“With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty. We are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in every event.”
Nature Points Beyond Itself
This quote of Cardinal Newman's reveals the key for the interpretation of all reality. We are a mysterious harmony of flesh and spirit. We are not merely of this earth, but have, as it were, one foot in eternity. This truth should have its echo in the hollow of our chest. It explains the ache we feel in the face of death. It defines the pull in our hearts for immortality. In the words of Pope Benedict, “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God.”
This poetical view, this vision that pierces through flesh and bone to reveal the spirit, this is the lens through which we are called to perceive the world. It is a specifically Catholic vision, a sacramental vision, because it shows us that external signs hold inner truths. In a certain sense, everything is a sacrament. Nature itself is a book that speaks of God. Shakespeare once wrote that we should “find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
The truth about God “breathes” through creation, and most of all through humanity, made male and female, in the image of the Trinity. The body is a sacrament that proclaims the Mystery of God. It speaks, and our spiritual life, which animates and is knit inextricably to our physical life, is crowned with the gifts of intellect and will. But our reason and so much of what it gathers from the senses is like a rocket that can propel us only so high. As when a trapeze artist lets go in order to be caught, faith grasps our hands from above when reason can barely touch the fingertips.
Reasonable and More
This is the path of the human person: to harmonize both faith and reason. We look with our human eyes; we scrutinize with our intellect, and we use our reason like a launchpad, to leap into Love.
The temptation today, as it always has been, is to isolate one from the other, to divorce the communion. Heresy is always the result of this fixation on the “one thing.” Like a golden ring we grasp at it and stuff it in our pockets. We think that life will be easier when we can fit it into our brains, tag it and bag it. After all 3 + 1 = 4 every time. Won’t reason then, reveal all? But what if 1 + 1 + 1 = 1? What if the reality of our own existence cannot even fit into our own heads?
In the words of one Albert Einstein: “Science without religion is blind. Religion without science is lame.”
Let Us Pray for Peace
This was the point of Pope Benedict's address last week; that faith and reason are meant to be a harmony. That reason is not the enemy of faith, and faith is not a restriction on reason. One flows from the other. The poetic view is the holistic view. It is harmony. It may seem paradoxical at times, but paradox is not contradiction; contradiction is confusion, but paradox is mystery — like dissimilar notes making a symphony. Like God becoming man without ceasing to be God.
Let us pray for those with only a singular view — the tunnel vision of the terrorist, the ego of the angry evolutionist, the clouded view of the creationist — and for those who resort to violence to make a point. For violence is a clear sign that reason has been abandoned.
May God give us His peace.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Bill Donaghy teaches theology in Malvern, Pennsylvania, speaks on topics of faith, and lives in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, with his wife Rebecca. You can visit his website and semi-serious blog at www.missionmoment.org.
