Skeptical Faith

Google Image Mother Teresa, the Nobel prize-winning nun who dedicated her life to serving the poorest and sickest in India, always appeared to be cheerful and joyous. But her letters, collected and published in 2007, indicate that she struggled to feel God's presence during at least the last 50 years of life.  So, she must not have always “felt” happy. But it didn’t stop her from continuing her commitment to her mission and or her practice of joyfulness. I’m always surprised to read about saints and saintly people, canonized or not, who maintain their joyfulness in the face of hardship and struggle. The conditions in which they lived don’t seem that joyful. Are they faking it? Unlikely, in my view. Is it possible that their lives exhibit what is beyond happiness, what is meant by “joy” about which I wrote in last week’s blog? Rarely a Distinction In the secular world, there’s rarely a distinction made between happiness and joy. So, for our purposes, we’re going to address the...

Google Image How should you judge whether a Mass, or church service, was good or bad? For me, among the criteria is whether or not you leave happier than you went into church. But not in the same sense as being happy because your stock went up, or your team won, or your daughter was student of the month. No, it’s a deeper sense of happiness that is probably better described as “joy.” “Joy” is a term you don’t hear much these days. Is that because the world has a deficit of joy? Maybe.   An online dictionary equates happiness with joy, both described as emotions that result from “ good fortune, pleasure, or contentment.” One dictionary’s secondary definition of joy is “ a source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; something or someone greatly valued or appreciated,” and w e’ll get back to that second definition. But for the Christian, joy is much more than a passing emotion. Contrasts Happiness and Joy The Catholic archbishop of Melbourne in Australia, Peter Comensoli, con...

Google Image In 1989 , the military in El Salvador murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in their home in San Salvador. The priests were internationally recognized scholars who wrote and spoke extensively about the need for peace and the root causes of the war in El Salvador. Their deaths awakened the world to the atrocities being committed by the Salvadoran government. In one sense, the murdered people were irreplaceable, but their Jesuit community wanted their work to continue, so one of their number, Fr. Dean Brackley, who was on the faculty of Fordham University in New York, volunteered to fill in “for four or five years.” But he became passionate about the struggles of the people of El Salvador and died there in 2011 at age 65.   One of the jobs he took on was meeting with delegations of people from the U.S. and elsewhere who came there to help, and that’s where I met him. On a visit from people from my parish who supported a scholarship program,...

Google Image I’ve written before about my 4-year-old grandson, Leo. Many grandfathers would say this about their grandchildren, of course, but I think he’s exceptionally smart. He asks a lot of smart questions, for one thing. Currently, he’s been asking about, and referring to, death. And why not? Death is scary and many kids are into scary things, though they may not fathom what it means to die. For many adults, it’s the worst thing that can happen to a human being, something to be feared above all fearful things. For others, it’s a relief. For most, I think, it’s an enigma, at best. People of faith may ask themselves, “Did God really know what he was doing when he created us to die? Couldn’t he, or she, come up with a way of creating that doesn’t include death? Say what you want about a God who loves us. Death seems like a cruel joke. Insights from the Gospels But if we seek God in the Christian tradition, we examine the gospels, and if we’re paying attention, we get insights t...