On Love and Death

"If you are trying to love God, wanting to love God, because you are trying to love God, wanting to love God, in the measure in which you are are trying to love God, wanting to love God, you are loving God. ... You are loving God, deliberately. In that sense, there is no difference between loving a person and trying to love a person." --Ronald Knox

At another point, Knox discusses the difference between John Wesley, who didn't fear death, and Anglicans like Dr. Johnson, who couldn't even talk about it. Knox writes, "Wesley had got hold of an ecstatic type of religion ... which fixes firmly on the emotions, dominates the imagination, and makes the things of of eternity seem real to a man, as if they lay within the realm of his ordinary experience. ... It is possible to argue that the true business of faith is not to produce emotional conviction in us, but to teach us to do without it."

In the vein of Christ's blessing of St. Thomas for believing, but blessing even more those who haven't seen and yet believe, Knox points us to the fact that emotion is not necessary to faith. In fact, the faith and love that exist without feeling are often stronger as a result. It seems that we do an immense disservice to ourselves when we assume that we have a handle on on Christianity and transcendence. And, ironically, the people who most have a handle on it (the saints), most believe that they don't.