WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR IN LIFE?

August 20, 2006

What is the good life, the life worth living? That's my focus this week.

The biblical book of Sirach 7:36, says "In all you do, remember the end of your life." These words are not a reminder of the hereafter, but a call to make wise choices in living this life.

When we confront our death, we acknowledge that our lifetime is limited, and so we have to choose what kind of life we are going to live, what matters most to us, and what we really want to accomplish most. We must ask: What memories do I want to carry to the grave? What is my most important work? What do I want to leave in the world? Which life is the good life?

It has been fashionable in our generation to think of life as a journey completed in stages. Each successive stage presents a new challenge or task of growth we experience as a crisis. For growth to happen, in this line of thought, we must say a fundamental "yes" to the challenge of each successive stage in life in order grow through it and move on to the next level of fulfillment and maturity, and to the challenge of the next stage.

When we resolve to say a fundamental "yes" to life, and to shift our concern away from our own pain and pleasure toward what is really worthwhile, we realize this question of truth is not easily answered. What is true? and good? and just? and right? If we are going to sacrifice our lives, what is truly worth such a sacrifice?

In modern secular society, when questions about truth and life arise, the tendency is to turn to science for answers, or to model ourselves after the heroes of the sports or entertainment worlds. But none of these can reveal to us the ultimate meaning or purpose of life. To determine by what principles or for what ends we should live, we must turn back on ourselves.

When we do so, we discover within us a voice of conscience, telling us how we should live, issuing not mere suggestions or invitations, but commands. The voice of conscience calls us to duty, to face up to all of life, to turn our backs on pleasure and comfort, and dedicate ourselves entirely, unhesitatingly, through pain and weariness and perhaps even rejection or hatred if need be, to the service of what is higher and greater than ourselves.

Along with the voice of conscience is the voice of resistance within us, revealing a divided heart: Why should I do what is worthy? Why should I respond to the voice of conscience? Why take the search for truth seriously? Why undertake the hard work of exercising reason rather than live the easy way -- by impulse? Why be a friend instead of remaining a stranger? Why care rather than look the other way? Why become involved rather than pass by? Why sacrifice and suffer for anyone or anything other than myself? Why say "no" rather than "yes" to my cravings and passions?

To discover answers, to discover the whole truth of my life, to discover a power, which I myself do not possess, to live in the truth, the Church says: look to Jesus Christ. The Church affirms that Jesus is the revelation of God, and that in Jesus Christ can be found the answers to our deepest questions and longings.

Jesus Christ calls out to each person. When he calls us to follow him, he is appealing to our desire for truth and life. What is his challenge? -- That we believe in him when he says that he is the way and the truth and the life.

He also calls us to hope because he speaks to us a promise that our life, however limited, however disadvantaged or meaningless in the world's judgment, can achieve a fullness and a truthfulness, an integrity, a dignity, a happiness and a glory, which belong to all who say "yes" to God and live by faith.

Jesus also calls us to love, to dedicate our talents and energies to the same purposes for which he lived and died, namely the kingdom of God, a kingdom of love, of justice and truth, of equality, peace and unity.

The Church teaches that the good life, the life worth living, is the life lived in conformity with the truth that sets us free, made known to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus is not only the revelation of the invisible God. He is also the revelation of human life in its fullness, life lived in truth and freedom.

Apart from the life and teaching of Jesus, God's purposes are only dimly known. John 1:18 states that "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known."

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap