Questions & Answers 1954

How can faith be increased?

“Through aspiration, I suppose. Some have it spontaneously… You see, it is difficult to pray if one doesn’t have faith, but if one can make prayer a means of increasing one’s faith, or aspiring, having an aspiration, having an aspiration to have faith… Most of these qualities require an effort. If one does not have a thing and wants to have it, well, it needs great, great, great sustained efforts, a constant aspiration, an unflagging will, a sincerity at each moment; then one is sure, it will come one day – it can come in a second. There are people who have it, and then they have contrary movements which come and attack. These people, if their will is sincere, can shield their faith, repel the attacks. There are others who cultivate doubt because it is a kind of dilettantism – that, there’s nothing more dangerous than that. It is as though one were letting the worm into the fruit: it eventually eats it up completely. This means that when a movement of this sort comes – it usually comes first into the mind – the first thing to do is to be very plucky and refuse it. Surely one must not enjoy looking on just to see what is going to happen; that kind of curiosity is terribly dangerous.

It is perhaps more difficult for intellectuals to have faith than for those who have a simple, sincere and upright heart, and no intellectual complications. But I think that if an intellectual person has faith, then that becomes very powerful, a very powerful thing which can truly work miracles.”

– Questions and Answers 1954, 5 May 1954