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Dr. Michael Patrick Gillespie
Louise Edna Goeden Professor of English
Web Posted: April 11, 2005
Time and again, while sitting in Religion classes at St. Angela’s School on the west side of Chicago or listening to sermons at nine o’clock Mass on Sundays, I heard the term “the gift of faith.” Throughout my childhood, I never took the term seriously. It seemed to describe a given, like the certainty of the sun rising or of your parents’ love. Faith seemed to me simply part of the world in which I lived, a defining feature, like blue skies or street names, which never required more acknowledgment than one would give to a familiar entity that was always there.
As an adult, faith has become more mercurial and less consistent. It now seems more a condition for which one can long but which resists domestication. Now, my faith is no longer founded upon certitude. Instead, it remains a tantalizing promise never completely fulfilled.
In moments of irrationality, I try to form logical arguments to support my beliefs. In more thoughtful instances, I see faith as completely unverifiable and deriving its force from that very condition. I take great consolation from being in the presence of people of great faith, though I often both envy their certitude and marvel at what strikes me as its naïveté. In the end, I remain hopeful but unsure, convinced only of my need for faith and still longing for the assurance that it brought me as a child.
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