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The Meaning Of Life
God's Quiet Presence
What is the meaning of human life? It is the decisive question none of us can forever
forestall. Its call is perturbing and persistent, even when only a hush in the whirlwind of
our routine activities. However, it becomes a bit more sonic whenever we purposely
consider what we personally need to do. Behind all of our actions, there is the
presumption of why I am doing what I do. Of course, our answers are wide ranging.
Mundanely, it may be for simple pleasure, inescapable duty, mere convenience, or base
self enrichment. But when it comes to the pivotal matter of why I am a human being,
living in the complex structure of the world about me, we never seem to inalterably resolve
the issue.
Certainly, we may reflect upon our most satisfying days for clues that suggest how to
maintain the contentment, but we know life's disturbing occurrences are never
extinguished. The intact peace of mind and fullness of understanding we desire is
shrouded and only incompletely realized in this life.
In my late teens, I idealistically envisioned the life of contemplative monks to be unworried
and a template for unruffled existence. Their image was an outward display of order,
piety, and placidness. In fact, it led me to pursue a religious vocation when youthful
confusion about my future overtook me. The actual experience, however, provoked
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deeper, more bothersome questions. The priestly inclination was not, as I fantasized, a
foolproof blueprint for happiness. It ratified for me that there is no cocoon of impervious
shelter, dissolving all of life's turmoil.
No matter what path any of us travels in life, we are all pelted by uncertainty and unfulfilled
yearnings. We question ourselves with awkward probes. We rethink our key decisions
and wonder about their solidity. Life does not exempt any of us from its demands. In
fact, the more we attempt to dodge life's onslaught, the more confused and anxious we
become. The most flimsy life is the one spent searching for bypasses around the
challenges of human living.
As I consider my own life in what most likely is the last decade of my earthly existence, I
understand its account is an entangled mix. My actions are a blend of obligation,
happenstance, thoughtfulness, disregard, compassion and sinfulness. I have neither a
halo nor horns on my head. So, am I a good or bad person? The answer is I am a human
being; hence, all of the above. My freedom of will traverses all sorts of territory because
life does not come with a routed roadmap. Nevertheless, I continually circle back to the
fundamental question of life's meaning. I seek to know why I exist. To what end is the
toil of my living?
Unambiguously, I realize I am not the principal cause of my existence. I did not
specifically will my birth and I am not capable of deterring my death. I do not have that
primal power. Therefore, there is another source responsible for my particular being and
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that of the world around me. Clearly, it must be an unlimited force with the ability to inform
being at will. It leaves me questioning the precise origin and configuration of our cosmic
milieu. And more pointedly, how do I fit into the mosaic? Who created me and for what
reason?
Empirically, our existence bubbles from the energy and matter of our universe. We marvel
at the factors contributing to our development. But, we remain stymied to exactly explain
how time and space arose from nothingness. We can trace our way back to the so called
"big bang" only to ask ourselves what precedes it? Our chaste, unbending intelligence
always seeks thorough explanations. We want to know definitively how and why our
cosmos came to be. As long as there is this "why", our mind craves a cohesive answer.
We are not comforted by ignorance. The human mind is relentlessly quizzical. We want
convincing answers.
Intellectually, we are pushed to consider what power can produce being from a void of
nothingness. It is a provocation that begins in mystery and remains cloaked in it even
after our minds have given it their best shot. Ultimately, we can concur that absolute
being is capable of sheer creation. It is being that only knows unhindered existence. It
is uncreated, ceaseless being. Therefore, any act of creation by absolute being is the
result of that being's necessarily perfect will. Likewise, if an action is willed, it is the
consequence of self consciousness. It is an intellectual determination to act. Therefore,
it is preposterous to posit creation from nothingness as haphazard. It can only be the
product of one who is supreme in all respects. It is the handiwork of God.
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However, for humans to know what we can of God requires divine revelation. As
creatures with conditional intelligence, we cannot enter God's mind. But, our human
understanding should bear a similarity to God's intellect. Not an identicalness but a
correspondence. Our knowledge of truth comes from an intellectual insight that is
analogous to God's conception. However, God's knowledge is a given. There is no
procession to the truth for God as there is in human intelligence. God has direct
comprehension of all that is; he has no need to raise questions.
The notion of one almighty God as the lovingly faithful creator of our being is presented
in our history, beginning in the earliest oral traditions of the Old Testament and
immortalized in the Pentateuch, the written record of the extraordinary covenant between
God and Israel. However, with the Incarnation of Jesus, divine revelation exponentially
multiples. The nature of God becomes startlingly identified for us. It is the exposure of
God as Trinitarian, a wholly spellbinding realization. The driving animation of God is
shared with us. It is in the Trinity of God that we strike the probable reason for our
existence.
While a comprehensive understanding of the Trinity is not a human possibility, the
revealed fact of three persons existing in one perpetual nature confirms the interpersonal
dynamism of God. Therefore, even if there never was the creation of angels or human
beings, God would still be personally interacting within himself. Amazingly, interpersonal
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existence and being are necessary to one another. Therefore, isolation is not
conceivable. The very being of God is eternally inter relational.
In our living, we know our personhood is uplifted through interaction with others. We
describe ourselves in the context of our relationships. We speak of family, community,
and friendship in cherished tones. We better know ourselves through our personal ties.
In fact, there is a euphoric experience in our intimacy with another. In a world hectoring
us with demands and anxieties, we encounter repose when there is unsullied concord
with another. While there are numerous examples of the togetherness to which I am
alluding, it is most movingly displayed in the drama of new life.
In pregnancy, there is the reality of two persons in bodily oneness. It is a complete sharing
and protectiveness. Yet, it is never the diminution of either one's individual personhood,
but an enrichment of both the mother's and child's being. There is the begetting of new
life with all of its potential, as well as the unbreakable spiritual unity of mother and child
despite the physical separation of birth. Simply put, love is never solitary or remote. It is
a merging in which we apprehend a fuller understanding of ourselves because of the
fusion. If we never enfold ourselves with another, we will surely fail to ever appreciate
the splendor of our humanity.
Knowing God is interpersonal by nature and incapable of nonexistence, it is
understandable for his being to be extended in creativity. The indissoluble power of love
is rooted in its generosity. God would not keep his love and intelligence unshared,
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knowing it can be providentially dispersed. Therefore, the human person with individual
self-conscious rationality and full freedom of will becomes a being with whom God can
relate in a manner reflecting the Trinitarian personhood. I believe this is the critical insight
to be gleaned. Namely, God can only relate to himself and his creation on a personal
and interactive basis. It is the revealed nature of God's being. It is the vine and the
branches. We proceed from the Being of the Trinity.
The truest love we experience in our living is found in the understanding we gain by giving
ourselves to another. It is an innovative event. Without venturing myself, I have no hope
of reciprocation. Without subjugating my selfishness in the act of love, I will never have
a response that is truthful. So, it is with God's loving creation of humankind. Spirit and
matter begin to subsist in integral unity. God initiates the body and soul relationship in
the purity of divine benevolence, seeking from us a response that is sincere and free.
In our self managed intelligence and self determined will we can affirm our longing to love
God. As the individual person we are, we can elect to interact with the divine. Both God's
personhood and ours are not alien to one another. However, as in any act of love, we
can reject God's prelude or place our own peculiar restrictions on it.
We should acknowledge that God understands the value inherent in the creation of a
being sharing matter and spirit. The kingdom of God includes human beings. We are not
a whimsical afterthought. God's creation always entails a categorically lucid and
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compelling judgment. However, our humanity is not divinity. It is a type of personhood
that is embraced in the unfaltering personhood of the Trinity.
Although God does not need us, God desires us. When one experiences authentic love,
its goodness cannot be restrained. We can only imagine the profundity of God's love. In
a way we cannot totally envisage, God knows there is unmitigated greatness and beauty
in human living. We strive to comprehend and justify it. Quite astonishingly, in the midst
of all our worries and travail, God is in a taintless person to person interaction with us.
However, even denoting in faith God's personal closeness, we still wonder if it is for real.
After all, we are not cloaked from the trials of life by a never-ending set of miracles. There
are times when God may seem remote and quite uninvolved with us. We may pray for
relief but not immediately experience it. We can listen to sermon after sermon about
God's unwavering plan and not understand why it is not as easy to realize as the spoken
words describe it. We leave church not overtly different. Our dismay is not demonstrably
eradicated.
As a result, some contend God works in a spiritually regal and judgmental manner,
emphasizing the wellbeing of our soul as paramount. Therefore, God's concern is not to
be identified with our material life. Rather, the secular and the holy are diametrically
opposed. Emphasis is upon eternal salvation and one's life in the hereafter. For them,
our earthly life is a cross we must subserviently bear in order to punch our ticket into
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heaven. In this rendering of life, God assumes a magisterial role, testing our faith with
obstacles. Therefore, clergy urge us to be wary of worldly temptations.
While this strategy banks on our suffering to pave the way to paradise, it does not appear
commensurate with the Trinitarian personhood of God. It is antithetical to imagine the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit in tension with one another. Love does not coerce, tempt,
belittle, or condemn the beloved. Surely, God cannot at the same time love us and
maneuver human life as a battleground in which we earn points of reward or demerits of
discredit. We fully exist within the fostering personhood of the Trinity. Human existence
is bestowed in an act of divine love. In God's supreme liberty we are created as a person
with a rational and free self identity. We are our own person with the intrinsic ability to
interact with God. The cosmos is our home. It is the place giving us the time and space
to begin to understand ourselves and our relationship with God.
Of course, the dimension of time is perplexing. It sets our existence as incremental. We
are born on a particular date into a cultural setting we do not choose. During the years
of our earthly living, we age from infant to adult. The events of our life, both those of joy
and harrow, form us. Our progress is measured in steps. We must pass through the
impositions of day to day living. Invariably, we all make errors in this journey. But it is
our life. We own it and come to take hold of it ever so gradually.
All of our relationships bear a time stamp. Some are lasting and others fleeting. We hold
a few inspirational and here and there a couple that are unfortunate. Hence, we should
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not expect our interaction with God to be outside our timeframe. It will be paced to our
clock.
In the insouciance of youth, I accepted God as someone I only needed at the periphery
of my existence. Life was vibrant and I seemed in control. Today, the current of my life
has slowed. I am more able to see where the last stream is taking me. My tie to God has
become focused from the boundary to the nub of my existence. My being arose from a
power greater than my own and I will soon be handing it back to the one who created it.
It is the alpha and omega of Jesus.
However, it is done in an act of love that redounds to each party. In my birth, God trusted
me with freedom and intelligence that has enormous capacity. In my death, I come before
Jesus in tatters, knowing his mercy is larger than all of my failings. Assuredly, the hope
of love is bathed in its compassion. Neither God nor I turn away from each other. He
knows me better than I know myself. Therefore, my death is the opportunity to
transparently surrender all of my personal being. It is the last offering I can give in the
faith that Jesus will never scorn even my unsteady attempts to live an intelligent, good,
and loving life.
Over the past twenty months, I have been felled by the death of my wife. We were married
for forty-six years. In the beginning, we were like so many other young couples, exuberant
and anxious to build our dreams and share a life together. We took a chance on each
other. We settled into comfortable habits that brought us security. We raised our children
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and took delight in our grandchildren. As cancer consumed my wife, we both knew she
was dying but did not articulate it. We were at a point, in the midst of unending medical
treatments, where merely being present to one another for the time left was better than
belaboring the obvious. In retrospect, I also know my wife's selflessness prompted her
to hold all her sadness and pain from us. She especially did not want her daughters and
grandchildren to be deprived of their joy because of her terminal illness.
When I saw her take her last breath, there were no final words. She could no longer
speak, and I could only stroke her now motionless body, pleading for her to forgive my
shortcomings. She was leaving me and her family. For the first time in our life together,
I could not go with her. The Good Shepherd was taking her home and letting me know
he will be back for me at another time.
So, I relearned God's relationship is inimitable to each of us in our own segment of time.
I now live with loneliness that is perhaps more revelatory than my grief imagined. When
one's anchor is lost, self reflection becomes grueling. It is God's reminder that his
everlastingness is our only inexhaustible solace. Clearly, love seeks the perfection of its
union and that is future oriented. Again, time inserts itself. Our past is not unblemished
and complete. Our future is the threshold to love's promise.
Of late, I am also reminded that the purer events of life bring us shame. They highlight
our shallowness and faults. As much as I attempted to be a caring husband to my wife
in life, the instant of her death, her slipping into the hands of God, flooded me with
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reflections of where I failed her. For sure, none of us is as gallant as we wish. Our
humanity packaged in time and space means we are always striving to be better. Each
day, we wrestle with emotions and actions that are not genuine. Our inclinations can be
downright bizarre.
Hence, mercy is also an aspect of true love. Compellingly, it is easier to forgive the
beloved than it is to forgive ourselves. Since we will what we do, it is difficult to atone for
our mistakes within our own consciousness. Guilt has a strong grip. As such, love is the
fortitude to ask for pardon. None of us can be but fault ridden before the preeminence of
God. Yet, we clutch the awareness that love never spurns the contrite. At times, we can
be harder on ourselves than our lover expects. For sure, God knows my flaws with
intensity that would be fearful were he not the very source of love.
Critically, what happens to us in life forces us to assess our faith. While some express
no belief in God and others speak of total dedication, for most of us, I surmise it is a matter
of some faith in need of further support. Recently, I reexamined the tenets of Catholic
faith with the objective of securing greater appreciation for the rationale of our living.
However, it was not as efficacious as I expected.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church presents itself as a theoretical document, a
statement of doctrines and the formulaic justification for them. Its focus is upon the
economy of salvation history with its indissoluble religious interconnection of actions and
their adherence to Old Testament prophecy. It is a portrait of God's grand, immutable
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design. It offers the sense of a clinical progression from Adam to Christ. It addresses
fallen humans whose guilt can only be expiated by God's requirement of Jesus' bloody
sacrifice on the cross. There are passages that strain to braid predestination and free
will. The power of Satan instituting death and deceiving our intellect establishes the divine
battle line and is a harbinger of the cataclysmic upheaval preceding Christ's final return.
Frankly, I am confounded by this scrupulousness. It hits me as off key. Life is hard
enough without dogmatic sharpening of the edges.
Primarily, the Catechism is a document written by the teaching authority of the Church to
underpin its promulgations. Apostolic tradition, Holy Scripture, Church councils, and the
writings of the Church Fathers are meticulously cited and chiseled in philosophic stone.
Certainly, it is more academic than pastoral. Therefore, I am not convinced a person
bereft by the disappointments and vagaries of life will discover it to be the resonant
revelation he or she seeks. An incommutable expression of exactly how one is to worship
and act in order to derive understanding of God is a mighty undertaking prone to induce
order but not ensure insight.
Manifestly, each of us is an individual with our own substantial personhood. When
pressed to identify ourselves, we provide our name. We do not deem ourselves to be
generic entities with the exact sameness of everyone else. Therefore, God's personhood
must know us not as just another human being but as the singular person we are. In our
living, we never relate to one another in precisely the same way. We know others in their
individuality and recognize their distinctiveness. Reassuringly, love accepts the other as
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he or she is. We do not force another person to become who we are, but encourage the
other and ourselves to use our self consciousness to appreciate the opportunities
personal bonds provide to deepen our experience of life. So too, I do not expect God's
act of love to be dissimilar. In our relationship with God, we do not become God. God
and we always remain the person we are. However, God is and we are becoming. God
is perfect and we are conditional. God cannot but love; we must freely will it and tediously
work to assure its abundance.
Therefore, while I can appreciate the concept of the community of the faithful, my
existence is not ultimately defined by it. I am a person created by the personhood of God.
I exist in a relational frame of divine reference. God does not drop any of us into the
cosmos to feign for ourselves in bleak solitude. Rather, we evolve from the universe of
God's initiation. God is with us from the start. God and we have no other way to
communicate than through the extension of our personal being to one another. It is how
love works. It is enkindled in liberty and its flowering is only accomplished in free acts.
God's love is a given; it is the divine state of being. Our love of God is expressive to the
degree it is prompted by our free volition. We are never forced to love God, but always
invited to do so.
We all know the adage "love at first sight". It is a poetic way of expressing the spark of
spontaneous love. However, it is not typical and perhaps not as desirable as romantics
would have us believe. All human relationships occur within the ambit of space and time.
We interact with a grouping of other people who are but a minute fraction of the universal
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population. We gravitate to those with whom we share a common interest. We both gain
new friends and loss touch with others. Clearly, there is contingency in our interactions.
Likewise, we have to make decisions at the given moment, knowing there is some open-
endedness to them. This is especially the case with our most intense commitments to
others. The connections in family and marriage are both wondrous when filled with love
and respect, but tragic when shattered by estrangement and hatred.
From the experiences of our successful and broken relationships, we realize love is
accretive. It begins in many small, casual ways. It takes risks in the face of timidity. It is
merciful because we all make mistakes. It is self-sacrificing since brute gratification at
the expense of the other is toxic. It knows perfection is not instantaneous. It understands
personal commitment to another is about a level of comfort one can never achieve in
isolation. It is enfoldment spawned by devotion. Therefore, love unwaveringly detects
the fuller life wrought through togetherness. It is a conversion of "one" into "two in one".
It gives us a sense of the Trinity in that the conjoining is not merely the sum of the two
persons, but a greater wholeness arising from the engagement. We shed secludedness
to become more richly human.
Throughout our life, we are the same person. However, we develop ourselves for the
good in our intellectual pursuits. We are different in our stages of life by what we
understand at that point in our time and space. We esteem the sageness age brings.
Often it is the harsh lessons of life that impact us the most. While no one purposely seeks
hardship and distress, life inexorable brings travail to our doorstep. Human living is
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precarious, filled with difficult questions and nagging irresolution. Nonetheless, our worst
setbacks are revelatory. They pinch the nerve of our frailty, forcing us to confront our
smallness and powerlessness.
Assuredly, the totality of truth is beyond us in this life. Therefore, faith must take up the
slack. However, faith cannot be divorced from intelligence. Blind eyed faith is as
unproductive as obdurate disbelief. Yet, even with the acknowledgement of faith, life
does not become magically transformed. In fact, I am fully convinced we all wage an
ongoing struggle with our faith. Once one consciously chooses to live intelligently, he or
she never ceases to question. It means one's faith is continuously subjected to scrutiny.
Remember, our person to person relationship with God is developing within the
boundaries of our human existence. It is as flowing as our other encounters of love. In
my current solitude, there are many moments of deafening stillness when I have no formal
words for God and God is simply sitting with me. It is life's waiting room.
With my wife no longer here, I understand better the notion of quiet presence. I now recall
how each day was not consumed in marathon chatter. It was always about the comfort
of her simply being here. Many words were no longer needed. I took comfort in the
muffled sounds of her moving about the house, the rustle of the morning newspaper, her
never ending handwritten lists, but most of all her being beside me as we slept. We knew
neither of us would reject the other. Being together filled the house with life. Clearly,
vivacity requires relationship with another. It is a life lesson I brutally learned in the
aftermath of her death.
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I now know God's interpersonal relationship is the kernel and confidence of my faith. My
days are now in slow motion and cloistered from others. There is scant lightheartedness,
tears still flow, no profound undertakings, and life's obstacles persist. But, there is the
calm presence of God. In my consciousness, I seem to be only conversing with myself
to abruptly understand my thoughts are directed to God. He never left me and remains
willing to accept me as I am, self pity and all. He is here around the clock. Perhaps, there
will be a day when he makes some noise in the house.
Pointedly, God is not leaving me alone. However, he is not planning to control me, even
in my distress. Love is never about manipulation. It is always about two persons in their
individuality wrapping their existence to one another. To live as one with the freedom of
two selfhoods. Mysterious indeed, but so necessary.
Although millennia of earlier thinking portrayed our world entombed in classical order and
ironbound regimentation, the scientific discoveries of the past century have replaced
determinism with probability. Absolutism has given way to relativity. Self reflectively, we
know human consciousness confronts objective data, uses intelligence to explain them,
and employs reasonableness to judge the merit of the determinations we make. But
beyond this labor of research, there is the final consciousness of what to do with the newly
minted judgments. In this moment we are making an evaluation within the scope of our
free will. Indeed, humans can intellectually ratify a truth and decide never to implement
it or wily twist aspects of the truth to dishonor it.
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Our indigenous freedom and the probability of events make our living complicated. It is
a condition that presents itself even in the earliest sagas of human interaction. Our
literature, art, and history are replete with the fallout from free will. Its beneficial use has
bettered our virtue, while its contortion has brought us tragedy. It is evident that we are
never absolved from our need to make decisions. Along the way, all of us are victimized
by mistakes. We rush headlong with incomplete information or misguided insights.
However, the more pernicious difficulty is knowing a verity and consciously subverting it
or deciding not to be intelligent at all.
Our living is experienced only after we are immersed in it. We have no conception of any
prenatal life. We do not determine the time and place of our birth. Nonetheless, we must
play the cards dealt us. But it is done with consciousness. We are not dolts. Our
intelligence desires to affirm the essence of human life. We want to make sense of it.
We seek to know the purpose of our individual existence.
From our birth, we are a question mark to ourselves. We leave behind the fleeting years
of infancy to begin to take stock of our surroundings. We learn the norms immediate to
our world. We adjust to our culture and society. We are tutored by our elders. We spend
a dozen or so years in structured schooling. We take on adulthood with an inculcated
ideology. However, when fully responsible for our own living, we revisit the imperative
questions of life. What does it mean to be a human person? Is my ideology accurate?
What is the end purpose of my living?
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The most perceptible aspect of human life is the cognizance each person has of himself
or herself. It is radical self consciousness. It is awareness of my individual thinking and
the discrete objects that populate the world about me. For many, this is the extent of their
mindfulness. The world is exactly what one senses it to be. It is the practical environment
that allows one to satisfy one's own needs and desires. The good is what is good to me.
The here and now are predominant.
Solely pragmatic thinking, however, is not robust enough to address the profoundest
issues of life. After all, approaching relationships with the exclusive motive of what is in
it for me is confining and incomplete. Also, it is intellectually shallow to simply believe the
perceived truth I find beneficial to myself is the fullness of all truth. Small minded living
and egocentric thinking are too partial by definition to answer the grand questions that
eclipse me as an individual.
Indisputably, we live in concert with others. There is a social aspect to our subsistence.
We share our living with one another because of the greater value to be gained. On my
own, I have rather limited understanding. On the other hand, the collaborative abundance
of the community provides expanded opportunities. Through the discoveries of others, I
can widen my vista of learning. I am not compelled to start from ground zero each time I
seek knowledge or assistance.
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Personal self conscious thinking and social living are the first two basic aspects of human
life. No matter what else, we all are a functioning individual interacting with others. Of
course, not all personal determinations are sound and not all human interactions are
fortuitous. This leads to the third characteristic of our existence. Namely, our
quintessential liberty. It is the free will that is baked into our creation.
Our freedom is the lodestone of our nature. In the acts of our will, we self determine what
to do and what not to do. From our most ordinary activities to our most noble acts of love,
we decide the course to navigate. Clearly, the liberty of our selfhood is double edged.
Free will unveils itself in both wise and foolish undertakings, bringing one to the fourth
characteristic of our being, namely, our imbedded human intelligence.
Our ability to rationally think demarks us from the rest of creation. We purposely identify
causes and meanings. We do not simply live a hand to mouth existence. We raise
questions, intelligently understand the data before us, weigh the correctness of our
findings, and morally consider the good of the actions our discoveries prompt. So, while
animals continue to live off the land in crude dens, we develop theoretic science, emotive
arts, and ethical tenets. We craft communities, societies, and civilizations. Our biology
is that of the animal kingdom, but our intellection is extraordinary to the human species.
Yet, our understanding is constrained. There is an unknowing that shades our intellectual
endeavors. We never have total possession of all there is to know.
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However, the darkness of unknowing is a brand of knowledge. It is the consciousness of
our limitedness in the face of our zeal for unlimited understanding of "who" and "why" we
are. Despite the high mindedness and passion of our articulated prayers, there is a
residual disquiet to know who God is. But to know who God is, is beyond the range of
human intelligence. Yet, it is not beyond the act of love. The essence of love is not
conceptual. It is the intended state of our being. It is a forgetfulness of strife found in the
soft caress of the beloved. It is knowledge beyond the capability of pale words and
austere logic. However, it is always relational.
For us to love God and for God to love us is to be with one another. It is togetherness
that only can occur in our removal of all constrictions and selfish demands. I am a created
being imbued with a thirst for knowledge that outstrips my thinking. I turn to God in
dependence and nescience. Startlingly, in the act of love, it is easier to appreciate why
we seek the other, but we are less sure why the other responds to us. Ultimately, love
returns more to us than our frailty brings to the coalescence. This is a foregone
conclusion when pondering God's absoluteness and our finiteness.
Earlier, I noted the phrase "love at first sight". Now, I beg you to consider a starkly
opposed truism, "love is blind". The paradox highlights a further characteristic of our
human living, the opposition of probabilities. Love's first sight is an undeveloped stirring.
At best, a possibility of what may be. The blindness of love is its high point. In the full
bloom of love, one no longer just focuses upon the overt attraction of the beloved, but
rather more inwardly upon his or her substantial being. If you will, it is the beauty of the
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human soul. What began as a callow interest is now a mellowed coupling with its own
lasting sustenance. In the end, one is conscious of love and nourished by it, but has no
verbal definition for it. It is too elegant and sublime to be sheathed in purely rational
terms. It is blind to the eye, but radiant to the heart.
In the Gospels, Jesus quite spontaneously tells us who God is by using the single word
"love". Yet, we know love is not a thing we encounter but a relationship we support or
reject. Therefore, like all other acts occurring in our cosmos, love is a probability. We
now firmly understand the edifice of our world is not one of dictatorial necessities. It is a
construct that expresses God's perfect love. Love is a free act that is offered to another
person. But for it to be authentic, the other person must freely welcome it. Love is never
divorced from the liberty of our consciousness and the freedom of our will. Hence, the
quantum uncertainty of our universe is aligned with the quantum uncertainty of love.
For sure, our human acts of love are imperfect. We are never completely unselfish and
wholly virtuous. But, we know real love has a divine quality we aspire, even though we
cannot completely achieve it. When loved, we are under an umbrella of mutual support.
Our personal burdens are shared. We feel goodness being with our beloved. In fact,
there are moments of ecstasy when all cares are forgotten and the world seems
compressed into the immediate moment of overarching elation.
God's unblemished love stands as a perpetual invitation to us. However, like all other
acts of love, it needs to be freely accepted. It is an event within our world of probabilities.
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Additionally, because of God's regard for the dignity of the human person, our relationship
of love with God will have a distinctly human element to it.
While we may speak of "falling" in love, it is more realistic to reference it as "growing" in
love. There is a seismic difference between one's first date and the celebration of a
couple's golden wedding anniversary. Clearly, our love of God is also a time driven
relationship, marked by all the ups and downs of our human love encounters. However,
in freely accepting God's invitation of love, we are in a supernatural sphere. All that is
mystery to us is luminous to God. All that pains us in life is shared by God. All that brings
us joy has its source in God. In humility, we astoundingly assert that we our personally
loved by God who understands all there is to know and loves us with spotlessness beyond
our comprehension.
The fifth and most crucial characteristic of human living is faith. Jesus adamantly informs
us that faith is the keystone. If this is not to become a platitude, we must consider what
it means. In its simplest form, faith is belief in someone or something. Initially, I detect
the need for understanding beyond my current grasp. I turn to another in whom I trust to
fill the gap. The knowledge another has becomes shared so I improve my learning.
In virtually every walk of life, there are experts and leaders to whom we reliantly advert.
Therefore, faith is quite natural. After all, we just presume our civil and social structures
will function for us day in and day out. However, this is not the mark of the faith Jesus
enunciates. He is addressing our very existence. The bedrock of our being is the issue.
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While faith is not thoroughgoing obscurity, it is born out of essential darkness. While it is
not divorced from our intelligence, it must supersede it. Our intellect is hard wired to know
all that can be known. However, the span of our earthly years will not give us sufficient
time to accumulate the understanding we wish. We encounter an unknowing. It is the
known unknown that we cannot fathom. When our conditionality overtakes us, it creates
the disturbance which causes faith to arise.
Jesus speaks about the forcefulness of faith. He assures us faith in him is energetic. It
is a power within our consciousness. When the fog of unknowing brings us to a standstill,
we are dead in the water. We either accept unrelenting bleakness or seek the very source
of our being. Only divine radiance pierces all doubt.
Therefore, faith sprouts in the soil of our uncertainty. It is our assent to God's revelation
that he is love, the inspirational mercy and charity of absolute caring. It is the belief that
only God can penetrate the dense unknowing bewildering us. Faith is the admission we
desire our creator's knowledge of why we exist. We submit our ignorance before the
supremacy of God's knowledge. We want to be what God created us to be.
The sixth aspect of our living curls us back to our intelligence. If we crave to live in
wisdom, we must distinguish between accidental ideology and critical methodology.
Ideology is what we believe from inculcation. It is a product of our culture, education, and
raw experiences. It is quite instinctual. However, methodology is knowing how I come to
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know. It is understanding human understanding. It is not simple practical acceptance of
what I encounter in my immediate world, but dedicated self conscious thinking. One does
not jump to conclusions, but intelligently examines data, reasonably weighs the merit of
each judgment, and deliberates upon the rightfulness of the actions reason identifies. In
this way, truth is not ideologically driven but confirmed mindfully. Likewise, it is a process
one repeats continuously to both disinfect and expand knowledge. It brings one's living
in synchronization with the transcendental precepts elaborated by Bernard Lonergan. He
urges us to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. Anything less, leaves
us intellectually compromised and inhibits our discernment of truth.
I would be remiss to overlook the fact that Fr. Lonergan distills the end point of our
intelligence as love. When we reach the stage of intellectual responsibility, we are making
a willful decision. We are deciding what needs to be done, choosing the actually good
over the apparently good. Only our charity sanitizes the process.
Our espousal of faith is buttressed by our intelligence. Without self consciousness, we
would never ask questions, investigate data, make judgments, and determine courses of
action. As long as we are driven by a dispassionate quest for the truth and the enactment
of the lovingly and morally good, we are using our minds productively and accordingly.
Such thinking is oriented to God, the source of all that is true and good. Faith is the point
at which we know our human reasoning lacks sufficiency and we must rely upon God.
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Mysticism is a condition of deep internal awareness few achieve. Nonetheless, there is
a factor of the mystical life we can appreciate. Namely, the agonizing undertaking to
discursively know God proves feckless. After the dense turmoil of self searching, one
knows little beyond I exist in a restricted way and God exists in an incomprehensible way.
It is recognition of my weakness and limitedness in the face of God's perfection and
infinity. I am not God and God is not human. But, God created human beings to always
be self directed individuals with rational self consciousness and existence incorporating
a body and soul.
While poverty of spirit bends our knee before God, it is God's unremitting love that reveals
the everlasting value of our being. Truthfully, we can never take in the full cup of our
existence unless God shares the knowledge with us. We must want it and pray for it.
Again, the apex of intelligence is love. It is not contorted, porous ideology, but the
methodology of sinuous critical reasoning that factually addresses human life in a never
ending hunt of the true, the good, and the loveable. It is the immanent rationality that
ignites each and every genuine act of our human understanding.
No matter what enterprise enlivens our dedication for understanding, we all employ the
same ingrained structure of human rationality. If one does not squarely use one's self
conscious thinking, one is held hostage by error. Inattentiveness to data, unintelligent
analysis, unreasonable judgments, indefensible actions, and callousness are the culprits
of our demise. Sin is the failure to use our intelligence in its integrity.
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Before proceeding, let me recap. I highlighted six factors that are endemic to our living.
I submit they are evident to those who elect to pay attention to their state of being and
they deserve reemphasis.
First, self consciousness is our birthright. From the moment we are born, we become
aware of our free-standing selfhood. As we age, we comprehend our individuality is
indelible. I cannot become someone else. All of my senses are stimulated by the distinct
world in which I live. All of my rightful thinking returns to me with increasing enrichment
of myself.
Second, we are present to other humans. We recognize the uniqueness of others and
the need to interrelate. Language, art, and mathematics objectify our thinking. But, it is
for the sake of communicating with others. Our psychic well being and the mutual
success of our social living are self proving in the productivity of wholesome relationships.
Third, our selfhood is displayed in our liberty. We formulate and enact our personal
decisions. Neither God nor others can force us to do what we steadfastly choose not to
do. Therefore, genius and idiocy, love and hate, as well as legitimacy and self absorbency
are comingled. Clearly, our will is not imprisoned to act in a predetermined manner.
Fourth, humans are endowed with rationality. We are thinking beings. Each of us has
an intellect that is ours to use or mishandle. We each have the ability to understand all
that there is to understand. However, our rationality is conditional. We do not understand
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directly and immediately. Human cognition begins in the data time and space provide.
But it is our mind that abstracts the meaning of what we experience. It is our critical
thinking and impartial reflection that lead us to the true and the good.
Fifth, faith is a part of our intelligence. Surely, we all come to the point in our living when
we are overcome by mystery and doubt. We know we do not know all we need to know.
This consciousness reaches a rolling boil when the knowledge we value is transcendent
to us. There is a rousing of our psyche to hear from the one who created us. Our
complete comfort is found in decidedly knowing why I am. This is knowledge only God
has. It is our faith in the interpersonal nature of God that gives us the trust his word will
come to us in a manner we can absorb.
However, God's communication must be nuanced. Certainly, the absoluteness of God is
too overpowering for us to unreservedly manage. It is beyond our intellectual capability.
Therefore, the revelation of God is extremely personal and doubtlessly subtle. Often, I
catch a glimpse of God less in formal worship and more in the sheer passivity of my
dismay and unknowing. When I am not being anything other than myself, there seems
to be the opening for me to let God be what he is. No prayers, no demands, just my
heartbreak and failures.
Sixth, wisdom is the most revered of human powers. In a world filled with deception and
self aggrandizement, it is refreshing to encounter a wise person surfacing in the pool of
fools. However, wisdom is not a rash display of intelligence to captivate one's audience.
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Rather, it is the character of one's thinking. It is the person who welcomes all data, sifts
it intelligently, weighs the reasonableness of the findings, and diligently reflects upon the
value of contemplated actions. The wise person is not driven by power, celebrity, or
fortune. In most respects, the wise person is quite unassuming, openly generous to all.
He or she is not entrapped by an ideology but resolute in using the human mind's inborn
methodology to secure truth.
Let me pull together the six characteristics of human living and present them as they
function in the dynamism of our world. Foremost, as our understanding of the physical
universe increases, so too, does our conception of creation and God's objectives. The
Book of Genesis is certainly not the literal portrait of how we came to be. We emanate
from the energy that fired the universe's inception. We come forth from the cosmos itself.
We are not placed into it as readymade beings. Therefore, while Adam and Eve are
portrayed as humanity's prime couple, it is demonstrably evident we surfaced gradually
through a materialization of probable events. While our being is not the fate of chance, it
is certain God willed a world order based upon our unassailable freedom. The statistical
panoply of cosmic happenings guarantees it. We are the being God intends, but we are
operationally independent because we are of the cosmos. Therefore, we function within
the universe's scope of probability.
Primarily, the Adam and Eve image is employed to explain the inherent sinfulness of
humankind. In Augustinian tradition, it validates Original Sin and its passage to each
human through procreation. As such, it is proclaimed, we are all born in a so called "fallen
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state". However, Jesus never directly states such a doctrine. Therefore, beyond Catholic
Church teaching, one may view the tale of Adam and Eve as affording a different moral.
Namely, the human person is created with unqualified liberty, even to the extent one may
spurn God's offer of love.
Adam and Eve were not compelled to associate themselves with God. Again, divine love
exceeds any human expression of it. We always bring some level of contamination into
our relationships. But God's love is given in absolute virtuousness. Therefore, as rational
beings, it is never forced upon us. Rather, it is extended to us. We must consciously
determine our acceptance or rejection of God. However, it is never an issue of God
forsaking us, but our decision to keep running from him.
One may press the above issue further. If we inherit Adam and Eve's guilt, we are
convicted of an action not attributable to any conscious determination on our part. In
effect, the doctrine of Original Sin implies God's love creates us with rational freedom but
we start employing it knee deep in an impassible morass not of our making. The Church
is quite insistent that no matter how faultless a life we live, Original Sin is an indelible
stain, a divorce from God. This is a harsh judgment that is clearly inimical with divine
love. I am disturbed by the principle of Original Sin, so let me share my own view.
Although Adam and Eve are biblically portrayed as the first human beings, it is more
related to tradition than fact. Humanity's first presence is masked in the mist of the Earth's
measured development. However, it can be asserted, the bright line between humans
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and other creatures in the animal kingdom is our critical rationality. There is a moment in
time when distinctively human life is attained and we start to think our way to
advancement and dominion.
The origin of human life is an event occurring within our universe's structure, making the
symbol of the star of Bethlehem quite apropos. The ingredients necessary for human
existence owe their onset to star activity. Dying stars spewed the elements necessary
for life and their light provided the energy to ignite the necessary chemical reactions.
Even today, it is our Sun that keeps us thriving. Without the hydrogen rich nebulas to
furnace the birth of stars, we would still be in the cosmic dark age. So too, the signal
given by the star of Bethlehem is the light beaming upon the Incarnation. Without Jesus'
palpable entry into our history, we would remain unaware of our personhood's deep-
rooted connection to God.
Earlier, I noted God's part in the process. God is the only one with the absolute power to
create time and space from nothingness. The small, dense compaction that expanded
into our universe is the Eden for our living. Jesus never flinched from reminding us we
are the kingdom of God. Our history is the assembly of God's promise. But, the blessing
and burden God has provided is our rational self consciousness. The story of Adam is
the personification of our ineffaceable liberty. It reinforces our personal relationship with
God, the intersection of limited intelligence with unlimited intelligence. For this to work in
the fullness of love's reverence, we have to be so self acting that we can reject God's
graciousness. Indeed, it is irrational to walk away from God's love, as Adam proved, but
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it is not impossible. One may even define hell as the ongoing refusal to accept God's
love.
For us to be completely free in our decision making, our world needs to be one of
probabilities, not intransigence. Our history is not prefabricated, our learning is not spoon
fed to us, and charity is not axiomatic. Our mistakes reinforce there is no iron fist pressing
us into unyielding living. We can seek guidance and we can open ourselves to others,
but the last step is always ours to take. If we did not have self managed control of our
actions, we would never understand individual responsibility.
Once again, the startling advances in theoretic physics over the last 120 years is
breathtaking. It is a golden age of discovery that raises as many questions as it has
answered. While new data is amassed and investigation continues, it is indisputably clear
our universe is saturated in uncertainty. Classical normative understanding has
acquiesced its authority. The very fabric of our material world is knitted in possibilities
that have only a probability of occurring. It is bathed in fluidity and freedom. It is a perfect
setting for the liberty of human life and its personal history making.
God cannot make mistakes. Therefore, the format of our universe and our life within it
are ordained by the absolute intelligence of God. Our development and that of our world
are willed by God and must have a sanctified goal. The congenital freedom of our being
and the roiling forces of our universe must have a divine cogency. Our birth, life, and
death cannot be fruitless. But, how do we band together the elements of human living?
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In our state of conditional intelligence, we know God in an abbreviated way. We must
take divine revelation into account if we are to make meaningful sense of our existence.
On our own, we cannot apprehend God's motives. Therefore, it is in our consciousness
that we seek resolution. It is in our attentiveness to God's presence that we open our
hearts. It is in our humility that we pray for illumination.
There are conclusions about our living we can affirm, using both our theoretic
understanding and God's revelation. Principally, God is personal. The Trinity of God
establishes divine being as relational in a person to person presence. It reminds us that
love needs another, the beloved, to fulfill itself. While the mystery of God's Being is too
abounding for our understanding, we know it is eternally enlivened through the exchange
of love among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, God only acts in this context. His
relationship to our created personhood must be defined in terms of his outpouring of love.
Therefore, God and human beings are welded to one another. The purpose of creation
is the consummation of the love between God and humanity.
As noted earlier, love is known in the delight of an authentically free relationship between
beings. When in love, one can only know oneself in terms of his or her link to the beloved.
We speak of the oneness shared by the selfhood of two. Yet, love is not a commodity.
We cannot own it, we cannot force it to be, and we cannot take it for granted. True love
is the most faithfully free act of our volition.
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For us to love God, we must be self consciously intelligent and have inherent liberty. One
does not freely offer oneself to another for reasons that are not intelligible. Remember,
the end objective of intelligence is the act of love. Knowing truth is laudable, but
determining the loving action to be taken in its light is the zenith.
God's absolute intelligence knows the divine worth of human life; it is the product of his
infallible reasoning. Hence, it is God's love that is the sole reason for his act of creation.
Likewise, God's determinative action must be completely perfect. Therefore, our
generation within the cosmos is the way of God's exquisite expression. Consequently,
matter and time and our free will are not defects. Our human composition is not a fallen
and befouled existence. It is the outgrowth of God's untarnished, perfect will. It is the act
of "Original Love".
Human life is of this world and to be lived in it. Clearly, God's design brought us to be
over time so we could be truly free, rational beings. We spring from the cauldron of
probability inlaid into the universe, removing us from the chains of paralytic determinism.
One might envision God making us to make ourselves. Personhood is no trivial matter.
It is conscious awareness of one's self through personal intelligence and the autonomy
of one's determinations.
The most significant conclusion to draw from the method of God's creation is his knowing
love cannot be engineered. It is made impeccable and true in the free judgment of
devotion and faith. We must decide on our own to approach God. Even in the midst of
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Jesus' crucifixion, there is the crisis of the duality of the two thieves on either side of him.
One is humbled and commits himself in a personal act of belief. The other continues to
be self absorbed; he is unable to offer himself to another. Definitively, God does not
bludgeon and drag us to his love. Even in the torment of impending death, one is induced
to God's love but not compelled to accept it.
Human living is about self disclosure. Realization of oneself as a thinking and acting
person with the emancipation of self consciousness is essential. Over time, we become
sensitive to the people around us and the things that fill our world. We assess our
capabilities and develop our learning and skills. We join ourselves with others in
friendship and community. We seek that which collectively benefits us.
Yet, we hit a brick wall. Simply put, we run out of time. All that we want to experience
and understand exceeds the years of our life. The verve of our intellect is abridged by
our mortality. The success of our excursions into youthful learning quicken us. In
adulthood, we detect deep learning is difficult and quickly consumes the sparse time we
have. In old age, we mellow and may even consider our efforts to fully understand
ourselves and our living as vanity. Therefore, as our body fails, our mind accrues the
insight that death is not our final act.
There are enough sign posts for me to put forward the meaning of life in a set of
conclusions. Chiefly, human beings are rationally self-conscious individuals who are
integrally part of the cosmos, the home of our existence. Our self awareness presents us
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with the insight we are conditional creatures. We recognize our nature is one of spirit and
matter. The incorporation of body and soul is our natural state. There is no evidence to
suggest God intends any other nature for us. The Incarnation of Jesus is the most blatant
evidence of this.
Jesus incessantly proclaimed himself as the only way to God. Our eternal association to
materiality necessities the touchstone of Jesus. Our ligature with Jesus is person to
person. We exist by virtue of the Trinity. Therefore, God and we relate to each other in
the vigor of our personal being. It is in our free, intelligent, and unique personhood that
we perceive the possibility of interconnecting with God.
Certainly, the perfection of God's love made present in his creation of time and space and
the emergence of human beings is brought to its climax by the individual freedom he
tenders to us. In this way, the love we are able to share with God is defined in our decision
to vow our love to him. We must want God's love; we must make that conversion to it for
our life to make meaningful sense.
Even in our love of other humans, we understand it to be a fragile undertaking. No matter
how much we may hope to share ourselves with another, it does not click until the other
person acknowledges it. For love to be sustaining, the freedom of the commitment must
continuously be renewed. The ripeness of love is the ever sharpening and widening
degree of understanding shared in the mutual relationship. Growth is the hallmark of life.
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To be is to develop. We cannot be all that we can be without giving of ourselves in order
to receive the love of another.
Far too often, Sunday homilies center upon our failure to perceive scripture and church
doctrine. Religion takes on the order of quid pro quo. Doing this will lead to God giving
us that. Only then, will our living fall into place. However, this may foster misleading
expectations. Indeed, belief and faith in God and his revelation are not minor issues, but
also they are not pro forma. Yes, God is forgiving and loving, providing us his grace.
However, God seems equally intent upon our independent progression. We have the
means to be all that God created us to be, but we need to personally exercise our
intelligence and goodwill to fructify it.
We are not pin balls batted about by God's dictate. We control our own lives. We meet
God in our personal intelligence. In our self consciousness we incrementally propel
ourselves to God. God is truth and being without end. Even the most discouraged of us
relish in the crux of our selfhood complete understanding and pacification of our spirit. It
is irrational to set a goal of ignorance and obliteration. We should always remember God
created us to be a person. Therefore, we share the design of God's personhood. A
relationship with God is natural, quite normal. If we honestly cradle the entrenched
structure of our learning and appreciate the capability of our humanity, we will know God
is both our wellspring and destiny.
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However, neither life nor religion is enchanted. I imagine there are some who fill their
days in acts of seeming kindness, but remain tortured by inward disbelief. Meanwhile,
there may be some who appear mired in sin, yet are internally crying for God's touch.
Certainly, we all come to learn outward appearances are not indubitably accurate.
Indeed, there is an interiority of mind that takes us to the real and the good. Ostensibly,
life surrounds us with possibilities, conditions, and probabilities. This is the weave of life's
fabric. To be free individuals, we must live in a world that mirrors our own methodology
of existence. As we are not mechanistically controlled, so too our cosmos is not
deterministic. Conclusively, God created us to live in freedom of thought and action in a
world that responds to our undertakings, prospering and declining in reaction to our
righteous and malevolent decisions.
Nonetheless, we are not inalterably left alone in the making of God's kingdom. Being
formed in the personhood of God, it is impossible for the intimacy of the connection to be
annulled. Love is constant sensitivity to the development of the beloved. God is not
gambling on our destiny, but knows it cannot be divine if forced. Therefore, the
Incarnation of Jesus permanently incorporates the correlation of God and humans. Jesus
distinctly makes the interpersonal congruity visible. He encourages us to think clearly
and act intelligently. Through Jesus, humanity has the ultimate testimony of God's
ineradicable interpersonal attachment to us.
However, even with Jesus at our side, the aspiration of human life is not instantaneously
gained. Our time and space are inextricably interlaced. One's individual life span is
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infinitesimal within the calendar of the universe. Our history is continuously one of
passing both our successes and failures onto the next generation. The cycle is repeated.
There is no dispensation that guarantees anyone a supine life. But also, there is no
absolute impediment to our incremental flourishment.
Indeed, God has provided us all that is necessary for our rightful development, but we
must want to be the better person we can be. We must elect to love God with all our
heart, all our soul, and all our mind. This is the urging Jesus presses upon us. Love is
free, intelligent, aesthetic, and spiritual. We become a complete person because of the
adhesion of love. We cannot identify our being apart from our beloved.
For the most part, love of God is unpretentious love of self. Certainly, it is not because
we are holy and sinless, but because we are the beloved of God even with our host of
limitations. I am who I am and God is who he is. The great mystics reach this tipping
point after much spiritual tumult. God fully understands me, but I cannot completely
understand God. Yet, in my nothingness I am everything because God is my genesis.
On my own, I am ultimately hopeless. In the personhood God gifts me, there is his
constant presence. I live my life striving for wisdom, self understanding, and joy of heart.
It is God's gentle enfoldment that tenderly and quietly takes hold in our honest self
reflection.
The active meaning of our life is its self creativity. We freely become the person of our
decision making. To the degree it is done with intelligence, concern, and honorableness,
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we are about God's objective for us. Jesus informs us God has given us the "kingdom".
It begins for us in this world and perfects itself in our life after death. Surely, God intends
for us to have everlasting human existence as conscious individuals. The personhood of
God and the personhood of each human being are encircled in perpetual Trinitarian love.
No matter how long it takes for us to commit ourselves to this love, Jesus, the Good
Shepherd, is with us for the duration.
As amply noted, the events of life are understood in their probability. It is a statistical
array, not a classical tight fit. For each of us, our betterment is a probability. All that we
encounter in life is singularly our experience. In our intelligence, we distinguish the
rational from the irrational, the good from the detrimental. Every bit of data is an
opportunity for our development. If we become inattentive and intellectually slothful,
much is forfeited.
Our world order is the product of God's will. He has determined that we best function in
a free and statistically probable environment. The magnificence of this fact makes us
autobiographical creatures. Within the scope of our own time and space, we control and
own our history. We are not nuts and bolts that God fits into place, but beings within the
ambit of spacetime, questioning our existence and managing our living. However, we are
never estranged from God in this process. He created us from his Being. Therefore, God
is within us. We go nowhere without God. We experience nothing without God.
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Nonetheless, God is not hounding us. But, God inalterably makes his advance to us.
God always takes the first step of love; it is the supreme confidence of divine love. Unlike
us, God's love is fearless. He made each of us. Therefore, no one is unworthy. Any
rejection of God stems from our uncertainty.
Without a doubt, life is disruptive. Real freedom of will forces independent action. Our
liberty means we will make mistakes. Our personal history and that of the world will not
be immaculate. We can easily become sloppy in our thinking and cavalier in our
undertakings. However, it does not diminish the fact that we have all that is necessary to
advance our human personhood.
Our faith is extant in God's creation, Jesus' Incarnation, and the Resurrection. Without
creation, we would not exist. Without the Incarnation, we would not know God's intimacy
with us. Without the Resurrection, we would not understand the everlasting nature of our
being.
I must reassert that God has deemed us to be creatures of spacetime. We are progeny
of the universe. Therefore, God's purpose is realized within the probable nature of the
cosmos. The statistical potentiality of the most intricate event, namely, our inception as
rational human beings in unity with God's bestowal of true freedom, requires a huge
dispersal of matter and a gargantuan amount of time to assure its ingenuousness. At the
moment, we are living in a universe approaching 14 billion years in age and 93 billion light
years in diameter. Indeed, a mind-boggling measure of the time and matter necessary to
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produce God's unquestionable intent. It is the consummate way to bring about God's
implanted objective for human life while preserving our indispensable liberty.
As a being united in spirit and matter, the material is not incidental to the human person.
We are not angelically spiritual or divinely powerful. We are provisional beings with a
nature always composed of body and soul. We could not be what we and God desire
without matter. Likewise, we would not be self consciously rational without the spirit of
our soul.
For God's love and goodness to achieve their ordained fulfillment, there is a divine
probability cemented in creation. It gives us self liberty, but equally, provides an end
result that is common to both God and humankind. All that God wills is perfect. All that
human beings will is conditional. For us to accept God's love, we must wring its worth
from the torque of our living. Plainly, one's lifetime is hardly sufficient. By the time we
realize the yoke of our mortality and the silliness of our petty activities, we have dents to
repair. What I could not envision in my youth is now in greater focus. Love is complete
humility of self. I owe everything I am to the one who is everything.
Life inescapably incites us. Ultimately, it rips each of us to our foundation. It is what the
mystics deem the focal point of the soul. In a sense, it is the naked embarrassment in
the Garden of Eden. In the midst of an unresolved life, our complete dependence upon
God takes center stage. We understand our profound vulnerability. All of our running
from God is exposed as both fruitless and debilitating. There is nothing we can do to
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permanently assuage our fretfulness. Our days are few; death is at our doorstep in the
blink of an eye. Without the personal love of God and the never-ending bond with his
personhood, we are desperate and despondent orphans.
The vital meaning of life is the opportunity it provides to thoughtfully respond to God's
offer of love. While love is inexpressible, it is most felt when it stands the test of time.
The venture of human living demonstrates love is not involuntary. Likewise, it is not a
putrid act of lust, covetousness, or control. Rather, it is the summit of our intellectual
agony. Taking up the cross of self-conscious rationality places us in the arena of life's
drama. Every day of our living prods our thinking. Only when we achieve understanding
and affirm the truth of our judgments do we have the girding upon which responsible love
can become the highest achievement of human existence. What we can know of God is
related to the quality of our openness to God's love.
Blaise Pascal is famously known for his eponymous wager. He recognizes that human
intelligence cannot immediately know God as God is. Nonetheless, one is faced with a
decision about God. Given the only two probable parameters, we determine he exists or
he does not.
Pascal notes the inherent quandary in the calculation. If one believes in God, eternity is
part of the calculus. If one does not believe in God, earthly existence is the extent of it
all. In the later case, one's life is a feverish race to cram everything into the span of our
earthly years. All we have is the very limited here and now. In the former circumstance,
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life and learning are forever. One seeks only the partial rewards of the now for the
fullness of the hereafter. Pascal's wager clearly marks the bet. If God is denied, one can
only secure finite tributes that are gone with the wind. On the other hand, if one assents
to God's existence, he or she understands present gains are modest and perfected in
eternity. Earthly existence is but a portion of our everlasting life.
The nature of Pascal's wager reinforces the point being made. Human life is the craft of
probable events that demand our dedicated personal attention. Our perfection is a divine
probability that should and will occur when all necessary conditions are satisfied.
However, it is not a foregone conclusion. We do not roll off an assembly line optimally
optioned. Rather, we come into the world with viability to be all that both we and God
relish. Our earthly labor is the detection of our intelligence and its integration with God.
The conditional nature of our intellect means we must manage the host of determinations
that clarify truth.
Life is not a stage production with God forcibly directing us. To repeat, as irrational as it
is, one has the possibility to completely reject God. The notion of hell is the portrayal of
one's conscious decision to turn from God's love even in death. While it is confounding
that one would accept loss over fulfillment, it is theoretically an alternative. Yet, I would
never doubt God's mercifulness and continuing offer of his love to those who recoil from
him. The parable of the lost sheep is not theatrical.
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God gives us being for a purpose. We not only live because of God, but also live with
him. In providing us personhood, God steps back to assure our independence. Love is
mutual only when two free beings in the liberty of their will consciously acknowledge and
pledge themselves to the conjunction. If God bullied us to love him, it would degrade and
hollow the experience. Therefore, the innermost event of our life is the conversion of
ourselves to the love of God. As with all relationships of love, it is a progression. Likewise,
essential love is encompassing. It is not just comfort for the moment, but a knot that is
tied for endurance.
Since the death of my wife, solitude marks much of my living. The turn inward has brought
me distinctive awareness. Namely, my beloved is no longer touchable, but solely in my
consciousness. She is now where only my death can take me. Indeed, it appears cruel
on the surface. But, I judge it to be best understood with a certain sense of humor, not
analytical dissection. We all know the psychic power of laughter and joy. Another
person's beaming grin often means more than his or her words. Good times are marked
by light heartedness. It gives life's harshness a serener perspective. So, I have lost the
immediate presence of my wife, but I am sure she is laughing at how I am over thinking
it. Maybe in the end all we need is Jesus' smile.
While I cannot directly speak to my wife, I now speak to God in my mind, inartfully telling
him things he already knows. What divine patience. God lets me complete my thoughts
not because it aids his understanding but because it lets me consciously turn to him.
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God's reply to me seems more a wink of the eye, letting me know we will work it out
together. All that is so confusing to me is abundantly clear to God.
In this life we are always on our way to death. Without the Resurrection, death would be
a collapse. The precariousness of life would overwhelm us with despair. However, in
Jesus, we recognize a powerful revelation about our earthly life. Indeed, it will end in
personal death, but ironically, it will be fulfilled in that act. Good Friday is made
understandable by Easter Sunday. Life will crucify us in countless ways. We all are
tortured by doubts, physical and mental turbulence, dreams that never materialize, love
that fails to abide, and our own personal transgressions. We want more than this life can
provide us. Only in God is this innermost yearning made possible.
Jesus frequently addresses our lack of faith. Repeatedly, the Gospels portray faith as
strategic. It is a productive force. Yet, it is not an abnormal human quality. Jesus urges
us to cling to our faith. Jesus tells us faith can move mountains! So, faith is significant,
and I need to expand on my forgoing comments.
Faith is an intellectual determination of belief. In the case of faith in God, there is a very
fine line being drawn. We profess a judgment that God is. But exactly what he is, we
cannot say. Of course, we philosophically specify God as absolute, unconditional in being
and knowledge. Yet, there is the great mystery of it. God clouded in his spirituality, but
materially present in Jesus, and infused in us by the Holy Spirit. However, the goal of
faith seems tied to the rebound of God's faith in us. Jesus did not proclaim a set of
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additional human powers through his ministry. Rather, he shed light on the capabilities
we already have, but fail to use astutely. The Gospel of John is poignant testimony to
Jesus' lament that we turn from the truth before us and establish needless intellectual
darkness for ourselves.
It would be misleading, however, to contend faith is an inoculation to spare one from the
agony of life. It is not a one and done profession or an immutable concept. Rather, it is
what is left when death takes everything else from us. When our time on earth is spent
and our space is squeezed to the instant of our demise, faith is our last resort. It is our
understanding of what we do not understand, it is the humbleness to know our pride is
brittle, it is our prayer to know God's purpose, and our intellectual stamina to track the
light of wisdom.
Human living is a crucible. Everyone is forced to painfully assess his or her being. There
is never a day when we do not have some issue or event we must evaluate and address.
We never have the control and knowledge that make us purely tranquil. Life demands us
to consider who we are and why we do what we do. We do not live in gear like precision.
The probability of our world order forces us to always be remorseful about what we
squandered today and uncertain about what tomorrow will allow.
The enigma of life is its pull to death. If dying is deemed obliteration, indeed, life is a
disaster. However, if death is a natural part of our personal growth, there is further
development to be secured. In earthly life, we strive to know what it is to be human. We
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realize we must use our intelligence to understand ourselves and our world. Time and
matter are the stuff our spirit manages. We are drawn into the vibrancy of social living
and the unique power of shared love. We awaken to life with many hopes, but end it in
the meekness of how little we really were able to do.
We hear the inner voice of our consciousness. It is with us continually. Much of the time,
we may only perceive it to be subliminal muttering. Yet, when life, as it always does,
pushes us beyond what we can seemingly bear, our thoughts are aware of another.
Because we know our limitations, we find ourselves internally dialoguing with God. He is
the only power able to provide us the answers we so desperately need.
It is this interiority of mind that brings us our most critical judgments. God never usurps
our thinking, but he certainly must assist it. God does not make decisions for us, but can
legitimately maintain us in truth by urging decency of thought in our periods of
deliberation. Arguably, productive education is about clarification. It is never compelling
one to do something they do not understand or appreciate.
After one's intellect has culled the data and determined a fact, it is then the hard work
begins. Is my knowledge correct? What am I going to do with it? This is the epicenter
of self-reflective assessment when we grow, remain static, or decline. The Gospels
record it as the juncture at which Jesus performs his most acute teaching. He does not
begin with a lecture on the inability of our intelligence, but begs us to reconsider, evaluate
further, be more astute. In a word, be more deliberative in the assessment of our
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judgments. Jesus' penetrating questions inflame one to consider what is really true and
right. Jesus never decrees an action that one does not personally come to intellectually
adopt. God can take no satisfaction in our unthinking behavior.
Our contemplation of life is unavoidable. The endowment of our freedom and self
standing intellection mandate it. The tick tock of our living is in constant flux. Knowledge
and faith are not manufactured objects we can nonchalantly pluck from a depository.
Rather, every bit of meaning we amass is laborious. It is an outgrowth of our intelligence
and are attentiveness to the eruptions of our own consciousness. Frankly, God is not
somewhere "out there"; he is already "in us". The more we search for God in some
location distinct from us, the more we will overlook the divine preservation and revelation
that inform our being. God is not estranged from us unless we choose to make him
remote and decide to derail our intellect's detection of truth, beauty and goodness.
The essence of our life is the spacetime it provides us to become a distinct, intelligent,
and loving human person. Electing the opposite brings a life of hollow irrationality and its
baggage of self hatred. There is no middle ground. We can never be a mere spectator
of life, hoping the vagaries of chance will fulfill us. We are all on the field of play and
must take stock of our circumstances, however disturbing they may be. The more
harmonized we are to our rational human existence, the more likely we are to find
ourselves and our connectivity to God.
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Remember, our earthly living is destined to bring us to our death. It is the moment at
which we experience the singularity of our personhood. No one else dies in our place.
No one plays a scripted role in the process. There is no standard prayer for us to recite.
It is our unique being, distinct from all others, standing before the Trinity of God. We bring
to God what we have made of our being, knowing it is unfinished and mottled. Arrogance,
dissembling, bargaining, or anger will prove useless. Much of what seemed estimable in
our earthly living will surely ashen in God's open presence. To experience absolute truth
and unbounded love must overtake us, especially when God's greets us by name.
The unity of our birth, death, and rebirth is befuddling before we reach the ultimate goal
of our existence. There must be more abundant resolution of thought secured in our post
death living. It is an understanding we cannot procure in our earthly setting. Before our
birth, we did not exist. Our personhood was only potential; completely in God's purview.
But once alive, we have subsistence without end. In Jesus, we are assured death is
natural and not destructive. Therefore, while it is convenient to address our rebirth after
death, it appears to be a misnomer. Since there is no revealed indication that one ever
loses his or her consciousness, even in death, the passage from this life is part of a
seamless progression. Our last thought while living blends with our first thought after
death.
The full meaning of life is open ended during our earthly living. No one achieves the
complete range of knowledge and the degree of satisfaction he or she internally thirsts.
To be human is to be forward looking. The anticipation of each new day is more than an
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emotional allusion. Even when circumstances may blatantly leave us helpless, we are
not hopeless. The travail of life and the tears we shed are cleansing. They direct us to
God because we do not have answers to the aching questions life lays at our feet. The
closer our approach to death the more stripped we become of the negligible. In the end,
the clock runs down and we cannot look back or even stay where we are. I expect we
are given God's final consolation, our eternal existence in a spacetime that never ends.
In our earthly life, we wrestle with our humanity. It is a struggle to understand the
indisputable meaning of our personhood. In death, we play the last chess piece. We
pass from this world so we can discover the unalterable meaning of our creation. The
events after our birth initiate our living. The events after our death illuminate the purpose
of why we exist at all. Our own state of eternity is the realm for fulfillment of our human
perfection.
Certainly, much of life remains a conundrum as we pass from day to day. The history of
the world and our personal history are in many respects fragmented. Life is not
irreproachable and composed, always moving toward greater progress. But, this is the
price for the freedom God has given human beings. It is a condition of probability.
Without our self liberty, we could never experience the value of interpersonal love. If our
life was choreographed, we would have no influence upon it. Our thinking would be a
useless subterfuge. However, God intends not to overpower us. Rather, as with any act
of true love, it is the freedom of the relationship and its deference of each person's being
that produces the rich harvest. I have no doubt God will do all that he can to emblazon
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our mind to the greater good in a personal consolidation with him, but he will not deform
our free will to bring it to fruition.
I cannot describe for you what your love of God will entail. Each of us is unique and our
encounter with God is just as individual. However, I can assert that the communion will
be intellectually demanding. Our heart is not going to go where our mind does not
encourage it. We do not normally do things that do not make sense to us. Likewise,
human knowledge always begins in the formulation of questions. Therefore, I would
suggest the multitude of doubts we have about God are the beginning of our relationship
with him. And as with any human interaction, time will be required. We know God based
upon what he reveals to us. That knowledge is housed in our consciousness and it will
only be unearthed to the extent we sincerely seek answers to our questions about God.
We will not be falsely informed, but we will need to proceed at our own pace.
Earlier, I noted how in my younger years I believed there was an equation for religious
contentment. Follow a particular path, intone the proper prayers, and practice a
controlling asceticism and all will nicely jell. However, this is a code of conduct that in
and of itself affords no guarantee of success. It may even spawn more repression and
disbelief than a totally secular life. After all, if one believes there is but a lone, regimented
way to know God, one may be missing the power of absolute love.
About seven years ago, my wife and I attended a retreat. While a range of topics were
presented, one question from an attendee encapsulated the gist of it all. She fervently
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wanted to know how she could persuade her grown son back into the fold of the Catholic
faith. Again, she believed there is an unbending prescription. The Jesuit retreat master
responded, "there is nothing you can do". In fact, he was not being curt, but amplified his
thinking by reminding us the personal events of life will bombard us and beleaguer our
consciousness. In the end, we all get knocked to the ground. Life's events get us dirty.
Only then, do we recognize our weakness and dependence. God's light is most visible
in the overcast of our discouragement. One does not ask for insight when life's questions
are not vexing.
So, what is the meaning of life? I have laid the groundwork; I have repeated my points
from different angles. Perhaps, I have even annoyed one's patience with ad nauseam
repetition. However, the reader should now appreciate that he or she creates the
meaning of his or her life. God, human personhood, and the cosmos are a unity. We
neither flee from ourselves or our world to discover God.
The self meaning of life is matchlessly one's own awareness of being. Not being in the
sense of alive versus dead, but my being in God's eternal love. Our existence is God
given, formed by the unbreakable love of the Trinity. Therefore, we are going nowhere
that is not in God's presence.
Arguably, we all know that earthly life ends in our personal death. The probability of our
dying is absolute. The conditions that prompt our personal passing will sooner or later be
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met. Therefore, this life only affords a limited experience. However, it is not devoid of
understanding and development. It is the only current venue for our learning.
Life circumscribes our inalterably interpersonal relationship with God. As much as we
may seek an abstract, universal definition of life, it is not to be. The Trinitarian personhood
of God is inexpressible and inexhaustible. Since it is the source of our being and God
has determined us to be individuals, none of us is a carbon copy of someone else. None
of us experiences life in precisely the same way. Frankly, none of us has the equivalent
interaction with God. If nothing else is clear to us, we surely know love is not factory
tooled. Therefore, God relates himself to each of us in a way distinctive to our self
consciousness. As much as we all hold the flicker of love's hope in our hearts, we must
be alert and intellectually reflective. God never turns from us, but he will not manhandle
us. Indeed, we may be threadbare by the time we realize God's accompaniment, but it is
not because he was not always there. Rather, we took the long road home.
While the lives of the saints are touted for emulation, I do not even come close to such
holiness. I am sure Jesus was quite purposeful in his references to the prodigal son and
the lost sheep. He is fully cognizant of how human life is a fire that brings the dross of
our misdeeds to the surface.
I already mentioned how the moment of my wife's death prompted feelings of how I failed
her. There were all the issues of what I could have done better and did not. There were
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no words of farewell exchanged. There was no do over of our life together. That is the
story of human living!
We all exist in a forward moving orientation. The notion of God's calling is enigmatic. It
is never as crystal clear as one wishes. Nonetheless, I have never heard anyone express
God as intending to bring us back to some previous condition. Our past informs us we
are not yet fulfilled. Time always goes from now to the future. I cannot hold on to today
and I cannot reform what I have done in the past.
To repeat myself, time compels love not to be "in" love but "growing in" love. Love is not
static. Its focus is forever toward the future. Therefore, our death is not a loss of life but
the inevitable future to which our living takes us; it is a stage of the human condition.
Likewise, love as the pinnacle act of intelligence is set in truth, and truth is fully rational.
Truth cannot be contradicted.
The Trinitarian Being of God is absolute truth expressed in the act of absolute love. It
can never not be. So too, we existing within the Being of God cannot ever be without his
love. It is our everlastingness. Whatever is God's purpose for our death, it is about the
future of our togetherness and the love that holds it steady. Hence, the meaning of our
life is not so much about our failures or successes, but about how willing we are to leave
them behind for the future's horizon.
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As much as I desired a goodbye from my wife before her death, I now understand she
was not leaving me or her family. No goodbye was needed. She preceded me into death
but did not consciously forget anything or anyone in this life. It reminds me of the Mary
and Martha motif of the Gospels. Mary did not jettison Martha nor was she callously
indifferent to her toiling, but she was before Jesus and her focus was forward. Martha
was diligent about the now and could not appreciate Mary's mindset. Death is the Mary
moment. One follows the Good Shepherd, knowing his footsteps take us to where we
will find the peace of fuller understanding.
The unknowing of human living and the uncertainty of our being are laid open in death.
We were born for the death experience. Our current life is a prelude, affording our first
inklings of God's love. But, we stumble with the prompts and are more tentative than we
need to be. By the time or our death, we have a relationship with God forged by the
demands of life. For some it may be marked by the lack of faith wrought by life's
hardships. For others it may be the unworthiness engendered by ongoing personal moral
failures. Another group may be half hearted in their faith. And some may have endured
every struggle of life and hold firm to their faith. Nonetheless, God is present to everyone.
In death, I am convinced God displays his love no matter the condition of our
consciousness. That is what real love is. It is accepting the other as he or she is, while
encouraging the beloved that there is a future that can bring love's complete blossoming.
In the case of God's love, it is quite special. He precisely knows what will bring us serenity
and satisfaction. He can effectively lead us to it, but only if we open ourselves to his love.
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Many of us at some juncture and at some level recognize with awe the willingness of
another to give all they have to their beloved with no ulterior demands. The wellbeing of
the beloved is unquestionable. I sense this is the forgetfulness of self Jesus reveals.
For the exchange of love to be genuine, it is given with no strings attached. God could
control us and our actions. But, he selflessly abstains from doing it because domination
is not love. Indeed, our human personhood has its limits, however, we always own it as
God's largesse. Dealing with our self freedom is the toughest lesson we wring from our
living. It means we have to tirelessly examine all we encounter, fiercely seek an
understanding of it, dispassionately assure there are no critical flaws in our thinking, and
justly deliberate the actions our judgments warrant so we serve the true, the good, and
the lovable.
Jesus did not protest against the demands of human living. He plainly informed us to
whom much has been given on trust much is expected. The liberty of our free-standing
self-consciousness is the treasure bestowed to us. Forsaking it despoils our entwinement
with God. Our rationality is the power that allows us to intellectually relate to all spiritual
intelligence including the Trinity of God. We have been given the means to approach
God. However, should we choose not to be intelligent, there is little we will know of
ourselves and definitely nothing we will know of God.
The meaning of life is as diverse as the population of human beings. Each of us, either
rudimentarily or with keen perception, define who we are and what we will do with our life.
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To the extent we are able to shed mere self-serving motivations, we better employ the
methodology of the human intellect and use it to seek wisdom. Invariably, wisdom is
attracted to the spiritual. It is knowing our rationality transcends the corporeal. As our
inner mind determines the real in a field beyond our senses, so too, our earthly life is
understood by what happens in and after death. We are creatures who understand in a
supernatural manner, using the concrete data of our living as the source of our questions.
In a way, our birth and death are only dates. There is meaning beyond the historical span
of our life. In our individual death enveloped by God's eternity, we must detect the
everlastingness of our personhood. One can only imagine and speculate on the
magnificence of the realization.
I acknowledge we bathe the thought of the death encounter with God in our weak human
vocabulary. Love is the only word we have for it and it falters because we can never
empty ourselves with the humility of God's faultlessness. We tend to withhold a part of
us from our encounter with the beloved; we cannot get all of our selfishness out of the
way. But, God's perfection offers us the most immaculate love we will ever enjoy. To
experience it is the basis for us to understand it, affirm it, and reciprocate it with
appreciation for the vast mercy God shows us.
In death, we continue what our birth inaugurated. Birth marks the beginning of our
conscious existence and death is a further expansion of it. The insight into our
relationship with God should detonate more fully. To know our human personhood is
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eternal and to understand how it functions in a spacetime that never ends are the ultimate
treasures of God's revelation.
Hence, the meaning of human living is never comprehensively understood in its earthly
mode. There is no way for us to entirely grasp the significance of our current existence
until we are aware of our life beyond the grave. So, we imbibe our conditionality with the
intelligence of our rationality, knowing our love of God is not fixed but spiraling and our
fulfillment is before us. Therefore, we garner some answers in this life and we welcome
the knowledge, but we know it is as partial as the years of our earthly existence.
It is crushingly evident that we never live a single day in which we contend we have fully
satisfied our need to know and have no more misgivings. Therefore, this life is
preparatory. It is the time in which we come to hone our personhood. In death, we reach
the crossroad where we seem to be where we and God are meant to be. Namely, I as a
distinctive human being, in the solitariness of my dying, no longer scurry from God. I
cannot make any more excuses for dismissing God's overture. I am convinced it is our
opportunity to hear God tell us "I love you" before we have a chance to catch our breath.
His love is uncontainable.
July, 2019