St. Andrew’s Episcopal ChurchThe Road2 Lent March 1, 2015

February 22: The Road: Morality,

Tradition, and Hope

March 1: The Father: God in the

Midst of Ashes

March 8: The Mother: The Choices we

Must Make

March 15: The Son: The Word of

God

March 22: The Coast: Love’s Embrace

Lent 2015: Sunday Mornings“The Road”

March 8, 2015

The Mother: The Choices we Must Make

The Mother or the Man’s Wife The Man’s wife doesn’t

appear for long in the novel.

occasionally the man will

think of her fondly, or the son

will recall her, but she remains more of an

absence than anything else.

The Mother or the Man’s Wife In the novel she is a counter example to

the man – someone who chooses not to adjust to the brutal new world and chose to give up (she commits suicide).

A lot of critics give McCarthy a hard time for his depiction of the mother. They say she is the weak part of the novel – cold and one-dimensional. What is your take?

Viktor FranklMan’s Search for Meaning

Viktor Emil Frankl, M.D.,

Ph.D. was an Austrian

neurologist and psychiatrist

as well as a Holocaust

survivor at Auschwitz.

Following his experience in the

Holocaust, he wrote Man’s

Search for Meaning in 1959.

Viktor FranklMan’s Search for Meaning In this book, Frankly

described the life of a

concentration camp inmate

from the objective perspective

of a psychiatrist. After enduring the suffering

in these camps, Frankl

validated his hallmark conclusion, that even in

the most absurd, painful, and dehumanized

situation, life has potential meaning and that,

therefore, even suffering is meaningful.

Viktor FranklMan’s Search for Meaning

“The prisoner who had lost faith in the future - his future – was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate. We all feared this moment - not for ourselves, which would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it

began with the prisoner refusing one

morning to get dressed and wash or to

go out on the parade grounds. No

entreaties, no blows, no threats had any

effect. He just lay there, hardly moving.

If this crisis was brought about by an

illness, he refused to be taken to the sick-bay or

to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up.”

Viktor FranklMan’s Search for Meaning An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of

extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Nazi concentration camps:

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

Viktor FranklMan’s Search for Meaning

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

Viktor FranklMan’s Search for Meaning A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth

as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which Man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of Man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when Man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position Man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."[9]

Table Conversation:

How is hope tied to suffering?

Comment on Frankl’s statement that “what is to give light must endure burning” in light of the importance of “carrying the fire” in The Road.

How is God present in suffering?

The presence of God’s absence is still holy presence.

Next Week: March 15, 2015 The Son: The Word of God