Sunday 5 Lent
(B-2006): Declaration of Dependence
Jer. 31:31-34;
Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33
According to the US Declaration of Independence, life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness are among the unalienable rights with which the Creator has endowed all human beings.
I thought of this when I reflected on today’s
readings, because through them Jesus seems to say the exact opposite.
As regards life, he says “whoever loves
his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.”
As regards liberty, he enjoins on his hearers
that they follow, serve and obey him.
As regards the pursuit of happiness, the Letter
to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus himself lived in prayer, supplication, loud cries and tears, and it is this example we
must follow if we are to gain eternal salvation.
Of course, the Declaration of Independence is
a philosophical and political statement. It is not the Word of God.
But it recognizes that life, liberty and pursuit
of happiness come from the Creator, not from the signatories of that document. They did not begin to exist on July 4th,
1776.
So the founding fathers had no intention of usurping
for Caesar what belongs to God.
Moreover, for the vast majority of Americans,
the Creator in question is the Lord Jesus Christ, who by becoming man also became our Redeemer.
It only makes sense, then, that as Catholics,
we at least, though not we alone, should look to the Redeemer for the true meaning of life, of liberty and of the pursuit
happiness.
It also makes sense that we should make that meaning
our own in the living out of our existence.
It should finally make sense that we resist any
attempt by Caesar to hijack that same meaning by measures of any kind.
For in the end, Lent and the whole Christian life
is the adventure of discovering true life, true liberty and true happiness in freedom from sin and in the love of God.
What, then, is the meaning of life in the mind
of Jesus Christ?
Obviously it is firstly the physical fact of human
existence, an existence he himself assumed from the moment of conception to his death on the Cross.
He treasured this life (his own and others’)
as a gift from God the Creator as his healings and miracles of resurrection show.
But while he saw this life of ours as a good in
itself and as an end in itself in the order of nature, he makes it very clear that there is a higher life and a higher end,
these too gifts, for which the human person is destined.
I mean, of course, supernatural life.
In the here and now we are inclined to identify
who we are with our life, to the point
that death seems to us as not just the end of life but as the destruction of who
we are, of our I.
The truth is that, when we die to this life, our
I survives; it passes through death to another life, a life of which we know little
because we are not yet dead!
This other life is the real life for which the
Creator first created us. It is called eternal life, or divine life.
God did not create us for death, nor for a mortal
life. Death is the work of sin which seeks to deprive us of eternal life!
Mankind chose death in rejecting God. But in Christ
the new man, God is offering us all another chance to escape death, to escape this mortal life and to inherit life eternal.
This is why Jesus says, “whoever loves his
life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.”
It only makes sense.
If we love this mortal life as if it were our
only life, our final destiny, then it
means we love death, even if we say death abhors us.
But how can this life really be life when death is inevitable? If this is life, then it is death which has the last word on all our experience
and achievements, as individuals and as a race.
That is why death is so painful, so abhorrent,
so perverse.
On the other hand, if we “hate” this
life (“hate” here is hyperbole used by Jesus to emphasize his point), that is, if we live this life focusing all
that we have and are in this life on the other life Christ offers us, then it means we have set our hearts on that other life.
Indeed, it means that we somehow anticipate that
other life here and now.
It means that death is no longer the last word
on us, but that eternal life in us has the last word on death.
That is why to live this mortal life in union
with Christ is far from failing to “enjoy life”: on the contrary, it is to know how to live to the full.
Faith, sacraments, prayer, moral fidelity and
all the other facets of Christian living are the surest way to win eternal life. This is the gift which supersedes the “right
to life” with which we were endowed by the Creator.
This gift of life is given to us through the death
of our Savior.
We are drawn to the Cross not to die, but to drink
in the life of God.
And what is liberty in the mind of Christ?
It is surely freedom from constriction and freedom
to pursue what one wants.
But freedom must of course also seek eternal life!
Otherwise it must die!
Freedom is not an isolated function of human existence.
It must be part of the whole of it, together with mind, heart and body.
The body will not know eternal life if freedom
does not choose it.
The mind will not know eternal truth if freedom
does not choose it.
The heart will not know eternal love if freedom
does not choose it.
Freedom must therefore logically choose Christ,
who is in Person eternal Life, Love, Truth and Freedom.
Man can choose anything he wants, but not anything
will fulfill him, not even freedom itself.
Freedom finds definitive fulfillment only in a
definitive choice. Otherwise it is like a ship that never docks, or a plane which never lands.
Freedom is fully free not when it chooses anything,
but when it chooses something, a something which ends once and for all the searching of the human person.
That something is someone, and that Someone is
Christ.
Obedience to Christ, to his values, ways and goals,
is therefore the fulfillment of freedom.
It is not obedience that is the opposite of freedom,
but disobedience. The disobedience of Adam brought death; the obedience of Jesus brought life.
Liberty is not then arrogant self-will and self-assertion.
It is the humble, grateful and self-surrendering practice of obedience.
And what of the pursuit of happiness?
The question is: does what makes me happy now
lead me to happiness then? If it does, then it is real happiness; if it does not, then it is illusion.
How do I know what will make me happy in eternity?
Surely, it will be the reward of my search for Christ and my loving obedience to him in the here and now?
The human being cannot truly be happy without
God, because God made him to find happiness walking with himself in the garden of Paradise.
Things in this life can bring us good cheer, and
we should welcome them with gratitude provided they are untouched by sin.
But even the legitimate joys of this life must,
like life itself, be kept in perspective. Otherwise we end up mistaking what is fleeting for what is lasting.
If, in the pursuit of earthly happiness, I grind
myself into the ground and become obsessive and possessive, greedy and envious, what use is that?
“What doth it profit a man to gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?”
Christ died that we might receive eternal life,
liberty and happiness.
Let no ideology, philosophy or human institution
convince you otherwise, for at the hour of death none of them will be able to help you.
Instead, let us make our “Declaration of
Dependence”: to walk humbly and faithfully with our Savior so that, in the end, death itself will mean nothing.
Msgr. Peter Magee
Sunday, April 2nd,
2006
First Anniversary of the Death
of John Paul the Great
