In last week’s column, I tried to show how artistic classics can enrich our lives and make our lives more beautiful. This week, I wish to suggest that nothing has the power to enrich our lives and make them more beautiful than Christian faith has. Each of us is writing his or her own story.
Works of art are described as classics because they reveal the truth, beauty, and goodness of reality in a special way. They transcend the period in which they were created and “speak” to 15 ages. I cannot recall ever reading a book on a time schedule, for example, 15 minutes each day, but putting a time limit on my reading seems to focus my attention.
As I mentioned in last week’s column, Martin Buber’s notion of an I-Thou relationship is at the center of his philosophy.
As I see more deeply into Martin Buber’s thought, I am simultaneously aware of light and darkness. As I see more deeply, I am simultaneously aware of how little I know. The increase in knowledge is accompanied by an awareness of my ignorance. Two relationships that are at the center of Buber’s philosophy are what he calls an I-It relationship and an I-Thou relationship.
In last week’s column, I tried to explain the view of freedom held by existentialist Søren Kierkegaard. The Danish philosopher believed that we attain human fulfillment and salvation through a free act of faith — a leap of faith in Christ — a leap that involves risking everything.
For various reasons, most related to teaching philosophy at St. John’s University, I have been thinking about what we refer to as classics in literature. One day in class last semester, a student announced that he had bought three books by Dostoyevsky: “The Brothers Karamazov,” “Crime and Punishment,” and “The Idiot.”
When I was a young priest, not even ordained a year, my pastor gave me a week’s winter vacation. At that time, I was very interested in what was called Catholic Action — the involvement of Catholic laity in various apostolates. The summer before I was ordained a priest, I had taken a six-week course in Catholic social action at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
A few years ago, some friends told me about a new series on television that they thought was something very special. In several conversations over a period of months, they indicated that the series was one of the best they had ever seen.
A few weeks ago, I received an email from someone in Southern California. The sender wrote that she and her friends have been watching my series of lectures on the Catholic novel on YouTube. From viewing the series, they have decided to start a discussion group on the Catholic novel. When I read this, if I had been wearing a but-toned-down vest, the buttons would have popped off.
I think the first time I heard the name of the Japanese novelist Shūsaku Endō, I heard him described as the “Japanese Graham Greene.” Probably, I thought that he was being described that way because he was a Catholic, and he wrote some novels that I would consider “Catholic Novels.”
