TESTIMONY OF FAITH by Malcolm Muggeridge 3 / 4

(These declarations, fruit of enlightment of the Holy Spirit, are intended for ‘all men of goodwill’.)

A seeker of Reality is bound sooner or later to be drawn to the sea of Galilee, where God leaned down to become a man – Jesus of Nazareth- so that men might reach up and relate themselves to their Creator.. Or, in the iimagery of St.John’s Gospel, where “the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Full of grace and truth.”

It has been my good fortune to visit Galilee often. The last time I was there I surveyed the scene with particular intensity. Who can fail to be uplifted by this vista? As one more pilgrim who has found his way to Galilee, a child of his time with a skeptical mind and sensual disposition, let me add my testimony to that of millions of others during the last 20 centuries.

So I say that the words Jesus spoke and the revelation He proclaimed, were true when He spoke them, and true now and forever. Moreover they provide for all who care to heed them a release from the fantasy of power, which is the world, transporting them into the reality of love, which is the kingdom, not of this world, that Jesus proclaimed.

Yet there is something else, something that I fine hard to express: an illumination that comes flooding in on one’s being, a knowledge past knowing, a hope past hoping. Call it faith which swallows up all the little intricacies of doubt and factual fidgeting. Call it being reborn , a new ctreature rising out of the dust of worldly living, like a butterfly out of its chrysalis.

Whatever it may be called, it came to pass in Galilee. A new dimension was added to our mortal existence; a new freedom, not based on institutions or propositions, but burgeoning in each human heart and needing only to be allowed to grow.

After His Baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist, our Lord made for the wilderness. Paul did the same after his Damascus Road experience. So have countless others, from hermits subsisting in remote caves to troubled souls to be seen walking in city parks before the day’s noises have begun.

(Mind you these are not words coming out of a person who has been declared by the Catholic Church a Saint …though he might deserve that honour.) ... /4