The more I re-read David Brooks’ book “The Road to Character” (New York: Random House, 2015, $28, pp. 300) the more I like it.
Brooks’ writing touches on many subjects that should be interesting to people who take their religion seriously. What is very attractive to me is not only Brooks’ style of writing, but also his admiration for people who seem to have achieved a strong, unselfish character. What is most important on life’s journey, these people have achieved.
Setting an Example
After Brooks wrote a column in The New York Times about how hard it is to use the classroom experience to learn how to be good, a veterinarian named Dave Jolly sent Brooks an e-mail that put the classroom experience into a more accurate perspective. Jolly wrote the following:
“The job of the wise person is to swallow the frustration and just go on setting an example of caring and digging and diligence in their own lives. What a wise person teaches is the smallest part of what they give. The totality of their life, the way they go about it in the smallest details, is what gets transmitted.
“Never forget that. The message is the person, perfected over lifetimes of effort that was set in motion by yet another wise person hidden from the recipient by the dim mists of time. Life is much bigger than we think, cause and effect intertwined in a vast moral structure that keeps pushing us to do better, become better, even when we dwell in the most painful confused darkness.” (p. xv)
Though Jolly does not use religious language – and for the most part, neither does Brooks – the above quotation is one of the best descriptions that I have read of what Catholics call Divine Providence. Think for a moment of how you have perceived the presence of the Holy Spirit in your own life and in the lives of others you love. Think of people you have met at an important time in your life. Recall how their presence had an impact on you.
Think of events that were not completely under your control and yet happened, and played a huge role in forming and shaping you into whom you are today. Think of your family and how you have been influenced by parents, siblings and others. Jolly touched on something profoundly mysterious when he wrote: “Life is much bigger than we think.” Indeed it is!
In God’s Hands
No matter how long we reflect on Divine Providence, we will never understand this great mystery completely, never understand completely how our freedom and God’s freedom interact, but we believe that we are never alone, we are always in the hands of God. The Holy Spirit is always present in our lives. Pope Francis says this succinctly when he says that he is certain that God is part of everyone’s life.
I agree completely with the view that the message is the person. In my life I have experienced a handful of truly great teachers. I wanted to be like them even before I discovered that I would spend most of my life teaching at a college level. When I was in their classes, I knew there was something different about these teachers, something special. At that time I was not able to articulate what made them special. I may have thought that it was primarily the content of their courses that made the teachers so attractive.
Now I suspect it might have been to some extent the reverse: the content of the courses seemed so good because of the teachers who were presenting the content. The great teachers I had seemed to be great human beings. Intentionally or not, they were teaching themselves. At this moment I can recall only a few of the ideas that they presented and taught, only a few of what I considered their marvelous insights. I recall little of what they said, but it is more clear to me now what they were. I think that one reason they were very attractive human beings was because they were very good human beings.
It would be fun to speak to the teachers we think greatly influenced us and ask them who they think influenced them. That might provide another insight into Divine Providence. What I am imagining is a long line of people helping others to be good. In turn, they help others to be good, and on and on goes the chain-like communication of goodness. I am imagining a wonderful long chain of goodness seemingly without an end. I think of the Holy Spirit influencing the line.
There are many problems in the world, but we should never forget that we are surrounded by goodness.
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Father Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).
