In search of meaning and being

My blog experience has been rewarding. To be frank, I wasn’t particularly keen to start or write a blog but my dear friend Wesley J. Smith encouraged me to start one. I started two - http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/ and http://markpickup.blogspot.com/

Not many comments are left but both have been visited by people all over the world. Hits have been registered from the United States, Canada, Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Peru, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Lithuania, Romania, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, South Africa, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, India, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand.

It has been gratifying to write blogs of interest for such a wide audience and many cultures.

It's become obvious to me that Life issues pertaining to innate sanctity, dignity and equality of all human life have broad appeal. People instinctively know that the equality of all human life is a truth that transcends any law or fashionable thinking. It is a truth that my beloved American friends call self-evident. We want to believe in the brotherhood of man under the lordship of God. This ideal rings true deep within the human breast.

Everybody wants to believe they are more than merely products of primordial slime, that we have inherent value for no other reason than we exist.

Cogito ergo sum?

In an early blog posting about man’s innate value God's image bearers, I commented about René Descartes’ quote “I think, therefore I am.”[1] It's problematic. It implies that our existence is justified by doing something (thinking, reasoning etc). I begin with a different premise: I believe we have value for no other reason that we exist. My world is build upon this. Therefore I wrote in response to Descarte, “I am, therefore I matter.” My my thinking begins later than Descartes' premise with this kernal of faith.

My reflections on suffering are not unique. They are common to the human experience. In W.H. Auden 1938 poem Musée des Beaux Arts, we read,

“About Suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.”[2]

The general theme of Auden’s poem was about man’s apparent apathy to suffering. It’s part of humanity's capacity for cruelty and reveals a darkness of the soul. Apathy to human suffering is only possible for those who do not suffer; when the pointed and jagged finger of suffering touches them personally, they want the world to care. A monolith of apathy yawns before them too and they are appalled. They can either grow bitter, give up, or search for higher meaning to their pain.

In search of meaning

The theme of my personal blog has been that of searching for meaning and purpose in suffering, and other matters that impact the human condition -- from a Christian perspective. Twenty four years of chronic, degenerative and incurable multiple sclerosis has provided plenty of fodder for my writings. Days, weeks, months and even years convalescing have given me time to reflect. Despite my suffering, I still believe in a good God. There is a reason for suffering: Many great thinkers have written about this – I am not one of them.

My primary source of illumination is the Bible and the body of Christ found in the Eucharist. A bell of encourage, and a promise of spiritual transformation, rings true in the writings of Saint Paul, the Gospel accounts of Christ’s Passion, the Book of Job. None of this makes sense to the secularist, the hedonist or materialist.

I keep reminding myself that fire consumes some things, it purifies others. It consumes wood but purifies gold. Job said, “But He (God) knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come forth as gold (23.10)

Saint Peter said,

“that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold which perishes, that perishes, it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1.7)

The fire of suffering can have a purifying effect. Fellow sufferer, give your pain to God and trust you will be brought forth as gold at the the revelation of Jesus Christ.

MP

____________________________________
[1] Discourse on Method.
[2] W.H. Auden (1907-1973).

The Great Sin

Have you ever wondered why God allows trials in your life? I certainly have. For close to a quarter of a century I have lived in a wilderness of chronic and degenerative disease. Each year my physical state sinks lower to the point where I am now triplegic and use an electric wheelchair. Despite this wilderness experience, I have been acutely aware of God's presence. He has led me through my wilderness for many of the same reasons He led the Israelites in the wilderness.

Moses told the Israelites “Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would really obey his commands.”[1]

The Great Sin

I have been guilty of the sin of pride. It is my worst sin. C.S. Lewis said the following about pride:

“According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: It is the complete anti-God state of mind.”[2]

Lewis called Pride “The Great Sin.” Pride is my sin despite the fact that most of my adult life has been marred by the various shocking humiliations of degenerative multiple sclerosis. Even afflicted by an aggressive disease that is slowly destroying my body, I have still been guilty of Pride. Even living in a carcass riddled with disease, I have found myself, at times, taking a perverse Pride in the preposterous delusion that I bear a tough disease so much better than lesser men. What arrogance!

I’ve tried to convince myself that I have not been broken by the dramatic loss of physical function or bowed to the terror of catastrophic neurological degeneration – ignoring the ocean of tears I've cried or nights fearfully trembling in my bed during harsh, unpredictable, dramatic attacks.

It is a perverse man who can still take Pride in his own destruction. And yet that is the colossal and pervasive extent of my monumental Pride. It knows no limits!

What is God to do with such a stiff-necked man! Perhaps He must leave me stumbling in the wilderness for my own eternal good, lest I truly fall into the pit. I am so prone toward the illusion of self-sufficiency – so ready and willing to push Christ off the throne of my life: “Move over Lord. I’ll take the driver’s seat now.” Allow me a modicum of recovery and that is exactly what I’m apt to do.

Pride, arrogance, presumption

Perhaps Twenty-four years in the wilderness of a horrible disease is where I must remain to finally learn utter dependence of God and uproot my Pride and arrogance.

If the Lord were to take me home prematurely I might argue with Saint Peter for the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.

“Give me the keys, Pete. You might lose them." (Yeah right, I can't find my own house keys.)

My Pride and arrogance can be boundless!

Better a wilderness on this side of the grave than to die with the weight of the Great Sin unresolved. Granted, Christ forgives all sin ... but do I really want to meet my maker with such a character flaw? No, I don't think so.

MP
____________________________________
[1] . Deuteronomy 8.2. NLT.
[2] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London, Geoffrey Bles, 1952) P. 96.

The happy past cannot repeat

It’s strange how smells can involuntarily bring back memories, good or bad, in much the same way certain tunes remind us of a time in the past. For some people, the smell of freshly cut grass may remind them of summer evenings when they were a child. Perhaps waking in the morning to the smell of fresh-baked bread evokes memories of a grandmother. For someone else the briny smell of the ocean conjures a longing for a family home in a harbor town by the sea.

The smell of old books remind me of my grandfather, the smell of pipe smoke, wool coats and pine trees remind me of my father just like ragtime piano reminds me of him (he was an excellent pianist).

He was a scholar of an older order and Christian of the first order. He was also one of God’s great gifts to me. Although he died when I was sixteen, my father was the principal force in developing my personality, character, and a sense of morality that was steeped in his Christianity – and later honed by mine. All my memories of my father are nearly forty years old now and yet not a day goes by that I do not think of him.

At the deepest point of mourning the death of his wife, C.S. Lewis wrote,

“Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the Spiritualists bait their hook! “Things on this side are not so different after all.” There are cigars in heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.” (A Grief Observed, Bantam)

But the happy past cannot be restored. Which happy past would I restore?

Each happy past precluded or excluded some aspects or people unique to other times. Which happy past would I choose?

The happy past with my father only encompassed my childhood and adolescence; it does not include my wife, children or grandchildren. My reality has expanded greatly since the particular happy past with my father. I would be miserable without the people who came along since then. If they were included, it would be something different than my happy past with him. It would be something completely different to any experience or memory in life.

No, Lewis was right, reality never repeats. There's no looking back. It is unworthy of our humanity and the God we serve. Didn’t Jesus warn us not to look back in life? A man who wanted to follow Jesus said. “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9.61-62)

We are to strive ahead knowing a greater glory lies ahead for those who live and die in Christ. We read in 2 Corinthians about an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison which awaits those who live and die in Christ (4. 17-18).

Happy pasts be hanged! A happy and glorious future is ahead of us with Christ. St. Paul recognized that his glorious future was not his possession while here on earth. He said,

“Brothers, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3.13-14)

He did not look back, he pressed on toward his goal which was heaven.

Sentimental memories of the past will pale in comparison to eternity with Christ in which our loved ones who make up the Mystical body of Christ will be partakers. Happy pasts will fade to a joyous future.

MP

"Let us turn to Jesus!" -- Pope Benedict XVI

On April 20th I awoke to discover an overnight snow storm made getting to church impossible -- especially for a man in a wheelchair. After making some coffee, I turned on the television. Throughout the previous week, CNN reported Pope Benedict’s first trip to America. They were about to broadcast a Papal Mass at Yankee Stadium in New York. An estimated fifty-six thousand people were in attendance.

Even sitting in my living room thousands of miles away from the Mass, I was stilled deeply moved by every aspect of it.

I did not dare openly recite the Penitential Rite, with His Holiness, for fear of weeping. I, of all people, am acutely aware that I have sinned in thought, word and deed against God and my fellow man.

Take the Lord at His word

The Gospel text was John 14.1-12 – the very text I have often written about because it creates in me such a yearning for heaven. It is that beloved portion of Scripture when our Lord said there are many dwelling places in His Father’s House: Christ promised to return to take His followers to be with him there.

In the first verse Jesus said, “You have faith in God; have faith also in me.” A few versus later Christ made the blazing and exclusive claim to be the only way to God: “I am the way and the truth  and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

In his homily, Pope Benedict responded with these opening words:

“In the Gospel we have just heard, Jesus tells his Apostles to put their faith in him, for he is "the way, and the truth and the life" (Jn 14:6). Christ is the way that leads to the Father, the truth which gives meaning to human existence, and the source of that life which is eternal joy with all the saints in his heavenly Kingdom. Let us take the Lord at his word! Let us renew our faith in him and put all our hope in his promises!”

Such statements can be unpopular in an era of relative truth, and when millions of people have believed the New Age lie that there are many ways to God.

The only way to God!

But this extraordinary passage in the Book of John, with the unequivocal claim of Jesus Christ, was open for all to read. It was reinforced by testimony of His Chief Vicar on earth, Pope Benedict. Christ is not a way to God the Father: He is the only way to God the Father
for all humanity.

Pope Benedict encouraged the Church Faithful to look beyond linguistic and cultural tensions that face the Catholic Church in America and work toward unity that has its basis in the Word of God, made flesh in Jesus Christ. The same is true for the Catholic Church in Canada.

The word Catholic means universal. Catholicism calls us beyond linguistic or cultural differences. In Saint Paul’s letter to the Galations, he said “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (3.28). The Apostle called for unity of believers in Christ, regardless of culture, ethnicity, social status or gender. Our common faith in Jesus Christ should unite us.

Freedom in surrender

Pope Benedict spoke of true human freedom coming from self-surrender to the truth of Jesus Christ. The Pontiff said, “Only by losing ourselves, the Lord tells us, do we truly find ourselves (cf. Lk 17:33).” We find love, happiness and freedom in Christ. This is the truth that brings liberty in Christ. Freedom in surrender is a mysterious and paradoxical truth that cuts close to the heart of God.

Perhaps the truth of finding freedom in surrender to Christ happens because we must discover that we are utterly incapable of truly accepting and internalizing the reality of the Gospel without surrender to Christ. The Gospel articulates the Good News of human salvation through the redemptive work of Jesus, his sacrifice on the cross, and resurrection from the dead.

Revolutionary Gospel

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is revolutionary. It can transform the hardest adamantine heart into a new tender heart motivated by love and devoted to service. The Gospel can conquer egocentric people and transform them into Christocentric people. People with Jesus Christ at the center of their lives, and whose personal egos have been subjugated to the will of God, will find they inexplicably begin to show Christ’s love. Old divisions and human tensions can melt away. Former adversaries can be seen as potential friends. Fists that previosly threatened become open hands of welcome.

Christ centered people see the image of God peaking through the lives of other people. They radiate Christ’s joy.

Pope Benedict closed his Homily by saying,

“"Happy are you who believe!" (cf. 1 Pet 2:7). Let us turn to Jesus! He alone is the way that leads to eternal happiness, the truth who satisfies the deepest longings of every heart, and the life who brings ever new joy and hope, to us and to our world. Amen."

Amen, Your Holiness. Amen.

MP

Another attempt to legalize assisted suicide in Canada

www.wcr.ab.ca/news/2008/0505/bill050508.shtml
"Assisted suicide bill returns for another go-go round", Canada's Western Catholic Reporter, for 5 May 2008.

Here we go again. Quebec MP Francine Lalonde is trying to get assisted suicide into Canada. Look for assurances of tight narrow guidelines to prevent abuses. Yeah right. (Lalonde tried previously to get an assisted suicide through the Canadian Parliament. It was unsuccessful. See my 2005 Western Catholic Reporter column "Only God grants death with dignity", (http://www.wcr.ab.ca/columns/markpickup/2005/markpickup101005.shtml) It deals, in part, with Lalonde's previous bill.)

Guidelines don't prevent abuses

Tight narrow guidelines don’t prevent abuses, somebody will push the envelope and play the martyr for the cause of death on demand. Remember how Canadian abortionist Henry Morgentaler flouted Canada's abortion law?

Think back forty years (yes, some of us have good memories) and the assurances that revolved around the contentious issue of abortion. The Justice Minister of the day was John Turner. On May 6th 1969, during 3rd reading of the contentious abortion bill, Turner rose in the House to assure a very hesitant and deeply concerned Parliament, and Canadian public:

"The bill has rejected the eugenic, sociological or criminal offence reasons [for abortion]. The bill limits the possibility of therapeutic abortion to these circumstances: It is to be performed by a medical practitioner who is supported by a therapeutic abortion committee of medical practitioners in a certified or approved hospital, and the is to be performed only where the health or life of the mother is in danger."

Guidelines flouted

The bill passed into law and became Section 251 of Canada's Criminal Code, but we know from history what happened. The ink was barely dry on the legislation and the law was being flouted. The word health was interpreted to include the vague and inexact term mental health. It opened wide the floodgates to wide-spread abortion. Abortion became so prevalent in Canada, under S-251, that by 1982 abortions outnumbered live births in the city of Toronto![1] Either the law was being flouted or Canada had the unhealthiest women on the planet! For all practical purposes, Canada had abortion on demand, despite assurances to the contrary. [2]


Why should I think things would be different with assisted suicide or euthanasia? The killing will simply expand and broaden. The right to die will eventually become the unstated duty to die. As cost of care for the terminally and chronically ill increase, death will be encouraged, and in the end, expected.

For more on the duty to die, I refer readers to a 2006 column I wrote entited "Duty to die attitude decries Christian love: A school of 'thought' states if your life burdens others, then you are obliged to die", Canada's Western Catholic Reporter, Week of September 18, 2006 (http://www.wcr.ab.ca/columns/markpickup/2006/markpickup091806.shtml)

MP
___________________
[1] “Abortions Outnumber Live Births in City of Toronto,” The Globe and Mail, June 17th 1983.
[2] A retired Alberta physician recently told me he can not remember any request for abortion ever being denied by any hospital abortion committee between 1970-1988.