Lent 2026 - Reading #32 - Faith
Reading
C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, addresses the practical challenge of maintaining faith: "Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable." Lewis continues: "That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith." Lewis identifies something that every honest believer knows: the life of faith is not a steady upward trajectory of increasing certainty. It is more like the sea, with tides and storms and becalmed stretches. The virtue of faith is not the absence of doubt but the discipline of maintaining course through doubt, holding fast to what reason has grasped even when emotion pulls in the other direction.
Reflection
Thirty-four days into Lent, Lewis names the experience that many of us know all too well: the mood that whispers "none of this is real." Our pilgrimage through the seven virtues has been sustained and demanding, and by this point in the season, spiritual fatigue is not unusual. The fifth week of a seven-week fast is where many people quietly give up. Lewis speaks directly to this moment. His insight is psychologically brilliant and spiritually liberating. If our faith depended on always feeling certain, no one would qualify as a believer. The saints themselves, Augustine, Aquinas, Ignatius, Benedict, all experienced periods of darkness, doubt, and desolation. What distinguished them was not the absence of such periods but their refusal to let them have the last word. They trained the habit of faith, returning to prayer and practice even when every feeling resisted. If you are in such a period right now, if Lent feels dry, if God seems distant, if the whole enterprise seems pointless, hear Lewis's encouragement: this is normal. It does not mean your faith is failing; it means your faith is being tested, and tested faith is stronger faith. Do not let your mood today determine your theology. Hold on to what your reason, your experience, and the testimony of the saints have shown you. The tide will turn. Keep faith.