physical and spiritual needs of others – all at the same time. It can be overwhelming to say the least.

One of those spiritual needs brought to us from outside, from others in need, is to counsel those who have doubts about their faith. When we stop to think about that, we have to wonder if God is asking a little too much of us. Who doesn’t have doubts? Remember the “scandal” that was caused when it was revealed that even Mother Teresa struggled all her life with doubts about her faith?

We are not alone. Yet, even amid having sometimes serious doubts of our own, we come into contact with those who may be having even more serious doubts about their own faith. When that happens, we cannot, must not, simply brush them aside with a “If you think you have doubts, if you are struggling with you faith, let me tell you about my doubts and my struggles.”

What we have to do for them is what others have done for us when serious faith issues cropped up in our lives: just be there. Let them know we understand, that we have walked that road, are probably still walking it. For the truth is faith is not knowledge. We do not and never will understand our faith. That is why we struggle perhaps daily to understand just a little more about what we believe.

Counseling those in doubts mostly means holding hands with them. That won’t alleviate their doubts and it won’t alleviate ours. What it will do is help each of us make it through this day into the next. That may not be much, but at the end of the day, it will be enough. Tomorrow? We’ll work in that once again – and together.