Fourth in a series
My taste in theatre and film seems strange to some of my friends. I can understand why, though I think I can offer a good justification for my artistic preferences.
My favorite author/director of films is Ingmar Bergman and my favorite playwright is Eugene O’Neil. Both have been described as nihilists, two artists who dramatize the silence of God and reality’s lack of ultimate meaning.
Both were exceptionally talented artists, and I think both were geniuses. Of course, I disagree with their visions of reality, but their talent was so great that they depicted their vision powerfully, and even beautifully. Both created masterpieces. This is one reason I have such great admiration for their work.
Challenged, Nourished in Faith
Another reason is that they raise the most important questions that I think can only be answered adequately by God’s revelation in Jesus. In some strange way, I think the works of Bergman and O’Neil have both challenged and nourished my faith.
Questions about reality’s ultimate meaning have been on my mind as I have been re-reading “The Essential Writings of Bernard Cooke: A Narrative Theology of Church, Sacrament and Ministry.”
Pointing out that one of the unfortunate tendencies in the contemporary world has been a growing distrust of the importance and goodness of the world, and even a cynicism about human existence and the world of people, Cooke suggests that there is abundant evidence that people are fleeing toward a world of fantasy, rather than living meaningfully in the real world. He notes that experiencing love from other human beings makes it easier for us to believe in a loving God.
Analogue of God’s Love
Our experience of being loved – starting with our parents and continuing through life with our experience of close friends, which of course involves our experience of loving others – can give us some taste of how a loving God relates to us. Our experience of human interpersonal love relationships can provide an analogue of God’s love relationship with us. Pointing out that experiencing love in our human relationships can help us have a positive, even grateful attitude toward life, Cooke writes the following:
“And this in turn makes it possible for us to see our lives as gifts from a loving providential God. If we have friends, life has some meaning; we are important to them and they to us. What happens to us and them makes a difference; someone cares. If love exists among people, there is genuine, deep-seated joy, because joy shared by people is the final dimension of love. If this is our experience of being human, then our existence can be seen as a good thing and accepted maturely and responsibly.
“All this means that our experience of being truly personal with and for one another is sacramental; it is a revelation of our humanity at the same time that it is a revelation of God… To see this as truly sacramental of divine presence means that human love does more than make it possible for us to trust that God loves us. The human friendships we enjoy embody God’s love for us; in and through these friendships, God is revealing to us the living self-giving in love. God is working salvifically in all situations of genuine love …”
This emphasis on interpersonal love reminds me of Pope Francis’ insistence that God is part of everyone’s life. If we believe this, it can help us to appreciate the wonderful mystery of the Holy Spirit’s presence to everyone, even those who are unbelievers, if there is any such reality as a person who is not a believer.
Distance from God
I know many people who have terrible crosses in their lives, crosses that cause great suffering. Many of these people are not churchgoers. Probably in the past I thought of these people as very distant from God. I now realize that no one is distant from God if by “distance from God” we mean that God is not involved in the person’s life. The Holy Spirit breathes where it will.
In the past, I was often tempted to think of myself and other Catholics as the “good guys,” and those who did not attend church regularly as the “bad guys.” I suspect that I was guilty of the sin of pride though at the time I did not realize this.
Though I believe that regularly celebrating the Eucharist is what makes us Catholic and is extremely important, I also believe that no one except God knows who is and who is not close to God.
Father Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).