What We Have Lost

Already the lessons of this journey begin to emerge, and I feel as one who has been allowed to step outside of the mad rush of modern life in order to learn to live more fully. Surely, I am very busy. Surely, there are many challenges before me. Yet something is different.

I have always understood, even if intuitively, what we have lost as a Western culture. It was only later that what I learned confirmed my intuition. Now, I am beginning to feel what I have understood, and therefore understanding on an entirely different level.

In my previous blog, I wrote about the choral Mysterium I witnessed, and how it managed to fulfill a deep human need found scarcely anywhere outside of the realms of religion and art.

Over-skeptics, atheists, and doubters of all sort will be quick to counter that my religious sentiment is no more than a product of evolution, an evolved condition for my own personal comfort as well as for social cohesion.

I will be quick to counter that the deification of natural selection is far more bizarre than the belief in a higher power. If natural selection is truly so precise, then it makes no sense that mankind would have evolved a contentious "sense of things" for which he would also have to evolve a religious need as an opiate. No, my friends, this is far too complex, and hardly the most elegant solution to the matter.

Nor do I think that the being who willed us into existence is above dabbling in the very genetic code he created. If religious need be genetic, if emotions be entirely chemical, then it was meant to be so. It is exceptionally odd and short-sighted that learned men would assign to us a religious need borne out of randomness. Such men, for all their learning and degrees, are no more profound than bleating sheep and stubborn children.

Last night I attended Mass in yet another ancient Cathedral. This time the crowd numbered well over two thousand young people, all eagerly crowded around four Dominican Priests. In a country viciously under attack by secularism and liberalism, this was a stunning witness of faith from the generation on the cusp of taking power. The feeling in the Church bordered on ecstasy (aided along by a wonderful musical presentation and vivid homily.) And I was reminded of what we have lost.

In the west, we have lost the sense of origin. We are, for better or worse, the wayward creations of a higher power. While we constantly emphasize the grand potential of these "imperfect creatures," we are quick to forget how quickly this potential can go astray. The 20th century was, if nothing else, a material confirmation of the doctrine of original sin. Perhaps our current economic crisis is no more than a gentle reminder?

We need help. We need guidance. We need to take a day a week to slow down, take a deep breath, and bring our frail selves before the creator. We need grace to learn, grace to persevere, grace to live in the moment, grace to be kind, grace to know when to fight, grace to know when to back away, grace to know when we are wrong, grace to confess our wrongs, and grace to even begin to approach the image of a decent life.

This is not religious fanaticism, nor is it the sort of sentiment which breeds oppression. It is a simple and comprehensive knowledge, available to any person with the courage to truly examine the human condition.