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STRENGTH OF THE WEEK
How you can know your life has meaning
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I remember as a little girl having a very big question: How
can I know for certain that God exists? What if I die and when I go to
heaven I discover that everything was made up? That all I have is a bag
with a big hole in it? Perplexing problems that my six-year-old
mind couldn't begin to resolve! Through my school years I sought for
answers to those questions, and it was only John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent, read for a post-graduate course, that brought me some peace of mind.
Basically,
it comes down to the question of certitude, of whether or not it is
possible to have certitude about God's existence and his love for us,
certitude that my life has meaning. For Newman, in an
oversimplification, we can know the unknown, know that through a whole
host of human and transcendent fragments of experience taken together we
can arrive at certitude that behind them all is the existence of a
loving God who gives meaning to life. Newman wrote in his famous prayer:
"God has created me to do him some
definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not
committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in
this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a
bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I
shall do good; I shall do his work. I shall be an angel of peace, a
preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but
keep his commandments. Therefore, I will trust him, whatever I am, I can
never be thrown away."
That's what Pope Francis is addressing in his own way in the excerpt below from Joy of the Gospel.
The Pope calls this certainty a "sense of mystery," that sense that we
can trust that if we commit ourselves to serving and loving God, God himself will bring the fruit. We
ourselves may not see the fruit, but in some mysterious way the fruit
is born, and somewhere, somehow, the fruit gives life to someone.
I love this thought of Pope Francis from today's Strength of the Week
and will take it to heart this week: "Let us learn to rest in the
tenderness of the arms of the Father amid our creative and generous
commitment." If you haven't read this encyclical yet, now in these
months before Pope Francis comes to the US in the autumn would be a
great time to give yourself this gift!
Blessings,
Sr. Kathryn J. Hermes, FSP |
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Faith
also means believing in God, believing that he truly loves us, that he
is alive, that he is mysteriously capable of intervening, that he does
not abandon us and that he brings good out of evil by his power and his
infinite creativity. It means believing that he marches triumphantly in
history with those who “are called and chosen and faithful” (Rev 17:14). Let
us believe the Gospel when it tells us that the kingdom of God is
already present in this world and is growing, here and there, and in
different ways: like the small seed which grows into a great tree (cf. Mt 13:31–32), like the measure of leaven that makes the dough rise (cf. Mt 13:33), and like the good seed that grows amid the weeds (cf. Mt 13:24–30)
and can always pleasantly surprise us. The kingdom is here, it returns,
it struggles to flourish anew. Christ’s resurrection everywhere calls
forth seeds of that new world; even if they are cut back, they grow
again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of
this history, for Jesus did not rise in vain. May we never remain on
the sidelines of this march of living hope!
279. Because we do
not always see these seeds growing, we need an interior certainty, a
conviction that God is able to act in every situation, even amid
apparent setbacks: “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor
4:7). |
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