By Joey Maillet
"In the awareness of the eternal question: 'why?' The person must be able to direct that self-awareness and painful yearning to something higher than himself. To God. Who became flesh and suffered as we do," (Monk Damascene Christensen). When faced with the world and the 'life' it offers and the soul's personhood is awakened for the first time, 'I am' is found not to be a sufficient answer to 'why I am.' The irony detected in this reflection is acute. For God, the very reason for why and who by we are, identifies himself by these very words. The source and summit of the real is marked by the same words we use to discern ourselves. The purpose for the person is not found in the person. Those who look to themselves for meaning and ignore the miracle of their own existence are lukewarm. They neither fear nor hate God but simply don't bother to think of Him. It is these of whom Christ says, "Because you are neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth," (Rev 3:16).
In the heat or chill of the world to which the soul is oriented, the person experiences this spiritual temperature as love. Either they love God and are filled with the fire of the Spirt, or they freeze in the dark vacuum of Nihilism, refusing to be warmed through the grace by which they exist. These are the ends of life that are not lukewarm. What kind of life are they? The frozen world of Nihilism ends in a dark tragedy while the soul oriented towards God finds its summit in death, rather than its doom. Looking forward to death, as Gandalf puts it: "Just another path, one that we all must take," the Christian's world faces an entirely different direction than the death fearing worldly man, who believes in nothing beyond his own senses. One life is that of joy, the other of fear. Many such examples of lives lived in these contradictory worlds can be seen in the great tale of human literature. In which a man portrays a projection of a world through a character. Each individual acts as he believes. As he views the world. From the actions of these characters, we discern their perceived reality and from their death, know if their life was good or bad, comedic, or tragic. The truth of life is that uttered by Monk Damascene in the opening of this oration. Three great works of literature that demonstrate the reality of his claim are "A Good Man is Hard to Find," by Flannery O'Connor, "The Brothers Karamazov," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and "Leisure: The Basis of Culture," by Josef Pieper.
"'It's no real pleasure in life,' spoke the Misfit." These last words in A Good Man is Hard to Find unveil the meaning of the whole text. Nihilism. It is in opposition to all that is Good because it denies that even Good exists. As a transcendental of being, denying good quickly becomes the denial of beauty, truth, the minds that behold them, and even existence itself. The resulting paradox of nothingness envelopes the entirety of the human soul. "For the soul cannot deny its own existence," (Justin Marler). Nothing, by its very nature, cannot exist. It is the lack of existence. So, to say nothing is the only thing, is absurd. So turns the soul. Without any meaning or even certainty of the actual, the soul's despair corrupts itself. If it is not purified of this evil, then the downward spiral of insanity overwhelms. Absurdity is no longer absurd because all is one in nothing. The confusion and pain from not only the unsatisfaction of the longing for more, but from the cold killing of the conscience envelopes the soul. Any action is like another as they are all equally nonexistent. The unlivable conditions the soul in this state result in the Misfit of Flannery O'Connor. A man so awash with pain that he denies the existence of pleasure as a whole and who has no issues with committing any evil action because nothing truly matters. The Misfit is an escaped convict who had killed a vehicle of people before coming upon the characters of the story, a family of five and their grandmother. After killing them and taking their belongings, he utters his infamous statement as a rejection of the pleasure his psychopathic companions get from murder. He is unfazed by his brutality and the only thing to shake his sense of acting like murder is normal, is the name of Jesus, who he says, "thrown everything off balance." He knows Jesus as he was a Gospel singer once, but with his current state of affairs, he knows that Jesus is the one man who can offer a solution, as He is the only man who defied death. This is why the Misfit's life is a tragedy. Because he knows Christ but orients himself toward nothingness and falsity because it's easier for him to ignore the pain and lack of purpose than to take responsibility for his actions which he says he "forget what I done." His life is a tragedy because it will have a tragic end: death in a prison or even death row separated from Christ. The Good Man in this story is indeed hard to find because he never speaks a word. Jesus Christ, asking of the Misfit through the Grandmother to accept the truth he denies and take the advice of Monk Damascene: "direct that self-awareness and painful yearning to something higher than himself. To God." The God who conquered the death that haunts the Misfit every day of his being. To make suffering redemptive and death glory is something the Misfit cannot accept because these agents have wounded him too dearly. For the Misfit, "Life is Pain," should be acknowledged as a universal truth of how miserable and meaningless life is. However, in the real, God has made pain a good and a great means for meaning and reaching it. For it was by God's "stripes we were healed," (Is 53:5).
Struggling to find meaning without literally anything is the great trope of Nihilism. Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov possesses this same dilemma. Denying the warming grace of God in the frozen land of Russia and the problem of evil, Ivan watches on as his crazed brother Dimitri kills their father Fyodor Pavlovich over a woman that loves neither of them, and his brother Alyosha live a heroic lay monastic life that lies on the opposite side of reality from Ivan. The famous poem The Grand Inquisitor is uttered as part of a longer dissertation by Ivan while he attempts to explain his excuse for disbelief to Alyosha, all the while demonstrating that without belief in Christ, life is unlivable. It is from this part of the much larger The Brothers Karamazov that will be discussed in this oration and all citations pertaining to that text come from book 5, chapter 5, of it. Ivan chiefly considers three things he considers to be evil. Pain, Suffering, and Freedom, and the relationship between them that he considers to be a mark against Christ. He writes: "There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship." Ivan recognizes the caricature of man to yearn toward the higher and how when removed from that higher will make one for himself either in an idol, himself, or despair at nothing like the Misfit. The only thing lacking from Ivan's assessment is perfection in pain. That through the pain of the human soul longing for perfection, we find perfection in the only thing that is perfect. God. As Aquinas writes, "God is the first principle... and therefore most perfect," (Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Q4, Article 1). Man seeks for something to ground himself and his experience in. A first principle that by its nature must be undeniable and good, so that it may hold everything else that is good up. This task is only accomplished by God and when perfection is sought of something material, it is natural that this leads to chaos of mind and intense disappointment. The atheist is disappointed in life because he has killed life's purpose and knows not what to do now. This explains Ivan's character. He sees his pain as evil and thus loses sight of the perfect in it. Through Christ's pain on the cross, all were redeemed to be perfect once again, if only they take the cross of pain and follow Christ.
This is the greatest fault of Ivan, who sees this freedom as evil and an enemy of greater good. He fails to understand that without this freedom there comes no virtue or love at all. "That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves." Ivan is thoroughly convinced that in man's seeking perfection, there is a conflict with the world. This is indeed true, like many Russian philosophers of his time Ivan recognizes the problems and questions of importance but fails to answer them correctly. Ivan believes that either man is fed, or he is free. He reasons as if this were a completely exclusive disjunction. Having rejected Christ because Christ choose "Man does not live by bread alone," (Lk 4:4). He fails to properly analyze this response from Christ. Ivan reasons that this shows that God values man's freedom over his material wellbeing. What it really shows is that Ivan missed the second half of Christ's response. "... but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God," (Mt 4:4). God values man's soul more than his flesh for the flesh fades and is nourished by mere bread, while the soul is nourished by spiritual bread, which is Christ Himself. What Christ means by not living by bread alone lies in man, not bread, like Ivan would have us believe. Man is a body soul composite. He longs for the spiritual because he is not meant for this world. "The world is the ship, not thy home," according to St. Therese of Lisieux. The soul of man must be nurtured by God so that upon the death of its body it may enjoy the perfect freedom that is the love of God. Ivan's fundamental assumption that man cannot be free and be fed is false also. For in Christ all men are one body. "Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and were all made to drink of one Spirit," (1Cor 12:13). By Christ men do share bread, every Sunday at the very least. It is only in Christ that peace is possible, and that man may be saved. In Peter's words: "Peace to all of you that are in Christ," (1 Peter 5:14). Pain and suffering will never cease to be because they are good, and the great way of salvation came by them. The only hope for the world Ivan desires is in Christ and rejecting Christ he kills the good the world needs. "At last, in this Death, there is perfect peace," (Justin Marler). The ironic tragedy of killing the very good you seek is at the heart of Ivan Fyodorovich. His meaning, centered at man's well-being, will ultimately fail, perhaps even sooner than the Misfits for man will destroy himself before even nothing ceases to be.
Accepting Christ is the cornerstone to the Good Life. With this as the center, how then shall man make his life? Christ says in Mark 8:34 that "Any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." To take up the cross of painful reality and bear it proudly as the sign of victory. As a quality, this is the virtue of Humility. As an action, seeing things as they truly are and making life one contemplation of the Good is defined by Josef Pieper as Leisure. Leisure is as one of those Greek words that holds so much meaning that it cannot be translated except as a concept. Leisure is "the receptive attitude of mind" (Josef Pieper), actively passive, simply beholding reality as it really is. Experience Simplicitor. "The steeping of oneself in the whole of creation," (Ibid). It must be understood that this is the Good Life. Labor for Christ and loving intensely all that he has made as good, simply because it is good, recognizing the good through leisure. A Christ centered life of humble leisure, taking all as a gift from God, for indeed it is. Even pain and suffering, perceived by the gentile as evils, are redeemed to the greatest opportunities for leisure and the pursuit of holiness, which is simply the Good Life. Again, to take the painful yearning for perfection and orient it by leisure, to God, who is the source and summit of the real beheld by leisure. He suffered and died as we do. By this we know that perfection is not only possible, but certain for the soul that enjoys eternal leisure, the beatific vision. It is in this final everlasting vision that the life of the soul is found to be a comedy.
Leisure lived out is not only humbling, it is fulfilling. "There is a certain happiness to leisure," (Ibid). The happiness one receives from the reception of the totality of creation and creation's infinite maker into one's own soul is beyond this world. This supernatural happiness is lived out in the good life. This perpetuation, this habit of leisure is a virtue. Joy. To be joyful is to be filled with whole simultaneous grandeur that is the beauty of the glory of God. To experience the good manifested by the fulfilling of man's purpose, which causes the greatest happiness, in the glory of the victory of the cross, this is to be joyful. This is to live the life of true leisure. "The glory of God is man fully alive," (St. Irenaeus). In our joy, in our leisure, and even in our pain, we may participate in the glory of God. We may be fully alive, in our triumphs and even our sufferings. Being most fully alive, man finds himself at peace. This peace is not the absence of conflict, but it is the right relationship between him and God, and him and his brother. Here he finds that all is right and at peace together.
When men come together to be fully alive they form cultures. Thus, it is said that leisure is the basis of culture, as it is culture's natural end and goal. Being fully alive with one's brothers cannot be a static leisure, wrapped up in a library, but instead it is active. As it has embraced being itself in its most dignified sense, it embraces all of being's perfections. To leisure is also then to have a good perceived in leisure and thus to have truth and beauty. Thus, also as action is a transcendental, the good life, the life of leisure, is most active. But it does not act out of fear or of necessity, but of love. For as God eternally acts in gracing the world with being, so to the good life seeks to imitate it with its best effort to match with its love, the infinitely greater love of the Father. This active imitation of love is art. This art not only consists of paintings and sculptures which raise the mind to leisure, but more importantly and intrinsically, virtue, the habits that imitate the transcendent reality that is Our Lord Jesus Christ. Imitating Christ is the art of virtue.
Ivan might disagree with all this talk. "Couldst Thou ever for a moment imagine that men would have the same strength to resist such a temptation?" Is it possible that the masses of mankind, weak and frail, mount to this appeal and live? "Love thy neighbor as thy self," (Mark 12:31), is too difficult for these corrupt wretches. The cross is too much for them to bear. On the contrary Ivan, it is written: "My yoke is easy and my burden light," (Mt 11:28-30). Christ himself aids all who take up their cross. He is the one that makes the burden light. All we must do is ask for it. Thus, he says, "Ask and you shall receive," (Mt 7:8; 21:22; Lk 11:10). Never shall Christ leave us to carry our burden ourselves, for perseverance is a hard thing. "Remembrance of God is pain of heart endured in the spirit of devotion," (St. Mark the Ascetic). And "No one achieved anything without pain of heart," (Elders Barsanuphius and John). No man ever did anything for his salvation without first having to persevere through the pain of denying the passions, and by this remember God, who grants him his salvation. God is timeless and because of this, Christ tells us saying: "I am with you always, even to the end of the age," (Mt 28:20). That age being all time until the world draws to a close and the struggle against sin ends and the soul passes on to the reward promised it by Christ. For God will guide the soul through all his ever-present pain until the age is united with him in the eternal. Indeed, mankind is weak, but God's mercy overcomes our frailty. The irony of Ivan's objection is almost too obvious. For God created man in his image (Gen 1:26). Made in the likeness of the omnipotent and sharing in His grace, man does have the strength to resist temptation, but only through God. Again, showing Ivan's lack of understanding of Christ's gift to the world on the cross. His solution to the eternal question.
It is essential for the Good Life that Christ redeems death through the cross. That God works in the irony of death giving life. For as Justin Marler writes: "... Must seek unto Death the ultimate in Truth if it is to accomplish that which it first set out to do." If death was not redeemed, then to seek the Good unto death would be impossible. Then destroying the love of Truth and annihilating what it seeks to do to man. Give him the Good Life. The life that is God. "God became man so that man may become God," (St. Athanasius). God's solution to the eternal question is himself. Man finds himself in God, because he is like God, made in His image, and is meant to have Him as the eternal answer to the longing for the eternal he finds beneath himself and beneath all men. For death must be redeemed that we may seek unto it to find the ultimate Truth residing in it. For salvation came from death. Death on a cross. By this death, God shares man's fate so that man may share God's and finally see that...
Beneath the brittle surface of the material, the vain, self-absorbed, clinging love of the world, beneath the maddening longing of the passions, that only obscures what lies below, there is a silently flowing river. A river of compassion, bowels of mercy, a feeling of other people's pain. The image of God present in Man's soul. The source of the yearning for the eternal. This river of love flows into a vast, vast ocean of sadness. Mankind and the world. Although it is a sadness, one enters it willingly, for there is such a tenderness in its pain. And at last, in this sadness, there is perfect freedom. For there is true leisure only in recognizing the sadness which Christ comes to cure. "This is the love that never dies: a proof of immortality. This is the pain that the crucified one embraced willingly, sharing our pain. This is the cross he asks us to bear. This is the death he asks us to die. And at last, in this death, there is perfect peace," (Justin Marler). The Good Life. A Comedy.