A Dance Between Faith And Knowledge
On the train that took me to Rome a few days ago, during this intense period of classes and conferences in Italy, I found myself in the company of three passionist nuns. I, engrossed in rereading the beautiful Bhagavad Gita, and they in prayer with the rosary.
A few sweet glances are enough to start chatting, and after a few minutes, they tell me about their difficulties originating from the Philippines, a country divided from all perspectives, about the poverty of their families, and the challenging monastic life. Noticing the book, the robes, and the rings, they ask me if I am also a man of faith or if I am not a man of knowledge about to discover faith. I reply that perhaps I was a man of something once, and then I began to feel that Life makes no distinctions, flowing through us in a dance between faith and knowledge.
“The knowledge we have of the world is essentially the knowledge we have of the forms of God,” responds one sister. I add that only those who intimately know God can recognize the roots of their Faith. Anyone who insists on speaking about God without knowing Him directly dedicates their efforts to superstition rather than Faith.
We all smile, and then they tell me about a lake with changing colors that bathes the shores of the small village they come from. “The simple people of our country say it changes color, listening to the emotions and events of the world, and that, for them, is ‘knowing God,’ just as it happens through our prayers or the expressions on our faces. Perhaps we have found more Faith in their hearts than in the monastery.”
We say goodbye with a photo, me to remember that no robe divides our essences, them to carry this little encounter to other sisters.
A fraternal embrace.
