Saturday, April 03, 2004
Christianity and the Modern World
What is our ultimate goal in life? What do we regard as the “greatest good”? In modern times, it has become what C.S. Lewis calls “man’s conquest of nature”. It is to become powerful by taking over nature, inventing new things, new technology, and to become “successful”. Success today means to become wealthy and powerful, and “progress” means to becoming wealthier and powerful. However, in spite of the progress in things like technology, man is still unhappy. And that is actually what we all want. No matter how much “progress” we have made, we always want something more. We always want better cell phones, faster computers, and a bigger television. But the more we get these things, the more we want to get better ones afterwards. This just proves that our happiness does not rest on these things. How can they? How can man be happy in something which is less in dignity or quality than him? Man does not look down, but looks up. He desires something more. He desires something higher and better than himself. As I said elsewhere:
“The reason why you are not happy is that you are looking for happiness in the wrong places. You desire for something everlasting, something infinite, yet you look for temporary and finite things to satisfy that desire. This is impossible. A greater cannot come from the less since the latter is unable to produce something it does not have. So too, something temporary cannot give us an everlasting satisfaction. You want something that would satisfy you. It is not something outside us, but inside us. The fact that we cannot find everlasting happiness in this world shows that we were not made for this world, but for another. We would not enjoy the fraction if we were not made for the whole. So then our desire for perfect happiness can only be given by something that is perfect. Since the object of happiness is the good higher than ourselves, we must look for something that is higher than us, not something lower than ourselves like material things. It cannot be another person because another person is not higher than us. So then, to become perfectly happy, we must look to something that possesses goodness perfectly. It must be a Being that perfectly possesses any imperfect things we possess like truth, life, and love. This Being must be God! No wonder you were never happy! You have not found God! If you want to be happy, you must put God in your life Who can satisfy all your desires including everlasting happiness.” (Are You Happy?)[1]
Has secularism and materialism made us better? Does technology make better families? Does wealth make better families? Why do we have so much money but terrible relationships? Let’s face it. Better technology and more wealth just make better egos. And having big egos makes it harder to love for to love to another is to give one’s self. Man does not belong in the center of the universe. He is a being that walks towards it, who is God. God, not man, is the center of the universe. And the only way to walk towards Him is through love and in love. The more we recognize this, the more we will leave our world behind for Him. The more we recognize we are made for God, the more we will easily give ourselves for the other. As Jacques Maritain said, “the more a man gives himself, the more he makes this life intense within him. Every self-sacrifice, every gift of oneself involves, be it in the smallest way, a dying for the one we love. The man who knows that ‘after all, death is only an episode,’ is ready to give himself with humility, and nothing is more human and more divine than the gift of oneself, for ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Man is simply not a being who wants to “have more”, but to “be more”.
What is man without God? Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell in his famous words said:
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.”
Materialism makes man no better than an atom. It is only in the context of man being made in God’s image that he becomes “special”. Without this, he is nothing; he has no dignity. It is therefore no coincidence that the twentieth century is the worse of all centuries. It was century filled with crimes of humanity with our atheistic, egoistic, and materialistic leaders such as Hitler and Stalin. Henri de Lubac once said, “It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man.” John Paul II also said, “Man cannot relinquish himself or the place in the visible world that belongs to him; he cannot become the slave of things, the slave of economic systems, the slave of production, the slave of his own products. A civilization purely materialistic in outline condemns man to such slavery, even if at times, no doubt, this occurs contrary to the intentions and the very premises of its pioneers…We have before us here a great drama that can leave nobody indifferent. The person who, on the one hand, is trying to draw the maximum profit and, on the other hand, is paying the price in damage and injury is always man” (Redemptor Hominis, 16).
Holiness and Heroes
Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange said:
“Do what you will with these material goods: share them out equally, make them the common property of all. It will be no remedy for the evil; for, so long as earthly possessions retain their nature and man retains the nature which is his, he will never find his happiness in them. The remedy is this, and this only: to consider the one thing necessary, and to ask God to give us saints who live only on this thought, saints who will give the world the spirit that it needs. God has always sent us saints in troubled times. We need them especially to-day.” (Three Ways to Spiritual Life)
Let us pray for saints. Let us ask God to have mercy on us and give us saints. Even more, let us ask God to make us saints. Let us ask God to give us the grace to make heroic acts in ordinary circumstances. We need to ask Him to give us grace to do small things in great love. This is what holiness and heroic virtue means. As Cardinal Ratzinger said,
“Heroic virtue does not mean that the saint performs a type of “gymnastics” of holiness, something that normal people do not dare to do. It means rather that in the life of a person God’s presence is revealed—something man could not do by himself and through himself. Perhaps in the final analysis we are rather dealing with a question of terminology, because the adjective “heroic” has been badly interpreted. Heroic virtue properly speaking does not mean that one has done great things by oneself, but rather that in one’s life there appear realities which the person has not done himself, because he has been transparent and ready for the work of God. Or, in other words, to be a saint is nothing other than to speak with God as a friend speaks with a friend. This is holiness. To be holy does not mean being superior to others; the saint can be very weak, with many mistakes in his life. Holiness is this profound contact with God, becoming a friend of God: it is letting the Other work, the Only One who can really make the world both good and happy.”
Let us also not forget the words of Fr. John Hardon:
“This price that we are asked to pay for our proclamation of Christ in word and in deed is not only the price of the endurance of pain. Nor is it simply the patient acceptance of criticism and rejection, or perhaps of open persecution. What we are also asked is to sacrifice what we personally like and have a natural right to enjoy. In order to confess Christ before men as He would have us do, we are invited to give up many things to which we are naturally, and legitimately, inclined. We naturally want to have money, and time, and leisure, and comfort, and convenience and the freedom to just be ourselves. We naturally want ease, and the praise of others, and honor, and recognition and all the good things of life, as they are called. And, provided they are justly acquired, no one should begrudge us these things. But as the beauty of Christ takes possession of our hearts, we become different men and women. Our personality is literally changed. We take on the quality of martyrs ready, if need be, to die for Christ. And we acquire a capacity for sacrifice that smiles at logic and rises above the desire for pleasure in this world in order to bring as many souls as possible to the Heart of the Savior whom we love.Martyrdom and sacrifice are not familiar terms in the vocabulary of modern man. But they are precious words on the lips of those who, like our Holy Father, have discovered the secret of true joy in this world. It is the joy that comes to those who are convinced that Jesus is God; who are concerned that so many are deprived of this knowledge of Christ; who are compelled by their faith to share Christ with everyone, even those who may not be willing to listen; and above all, who are committed to proclaim the Master—no matter what it might cost themselves.”
Men with Hearts
Materialism and secularism produces “men without chests”. Christianity produces “men with hearts”, that is, men who men which have their eyes fixed on the Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart.
To be Christian is to be Marian
We need to follow the examples of Mary, who, by a radical common sense, said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” She is not a feminist, but a handmaid of the Lord. She, who was at the foot of the Cross, was told, “Behold, your son.” Mary leads all disciples of Christ, all friends of the Crucified Christ, to carry their crosses. As said in Revelation 12, her offspring, the Church, is in battle. But our weapons are not swords, guns, or atomic bombs. Our weapon is this and only this: the Crucified Christ. Our weapon is to say, “Look at Him. He loved you and died for you. You can try to poison me with your materialism and your secularism. You can try to poison me with your Freudian view of the world. But I will never drink it. He is my true food and true drink. I may die because I eat and drink Him, but unlike the poison which the Serpent produced, I know that in the end, my tomb will be empty just as His is. And behold, I have joy!”
[1] See also Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 2 a. 1-8
What is our ultimate goal in life? What do we regard as the “greatest good”? In modern times, it has become what C.S. Lewis calls “man’s conquest of nature”. It is to become powerful by taking over nature, inventing new things, new technology, and to become “successful”. Success today means to become wealthy and powerful, and “progress” means to becoming wealthier and powerful. However, in spite of the progress in things like technology, man is still unhappy. And that is actually what we all want. No matter how much “progress” we have made, we always want something more. We always want better cell phones, faster computers, and a bigger television. But the more we get these things, the more we want to get better ones afterwards. This just proves that our happiness does not rest on these things. How can they? How can man be happy in something which is less in dignity or quality than him? Man does not look down, but looks up. He desires something more. He desires something higher and better than himself. As I said elsewhere:
“The reason why you are not happy is that you are looking for happiness in the wrong places. You desire for something everlasting, something infinite, yet you look for temporary and finite things to satisfy that desire. This is impossible. A greater cannot come from the less since the latter is unable to produce something it does not have. So too, something temporary cannot give us an everlasting satisfaction. You want something that would satisfy you. It is not something outside us, but inside us. The fact that we cannot find everlasting happiness in this world shows that we were not made for this world, but for another. We would not enjoy the fraction if we were not made for the whole. So then our desire for perfect happiness can only be given by something that is perfect. Since the object of happiness is the good higher than ourselves, we must look for something that is higher than us, not something lower than ourselves like material things. It cannot be another person because another person is not higher than us. So then, to become perfectly happy, we must look to something that possesses goodness perfectly. It must be a Being that perfectly possesses any imperfect things we possess like truth, life, and love. This Being must be God! No wonder you were never happy! You have not found God! If you want to be happy, you must put God in your life Who can satisfy all your desires including everlasting happiness.” (Are You Happy?)[1]
Has secularism and materialism made us better? Does technology make better families? Does wealth make better families? Why do we have so much money but terrible relationships? Let’s face it. Better technology and more wealth just make better egos. And having big egos makes it harder to love for to love to another is to give one’s self. Man does not belong in the center of the universe. He is a being that walks towards it, who is God. God, not man, is the center of the universe. And the only way to walk towards Him is through love and in love. The more we recognize this, the more we will leave our world behind for Him. The more we recognize we are made for God, the more we will easily give ourselves for the other. As Jacques Maritain said, “the more a man gives himself, the more he makes this life intense within him. Every self-sacrifice, every gift of oneself involves, be it in the smallest way, a dying for the one we love. The man who knows that ‘after all, death is only an episode,’ is ready to give himself with humility, and nothing is more human and more divine than the gift of oneself, for ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Man is simply not a being who wants to “have more”, but to “be more”.
What is man without God? Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell in his famous words said:
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.”
Materialism makes man no better than an atom. It is only in the context of man being made in God’s image that he becomes “special”. Without this, he is nothing; he has no dignity. It is therefore no coincidence that the twentieth century is the worse of all centuries. It was century filled with crimes of humanity with our atheistic, egoistic, and materialistic leaders such as Hitler and Stalin. Henri de Lubac once said, “It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man.” John Paul II also said, “Man cannot relinquish himself or the place in the visible world that belongs to him; he cannot become the slave of things, the slave of economic systems, the slave of production, the slave of his own products. A civilization purely materialistic in outline condemns man to such slavery, even if at times, no doubt, this occurs contrary to the intentions and the very premises of its pioneers…We have before us here a great drama that can leave nobody indifferent. The person who, on the one hand, is trying to draw the maximum profit and, on the other hand, is paying the price in damage and injury is always man” (Redemptor Hominis, 16).
Holiness and Heroes
Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange said:
“Do what you will with these material goods: share them out equally, make them the common property of all. It will be no remedy for the evil; for, so long as earthly possessions retain their nature and man retains the nature which is his, he will never find his happiness in them. The remedy is this, and this only: to consider the one thing necessary, and to ask God to give us saints who live only on this thought, saints who will give the world the spirit that it needs. God has always sent us saints in troubled times. We need them especially to-day.” (Three Ways to Spiritual Life)
Let us pray for saints. Let us ask God to have mercy on us and give us saints. Even more, let us ask God to make us saints. Let us ask God to give us the grace to make heroic acts in ordinary circumstances. We need to ask Him to give us grace to do small things in great love. This is what holiness and heroic virtue means. As Cardinal Ratzinger said,
“Heroic virtue does not mean that the saint performs a type of “gymnastics” of holiness, something that normal people do not dare to do. It means rather that in the life of a person God’s presence is revealed—something man could not do by himself and through himself. Perhaps in the final analysis we are rather dealing with a question of terminology, because the adjective “heroic” has been badly interpreted. Heroic virtue properly speaking does not mean that one has done great things by oneself, but rather that in one’s life there appear realities which the person has not done himself, because he has been transparent and ready for the work of God. Or, in other words, to be a saint is nothing other than to speak with God as a friend speaks with a friend. This is holiness. To be holy does not mean being superior to others; the saint can be very weak, with many mistakes in his life. Holiness is this profound contact with God, becoming a friend of God: it is letting the Other work, the Only One who can really make the world both good and happy.”
Let us also not forget the words of Fr. John Hardon:
“This price that we are asked to pay for our proclamation of Christ in word and in deed is not only the price of the endurance of pain. Nor is it simply the patient acceptance of criticism and rejection, or perhaps of open persecution. What we are also asked is to sacrifice what we personally like and have a natural right to enjoy. In order to confess Christ before men as He would have us do, we are invited to give up many things to which we are naturally, and legitimately, inclined. We naturally want to have money, and time, and leisure, and comfort, and convenience and the freedom to just be ourselves. We naturally want ease, and the praise of others, and honor, and recognition and all the good things of life, as they are called. And, provided they are justly acquired, no one should begrudge us these things. But as the beauty of Christ takes possession of our hearts, we become different men and women. Our personality is literally changed. We take on the quality of martyrs ready, if need be, to die for Christ. And we acquire a capacity for sacrifice that smiles at logic and rises above the desire for pleasure in this world in order to bring as many souls as possible to the Heart of the Savior whom we love.Martyrdom and sacrifice are not familiar terms in the vocabulary of modern man. But they are precious words on the lips of those who, like our Holy Father, have discovered the secret of true joy in this world. It is the joy that comes to those who are convinced that Jesus is God; who are concerned that so many are deprived of this knowledge of Christ; who are compelled by their faith to share Christ with everyone, even those who may not be willing to listen; and above all, who are committed to proclaim the Master—no matter what it might cost themselves.”
Men with Hearts
Materialism and secularism produces “men without chests”. Christianity produces “men with hearts”, that is, men who men which have their eyes fixed on the Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart.
To be Christian is to be Marian
We need to follow the examples of Mary, who, by a radical common sense, said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” She is not a feminist, but a handmaid of the Lord. She, who was at the foot of the Cross, was told, “Behold, your son.” Mary leads all disciples of Christ, all friends of the Crucified Christ, to carry their crosses. As said in Revelation 12, her offspring, the Church, is in battle. But our weapons are not swords, guns, or atomic bombs. Our weapon is this and only this: the Crucified Christ. Our weapon is to say, “Look at Him. He loved you and died for you. You can try to poison me with your materialism and your secularism. You can try to poison me with your Freudian view of the world. But I will never drink it. He is my true food and true drink. I may die because I eat and drink Him, but unlike the poison which the Serpent produced, I know that in the end, my tomb will be empty just as His is. And behold, I have joy!”
[1] See also Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 2 a. 1-8
