Skip to main content

Being anti Anomie

We had an excellent homily on the parable of the weeds this morning, but these two lines from today's reading from Romans struck home with me today:
We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
I think religious faith is not, for most of us, written large, with a boom. It's not an action flick with the DTS sound turned up too high. It's more like being struck dumb for the most fleeting of moments, and if you are very attentive - very, very attentive - you might find that your heart has been reoriented just the tiniest amount. It's like Keats' Joy, "ever biding adieu." To know it was ever there you have to find the time and make the effort to be receptive rather than active. The alternative is what Francis has called the "Conundrum of Happiness":
Happiness, in Aristotle's definition, is that which we seek as an end in itself, and for no other reason. Everyone wants to be happy. However, happiness cannot be sought directly; it has to be approached through more concrete instruments. Few of us have a perfect, unerring vision of what steps and acquisitions will make us happy. The proof is in the frequently encountered anomie of the well-to-do, who are nominally equipped to do or procure anything they think they'd like.
I think it was Pascal who said that humanity is like a lock, and Christianity is the key.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Hiatus will be blogged

This hiatus thing isn't going to plan. As I'm reading (books and blogs) I find things I think are interesting, or things I would like an opinion on, and bingo, my hiatus is in a shambles. So, *coughs*, until further notice, I'm blogging again. The main editorial difference that I can see coming from my few weeks away is that I do not expect to resume posting six out of seven days a week. There could be, at any time and without warning, a break of a week or two between posts. Really, I think that is the only way I can start to get some books behind me, and is also inevitable in the summer season when one wants to get out and enjoy it all. Here's a few things that got my attention this past week. Chris Taylor is blogging once again and has recruited an air force for the Red Ensign Brigade. Heh. Dennis Prager asks, Are you a liberal? Anglicans and Catholics are getting closer to reconciling -over the role of Mary in the Christian faith. Quote: A working group c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ghost in the machine

In writing up this post I have to mention that I am very impressed with the quality of discussion that one finds on blogs. This truly is a remarkable medium. Thanks go to all three of the bloggers mentioned here for providing such good reading and thinking for the rest of us to try and learn from. I have not had a chance to read all of the entries linked to here, but I do intend to. ***** George Will compares two views of man in his latest column . One is novelist Ian McEwan, who places the following words into the mouth of the leading character in his latest novel, Saturday : Endless and beautiful forms of life, such as you see in a common hedgerow, including exulted beings like ourselves, arose from physical laws, from war or nature, famine and death. This is the grandeur. And a bracing kind of consolation in the brief privilege of consciousness. This character is a neurosurgeon. The quote reminds me that there may be some truth to the observation that those in the biological and...
Post a Comment
Read more