Karl Rahner writes of the surprising presence of faith, hope, and love at times when there are no apparent justifications for it. He claims that his is an action of the Spirit within us that brings ups hope beyond individual hopes and a basic and fundamental faith that cannot be shaken. He gives the following examples:
1. Where a responsibility in freedom is still accepted and borne where it has not apparent offer of success or advantage;
2. Where a person experiences and accepts his or her ultimate freedom which no earthly compulsions can take away from him;
3. Where the lead into the darkness of death is accepted as the beginning of everlasting promise;
4. Where the sum of all accounts of life, which no one can calculate alone, is understood by an inconceivable other as good, though it still cannot be “proven”;
5. Where the fragmentary experience of love, beauty, and joy is experienced and accepted purely and simply as the promise of love, beauty, and joy, without being understood in ultimate cynical skepticism as a cheap form of consolation for some final deception;
6. Where a woman dares to pray into a silent darkness and knows that she is heard, although no answer seems to come back about which she might argue and rationalize;
7. Where men and women rehearse their own deaths in everyday life; and try to live in such a way as they would like to die, peaceful and composed ---
there is God and God’s liberating grace.
Rahner, The Practice of Faith
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