LIFE: MAN IN SEARCH OF HIS HUMANITY

“When I was a child I spoke as a child...” As children we have not a care in the world. We just are, we trust those who care for us, no matter whether they smother us with love or forget that we are there. We are happy, at least at first, playing, with toys if present, even with plain old dirt and water. We dream, engaging the world with our imagination and immersing ourselves in hope as we would a down comforter on a cold winter day. Essentially we are happy with just being, we wonder at the marvelous things around us acknowledging their innate intelligibility we ask why?, what?, where?, and how?. For children everything is wondrous and the only thing to fear is the monster under your bed or in the closet, but even this is not of much concern to you because you rest assured in the faith that your mommy and daddy will save you if the monster rears its ugly head.

“But when I became a man I put aside childish things...” And then every thing changes, you put aside your childish fears of evil lurking in the corner and you begin to search in earnest for yourself; and in doing so you begin to see the failures and sins of others. You doubt. The more sin abounds the more the boy in pursuit of manhood doubts, the more he looses the ability to trust. While at the same time in his search for himself the he digs inwardly the more he realizes his own lack of being. True, he is there, standing there, thinking about himself thinking, but this is a illusion, you can't have true being unless you have true purpose. Finally in his search for himself he finds out that at his core he IS NOT. This is maturity, this is what all men must arrive at if they are to truly become men, this is the crisis. We see, if only for a minute, that the world that most people pretend to live in is a fantasy, a machine concocted in the mind of some overly rationalist men who preferred to live in a predictable, i.e. controllable, illusion rather than in an unpredictable reality. Our world of doing, and systems, is for an instant unmasked as sand, a poor foundation for building an eternal self, and we are faced with the decision.

We find ourselves empty, subsistent, lacking substance, and we are face with Kierkegaard's existential decision, do we despair or do we move from despair in search of the purpose and meaning for our lives open to the One who can fill our emptiness? Pain and death, replace in the adult, the monster hiding under the child's bed. If we choose to continue in despair, we either lie to ourselves assuring ourselves that we are not in despair, that death is the limit, the end, and so we must make meaning for our meaningless lives, most often embracing the hedonistic mantra “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die,” or we acknowledge our despair and continue in ever greater horror of death. This is where it seems that the majority of our contemporaries reside, either denying that this existential anxiety exists, or acknowledging it and becoming consumed by it, i.e. embracing nihilism. In the poetry of John Paul II we see quite clearly this anxiety, which is truly good and useful if we choose not to continue in despair. For despair is a rejection of the Good in this world, at one or many levels it is a rejection of the goodness of existence and a refusal to engage the world in the way proper to man.

Despair is sin, it is a sickness that leads unto eternal death. But this despair is not necessarily a bad thing—despair is the natural response of man, separated from the font of life. In man despair causes an existential anxiety, i.e. fear, and in fear is the beginning of wisdom. Death is the limit, the horizon, for man. It is the the limit of life as we know it and thus it terrorizes man. Death means the end of this semi-subsistent state, like the top container of an hour glass, our being slowly pours out as we approach death. In response to the numberedness of our days man can give up on life, he can pretend that annihilation doesn't bother him, or he can look to the one whose days are numberless. And looking to He who IS that he IS, in trust and love, we can in a moment of his grace engage the eternal consciousness.

Jesus said, “if you wish to enter the Kingdom of heaven you must BEcome like one of these little ones.” In the end it seems that man in search of his humanity stops being a child to find himself and in finding himself starts being a child once more. Man is terrifies of death, and of pain, and maybe he should be, since these are not very nice things for an animal. But man's days as an animal are numbered and unless he wishes to inherit the destiny of the animals he must start to act like a man. Embracing the infinite, embracing his own limit and trusting that the Limitless One will carry him beyond it, man has no reason to fear death, or even pain. Man's reward is in heaven and no on earth, and thus death is impotent. “O death where is your sting?” In the end it turns out that fear of death and pain are immature, whereas fear of evil lurking in the corner are, though childish, are much more well-founded.