I don’t know how people get along without faith. Of course, many, many people do, and those people really miss a whole lot. They miss a lot that faith offers. Because what does faith give us? Faith gives us power. Faith gives us the power to overcome. Faith gives us inspiration. Faith gives us integration—all the lose ends of life are pulled together. Faith gives us a connection. It gives us centeredness. It gives us strength. And faith does something else. Faith helps make miracles happen and in making those miracles happen, faith helps to rid us of our fears.

I dare say that the real demon in life, that which causes us more problems than anything, is fear. Fear of what? We are afraid of ourselves. We are afraid of the present, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of people, afraid of situations. And when we are living with fear and responding to fear, we pull back. We never develop into the people that we can be and that we are supposed to be.

I had a real lesson in faith a number of years ago through a woman who had become a very dear and intimate friend of mine. Her name was Amelia Rossi. Amelia died three years ago at the age of one hundred and five. She started coming to my church, the Marble Collegiate Church, when she was in her late eighties. We had become acquainted when she was eighty-nine. On her ninetieth birthday, and thereafter every year on her birthday or close to it, I would take her to lunch. We always had the most fascinating conversations. I was intrigued by this little lady who was about five foot tall—a bundle of positive energy. She was always in the present. She talked very little about the past, but was in the present and always looking forward to the future. She was a veritable "faith factory." You don’t hear faith being a faith factory. What does a factory do? It manufactures things. She seemed to manufacture faith and miracles through all of the years that I knew her. On her ninety-ninth birthday lunch I asked the question that is usually asked of people when they are one hundred years old. I didn’t know if she would make it that long and so I decided to ask her then. And the usual question is: To what do you attribute your longevity? So I said to Amelia, "Amelia, tell me what is that has kept you living so long and so vital so long?" Well, you know the usual answers: I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I’ve lived a clean life. These are rather dull answers. But she had another one.

She thought for a minute and she said, "I’ll tell you what’s given me this long life. I have learned how to not be afraid." That penetrated my consciousness. This little woman had learned how not to be afraid. And I was aware then that Amelia knew what the fifth verse of the third Psalm was all about: "Thou, oh Lord, are a shield around me." And then I remembered two passages of scripture she would often quote, both from St. Paul. First, something that Paul said in his letter to the Romans: "All things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purposes." I saw her facing adversity and loss, I was with her when she lost two sons. She had broken bones—a broken toe from stumbling, a broken hip at one hundred years of age. She was mugged on several occasions. She had a tough time in the years that I knew her. But I never knew her to be afraid. And she would always say, "All things work together for good when you love God." But the phrase she used the most was what Paul said to the Philippians: "I can do all things through Christ who gives me the strength." A faith to rid you of your fears. And this little lady said, "I have learned how not to be afraid."

Faith really is a miracle maker. And I don’t think we understand what faith can do for us. We don’t give it the chance. We don’t give it the opportunity. Everybody in life wants a big miracle to happen, something spectacular, because all of us in the difficulties and challenges of life are dealing with things that become very big. And once in a while, something very major happens. I think that in our faith we should always go for broke. Go for the big one because as we go for the big one we’ll always have some kind of miracle happen. There are times when the big one does happen.

I have a fairly recent friend named Barbara Holmes. Barbara lives in Maryland. A number of years ago she started coming to Marble Church when she would be in New York to see a pain specialist, a doctor at the Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York City. The first Sunday I met Barbara was after the service when she introduced herself and said, "You are my pastor."

I thought, "How could I be her pastor? I had never seen her before."

And she said, "I live in Maryland and I have been in bed for years suffering from enormous pain." And she mentioned a disease which had all of this profound pain. Her face was tortured. She looked terrible. Then she said, "You have been with me every Sunday morning and I just wanted to meet you because I come to New York often."

So Barbara and I got to know each other and became friends. She told me the story of medication after medication after medication, the complications that would come from it , and sometimes one pill fighting another pill was more difficult than the pain she was facing. But all the way along she said, "A miracle is going to happen in my life. I know I will be free of pain. I am confident." She enlisted me, she enlisted the congregation, and many other people to pray for her. Year after year the prayers continued. Then I didn’t see Barbara for a long time.

Finally, a number of months ago I received a letter from her, a clearly written letter in which she said, "Arthur, I am healed." I was so excited that I called her that night. I said, "Barbara, when are you coming to New York? I want to hear the story." She came within a couple of weeks and this is the story that she told:

She said, "You know that I have believed. You know that I have prayed. You know that I have many people praying for me. More recently, Francis McNutt, a former Roman Catholic priest and a renowned faith healer, was coming into our community and I had to go and see him. Fortunately I was able to get an audience with him and I spent about ten minutes with him before the healing service. This is what he said, ‘Barbara, you have a real problem here. But what you need more than anything else is soaking prayer.’ A few minutes later, three woman came and began to attend to me. For three hours they read Scripture, they prayed, they had a laying on of hands one after another after another. They worked as a wonderful unit. After an hour had passed, I felt going through my body some kind of light electrical shock and some of the pain was released. They continued to pray, read scripture, laying on hands, and after another hour there was another feeling going through my body like an electrical shock and the pain was even less. The third hour it happened again. This time I knew I was cured. I knew I was healed. The pain was gone. I know enough about psychology to know that sometimes there is a power of suggestion, but this was deeper than that—more was going on. I waited a week. I went to my doctors in Maryland and I told them about it. They wouldn’t believe it. They could really never deal with it. I came to New York to see my doctor at Sloan-Kettering. We were at opposite ends of a long hallway. He saw me coming and I ran and jumped into his arms. I held on and I cried. And he cried. And he said, ‘Barbara, you are really healed, aren’t you? The miracle has happened.’"

It was a result of sturdy, unending faith—the result of a lot of people praying for her. But she said, "There was one other thing, Arthur. Do you believe in angels?" And I said, "Yes, Barbara, I do." She said, "When I went back to thank those three women, I could only find two of them. Nobody had ever seen or heard of the third woman. We have not been able to locate her yet, but somehow God brought this angel into my life to be a part of this team to heal my body. And today, I’m well."

Faith to rid you of your fears. Jesus was very simple and direct when he said to have faith. He didn’t tell us to intellectualize. He didn’t tell us to think about faith. He said believe; have faith. And as you believe and have faith, in time, there will be that great moment when you will hear the Lord say, "Go in faith. Go in peace. Your faith has made you well."

Let us pray: Lord, for the gift of life, for the challenges of life, and for the wonderful gift of faith, we say thank you. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Lydia Talbot: Arthur, you began your compelling message earlier by revealing your own mini faith crisis. How did you know you were experiencing that? What are the signs?

Arthur Caliandro: The best way to say it is that I always have faith in the sense that I believe. I believe there’s a God. I believe God is a God of love and God is a caring God, and so forth. But I know I’m in trouble when I don’t trust God. When I’m in my worst faith crises, I can’t trust God for the next five minutes. I have to do things. I have to control things. And it doesn’t work to do it that way.

Talbot: What was going on in your life at the time that caused you to sense this loss?

Caliandro: We had some setbacks in the church, some problems with integration of various programs. There were some financial difficulties. And I was tired of it. I was a little bit weary. And rather than, as I mentioned, lean into God—which is where the power is, which is where the future is, which is where the energy is—I layed back and wallowed a little bit. What brought me to attention was this very cute note that was on the wall that night saying, "Sir, do not close the door. Jesus."

Talbot: And you called that particular church worker who left the note one of God’s messengers in you life.

Caliandro: He was my messenger. God does this. I think God really meets us at every point of need. We don’t always experience what we want to experience. We’d like somthing different from what God gives us.

Talbot: You touched on the struggle for the church to be the church authentically; to keep faith. That must be a very tough struggle for someone in your capacity. Here you are in the center, the heart of New York City—29th and Fifth Avenue. How do you keep the faith in a setting like that in New York City?

Caliandro: New York City is wonderful. New York City is a challenge. It’s a wonderful challenge. Probably the contrast makes it a little bit easier. I would like to say that New York is probably the most pagan city in America and it’s the biggest mission station. There is nothing on a Sunday morning which encourages people to go to church. There’s nothing in the environment which encourages spirituality. This makes the challenge very, very clear to do everything you can to show people and interest them in something else, something divine, something spiritual.

Talbot: You use the word spiritual, spirituality. On an earlier visit you quoted the writer, Teilhard de Chardin, by saying that we are not human beings having spiritual experiences, but the converse, that we are spiritual beings having human experiences and that spirituality is really a very natural state.

Caliandro: This is our normal, natural state. We are spiritual and we are on a human journey. The quicker we can get back to a realization that we really are spiritual beings having human experiences, the better the life experience will be.

Talbot: Now in your message you gave a powerful story about a woman who experienced what we would call faith healing. What do you say to the cynics who would be suspicious of faith healing, who would say that it was a coincidence?

Caliandro: All you can say is the evidence is there. You’ve got to believe some times coincidences do happen. There have been too many instances of pure, straight-out healing which transcended all scientific and medical explanation. Something happened from somewhere which made a person different: the cancer disappeared, the illness dissolved. It’s happened too many times. There is good evidence for this.

Talbot: And it’s happened to you.

Caliandro: I have seen it happen. My own healing experiences have been more a process. I have not had a dramatic healing, but I have had a couple of major illnesses. Without faith and without my dependence on a higher power I don’t think I would be here today—along with good medicine. It’s a combination. Jesus was a realist in that sense. Luke was a physician. You use all the resources that you have around you, but that which is the kicker is faith.