Fact, Faith and Feeling

Before shutting down and calling it a night, I'll leave you with this post from my old blog, The Confirmand. It's a parable that I've always found useful whenever I don't "feel" my faith as much, or am confronted by others who are lukewarm as well.

There is a Chinese parable about faith and feeling. Fact, Faith, and Feeling are three men walking along the top of a wall. As long as Faith keeps his eyes on Fact, ahead of him, all three keep walking. But when Faith takes his eyes off Fact and turns around to worry about how Feeling is doing, both Faith and Feeling fall off the wall. (But Fact never does.)

A perfect example of this was after I left confession on the day before Ash Wednesday. It was a particularly cleansing one (as they all are), but one I needed to make for quite some time. After walking down the street outside of St. Mary's, I noted to myself that I didn't feel particularly "holy." But, I recalled this parable, and reading in a book once about confession that even if I don't "feel" grace, I can be rest assured that it is there by my having participated in this Sacrament.