A few Sundays ago there was this Gospel reading at Mass:

John 2:13-22: “Since the Passover of the Jews was near,
Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
as well as the money-changers seated there.
He made a whip out of cords
and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
and spilled the coins of the money-changers
and overturned their tables,
and to those who sold doves he said,
‘Take these out of here,
and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.’
His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
Zeal for your house will consume me.
At this the Jews answered and said to him,
‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’
Jesus answered and said to them,
‘Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.’
The Jews said,
‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and you will raise it up in three days?’
But he was speaking about the temple of his Body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this,
and they came to believe the Scripture“

(Via USCCB.)

The phrase “came to believe” jumped out at me and made me think of the Second Step of recovery movements:

“Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

Both the disciple’s and an alcoholic’s “coming to believe” happen after some seismic event in their lives. The disciples had to witness Jesus’ resurrection to come to believe in His divinity and the Scriptural basis for His being, and the alcoholic had to fundamentally declare his or her own weakness about their addiction before “coming to believe” that God can effect change in their lives. For the disciples faith was the result, for an addict it is sanity.

Some may have a hard time reconciling faith with sanity, for faith is belief in the unknowable, and only crazy people believe in things unseen by any method. Maybe for us alcoholics in recovery it is not such a difficult thing. Our experience in recovery gives us an insight into the situations that are otherwise unexplainable, except by faith. Our ability to cope with this (or relish this) implies a sanity.

Where are you in “coming to believe?”

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