Course XI - Teaching 8: Faith

The Son founds his future mystical states on faith; so, faith is support of spiritual life.
The soul confronts by destiny certain spiritual ideal, and this ideal is real but unknown, and the soul cherishes it blindly and adheres to it strenuously, always with a pure act of faith.
The Son supported by faith enters his inner world, and there erects his secret tabernacle, by devoting his whole love to it; intimate experiences and contingent results prop up more and more his ideal, and all those things, which he found through faith, strengthen his own faith.
Many holy souls fill their whole lives with this admirable work; but they did not achieve their purpose because all this became a part of the inner spiritual work.
They have worked just around an ideal of faith, not around faith in itself.
This divine providence did not produce a definite crisis leading them to an ideal of faith, to faith itself. Of course, because they have no strength to stand it, or simply, because this is the fate of them, and the truth might be revealed to them only on other stages or planes.
The Son’s soul that has progressed on the spiritual path cannot resign to inner ideals of faith and has to experience frightful inner crises of faith because he needs great and powerful faith as a whole. This is the price to pay.
Apparently it is a contradiction that a soul living by faith may have problems, contradictions and doubts about faith, but the spiritual soul is bound to pass from a state of ideal knowledge of the eternity to a real state of knowledge of faith. One passes from an ideal to the reality only through the most absolute darkness.
The Son’s soul experiencing these great inner crises is bound to success and possession of faith, but necessarily he should be steadily founded on virtue and rightly guided spiritually, since the soul experiences here such a trial to win or lose.
Many virtuous souls judge harshly the ones who fell or became renegades, but they should not forget that a trial of faith is so significant that only those who are strong and brave can stand it.
Being still and safe in the Secret Tabernacle of his Golden inner Temple, the Son works the whole life to settle here divinely his ideal, but when the enemy enters there and destroys everything, is something left to the soul?
Those souls that have erected temples to God and His envoys, that have cherished the dogma of a Church, that believe blindly in a philosophy, how can they go on to believe when their living and bare beliefs seem insubstantial?
That is why many souls fall before the inner trial of faith, and the world is filled with poor beings that have lost their chance to attain spiritual realization, because they were unable to pass from a figure and idea to the state of eternity.
Actually, nobody has faith. All revealed verities and their derivations are bulwarks and elements derived from faith, but not faith itself, which is an exclusive good of the soul and that a soul achieves in its innermost intimacy, with no veils or witnesses, when the individual being even renounced to ideals of faith.
The immortal beloved appears to a soul only after this soul has found the temple empty and the tabernacle abandoned, even the Mystical Body of our Lady.
More often than not, inner crises apparently take place by an outer fact. If is as if the world and flesh started from outside their definite attack to enter the inner sanctuary of the Son, and to destroy everything. But a Son has to be sure that this attack can attain only ideals of faith, never faith itself.
How many times you hear voices like these, “I have lost my faith”. Their adored God became an old worn-out idol; dogma, that was a support, now has lost its gracious power before science proofs; and philosophical system has exposed its dialectic worn out and based on uncertain axioms.
Being unable to be profound, many souls cannot counteract these apparent disappointments; that is why they refuse to fight. Their attachment to old habits of faith possibly deprives them of obtaining faith.
The soul of the strong Son confronts a crisis, wields a powerful weapon acquired after years of trial and spiritual experience. This weapon is his capacity of renunciation. A Son achieves the victory through Renunciation.
The ideal of faith persists in the soul and eventually his soul remains still and serene, but this ideal is at stake as soon as an insignificant stimulus brings it into contact with the outside. A soul experiences highs and downs, and falls, which immerse it in doubt and melancholy. But a soul with faith becomes strong, unyielding and sure, and knows itself: it is faith. This soul is faith.
Faith is an inherent good to the soul, which is ever present although everything passes by and gets lost, because faith is the living power of the divine in man. When this power is unlimited, then it is faith itself, dark faith, and unknown intuition and affirmation of irrational and negative aspects.
Who or what can deprive a soul of its faith, if this faith is deep? All creeds can disappear, all schools can decay, and all teachers can die, but faith shall remain in our souls like skin adhered to flesh.
The Son possesses faith itself through Renunciation. Faith itself is essence and power of the soul –of the consecrated soul.