The beginning of a new year is a good time to re-appreciate our faith. The basis of our faith is our loving relationship with God, a complete, loving, “belongingness” that God offers us. By belonging completely to God we find the meaning of our lives.
To show how faith gives us our complete meaning, let us turn to the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre said that we are born completely without meaning. We gain meaning by using our freedom to make our own meaning. If anything or anyone takes away our freedom to make our own meaning, we are destroyed. We cannot love anyone because that would decrease our freedom to make meaning for ourselves alone. “Hell is other people,” he famously wrote. Now, since God gives us our fullest meaning, God would destroy us completely. We exist, therefore God cannot exist.
Sartre then described life without God. We are born into a completely meaningless and absurd world. Even when we use our freedom to give ourselves meaning, that meaning is absurd. So we are bound to live in an absurd world. When atheists say they can find meaning completely without God, I refer them to Sartre.
During World War II, Sartre met the philosopher Albert Camus, who was a member of the French Resistance. A story is told about Sartre and Camus that illustrates the importance of finding meaning. One day during World War II, the story goes, the two friends were in a cafe, along with some German soldiers. Camus had an idea. He said to Sartre, “There is no given meaning in the world. All is absurd.” Sartre agreed. “So,” Camus continued, “tell the Germans that I’m a member of the Resistance.” Sartre recoiled in shock. “I can’t do that! They’ll kill you.” Camus said, “So telling them must mean something. Then there really is meaning in the world.” Sartre looked worriedly at Camus, “Be careful, my friend. You’re beginning to believe in God!” Later, Camus began a journey toward the Catholic faith.
Finding meaning in life by faith includes appreciating value and importance. Certainly, our faith includes the valued doctrines we recite when we say the Creed at Mass. But faith is more than a list of truths. We relate to God in faith by finding meaning, value and importance every day, everywhere. We value our individual lives, our families, our gifts and talents, our opportunities, our schools, our professions and arts, our nation, our society and culture, our church. All these values show us a different view of our belongingness to God. They show that our faith is lived not just one hour a week at Mass but every day, 168 hours a week. It is a mistake to consider what we do in church as our “spiritual” life and what we do the rest of the week as our “secular” life. Our entire life is our spiritual life. Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, we are the People of God and expressions of Jesus Christ in and for today’s world.
We live our faith as 21st century, American Catholics, and there is a tension between the values of our country and those of our Catholic faith. Our Constitution acknowledges the right of every American to believe in accord with his/her own religion, and also not to believe. Our faith empowers and requires us to profess our faith with confidence and love, to show our country and the world the American features of the beautiful face of Christ. We do this by working to elevate our country’s meaning and values and where necessary, correct them, to make our society and culture more just, peaceful and loving, in sum, to make America more luminously human, without imposing our religion on anyone. “The glory of God is all people fully alive!” We must therefore live our faith in a deeply informed, adult way.
There is concern that many Catholics today are badly catechized. We need not only information about our faith but also personal formation in our faith. The people of our diocese have asked for education in spirituality and how to apply our faith to everyday situations. Thankfully, we’re not starting from scratch. God is with us and we are already responding to him to some degree in our everyday lives—in our homes, schools, work, politics, sciences and arts. Here’s a suggestion: what if we began discussing how we are bringing justice, peace and love into our lives and into today’s world, with family members, or with fellow students, parents, teachers, workers, business people, professionals, et al.? We will find wonderful new ways to appreciate our faith.
Anthony T. Massimini of Woolwich holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. He can be reached at massimini7@gmail.com
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