PRIUS DEI SERVUS

The Magnificat

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
and my spirit exults in God my saviour;
Because he has looked upon his lowly handmaid.
Yes, from this day forward all generations will call me blessed,
for the Almighty has done great things for me.
Holy is his name,
and his mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear him.
He has shown the power of his arm,
he has routed the proud of heart.
He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich sent empty away.
He has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of his mercy
—according to the promise he made to our ancestors—
of his mercy to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.”
Luke 1:46-55 Jerusalem Bible

And my spirit exults in God my saviour

Recently I was reading a text where the writer, like the Israelites, could not bring herself to spell out those three letters that spell His name. She chose instead to type: G-d. Who is this being to inspire in us such awe and respect?

My Lord has no physical form and yet he has all the other emotional and psychological characteristics of a man…

I can feel his presence; I can feel his love; I can feel his anger; I can feel his tenderness; I can feel his comfort; I can feel his power; I can feel his humility; I can feel his fortitude; I can feel his timidity; I can feel his strength; I can feel his weakness; I can feel his frustration; I can feel his perseverance; I can feel his joy; I can feel his pride; I can feel his impatience and his fear. I can feel his hesitations and I can feel his confidence. I can hear his laughter and I can also hear him when he sings and when he cries. I feel his majesty and I feel his loneliness.

At once, he has the hardness and sharp form of masculinity and the soft-edge and suppleness of femininity. He is a man of my time and he is a man of all time. He is everything and yet he is nothing. He truly is the alpha and the omega of everything that I am. Yet, I can never touch him.

We proclaim him “our saviour”, we proclaim that he sent his Son to “save” us. What does this all mean?

To me it seems that there are three main themes to explain human behaviour:

• Some see us as being born with an equal propensity for good or evil. Our life is a struggle between the good and evil within our nature. Our quest in life is to overcome the evil and redeem ourselves in the eyes of G-d.
  
  
• Others see us as being born in the image of G-d but we have a tendency to “run off the rails”. In other words our tendency is towards good but we have to overcome our failings.
  
  
• The third great theme seems to be that it doesn’t matter: this is just all ‘playing with words’, let’s just get on with life and enjoy it!

I have tried to reason my way through each of these philosophies and I think it does matter. I believe in the philosophy put forward by the Catholic Church. It isn’t alone amongst the world’s religions in seeing life according to the second of these three great themes. The Catholic Church itself is only a human institution. It is far from perfect but its own sinfulness and failures are entirely in keeping with what it preaches. That is what the whole doctrine of Original Sin and the sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation are all about.

At the end of the day, what do most people want out of life? I believe there is only one answer to that question. But there are two slightly different words which cover it. The first word is happiness. The second word is contentment.

Look first at happiness…

Everybody says “Be Happy” or “I wanna be happy!”. But just what do we mean? I think happiness is a very imprecise word to describe the quest of life. In my forty-five years of wandering about this planet I’ve probably met and conversed with, at most, a thousand people or so. (I mean meeting people to the extent that you can form an impression from your conversation with them about their personality and what drives them.) I am sure that not one of them would not place “Happiness” at the top of their list of priorities. However, of those thousand people or so there would be no more than a handful whom I would class as really happy people. Most people are unhappy about something.

I think the problem with happiness is that we tend to look at it in terms of material things or things that are one step removed from the material. Let me explain: most people – but not all – want money. That is something material. But, if you probe deeper and ask “why do they want money?” you find they want it because they believe it will provide them with happiness. The argument is circular and therefore it is corrupt.

Money can be desired for security. This is the great quest of the middle classes. Money purchases a house, a car, the physical possessions and the luxuries that the middle classes use to define themselves. Are “secure” people happy people? I think not but I will not argue the case. Just look around amongst your friends and work out those whose prime drive in life is security. Particularly look at people who are in their twilight years. Ask yourself: do most of these people have happiness written all over their faces?

Money can be desired for power. You tend to find this amongst the entrepreneurial classes. Again, look to those from these classes who are now in their twilight years. Ask yourself: do most of these people have happiness written all over their faces?

An inversion of this equation can be seen in those who seek power as the road to obtaining money. This has been a theme that has led to the worst excesses from the emergent left wing, nihilist, “new classes” that came to dominate the political landscape in the Western democracies in the 1980s. They rose to power using the rhetoric of socialism and a professed “care for the underdog and the working classes” but, once they had got their snouts in the trough, their true nature was revealed. All they really cared about was themselves and their own material and ego satisfaction. George Orwell wrote all about these people in Animal Farm. Look around you today: some of these former political high fliers are already in gaol, many more are fighting to stay out of gaol, and probably many more again have made their pile and have quietly snuck away from the limelight to try and enjoy their ill-gotten gains. Are any of them “happy” people?

Money can be desired for kicks. You tend to find this amongst the young. Ask yourself: do most of these people have happiness written all over their faces?

Money does not buy happiness. But didn’t someone say that about 2,000 years ago?

Power and money are not the only “humanly touchable” or material things that people delude themselves into believing is happiness. Some people elevate health, diet, food, their work, their hobbies, their sex life to an illusory substitute for happiness. Some people even elevate religion itself – or at least the external trappings of religious practice – to the point where they delude themselves that they have found happiness.

You don’t find real happiness in “things” and “situations”. The only place where you find real happiness is written on people’s faces in their old age. When you find those rare people who do possess this “real” happiness you also find that it isn’t called that after all. It is actually called contentment.

Contentment is something different to happiness. Christ called it peace of heart. It isn’t found in things and situations. It is found through our attitude to all these “things and situations” – money, power, health, food, work, hobbies, sex, religion that many people substitute as an illusion for happiness.

I have met very rich people and very powerful people whose faces radiate this inner contentment I am trying to describe to you. I have also met people who are moderately wealthy who have contentment. And we have all seen images of Mother Theresa of Calcutta – a woman who owns nothing, yet she owns the world and the world owns her. Contentment, unlike happiness, does not discriminate according to your wealth or your station in life.
G-d my saviour: he is the one who can save me from my delusions. It is my delusions that lead me to unhappiness. Unhappiness is just another word that describes “a lost path of communication to the Divine”. It is another word for sin.

G-d isn’t a person though. He is not some magic tooth fairy who dispenses an elixir that takes away pain. He is not a kindly, grey-haired, grey-bearded old man of wisdom seated on a heavenly cloud who dispenses wisdom and justice. G-d is a mystery. He has some of the attributes of a person; he has some of the attributes of a tooth fairy; he has some of the attributes of an old man of wisdom, yet he is none of these. He is at once omnipresent and at the same time he is intensely personal: like “Hughie” – my best mate. He is at once all powerful, rich, majestic and he resides in the souls of the most powerful men and women on earth. At the same time he is powerless, poor, humble and he resides in the soul of the most destitute person on the streets of Calcutta.

The history of all cultures, the history that is a record of the billions upon billions of people who have ever inhabited planet earth records an unending quest to find or describe this enigma we call G-d. Who is he? I don’t know. He is everything and he is nothing.

While I don’t know “who he is”, I do know “what he does”. He is the architect of life. But his architecture is not something that occurred at some short period in time and hence since he has passively looked on at what he created. His architecture is dynamic and we – the products of that architecture – remain in an ever-changing, constantly evaluated relationship with the architect. Like the spires of the tallest buildings built by men, the pinnacle of G-d’s creation is the “free-will” he endowed to man.

Each of us remains absolutely and totally free to choose whether we hitch our wagon of life to his. This freedom is without any condition apart from a warning that there will be some form of evaluation or judgment at the conclusion of our stewardship of our body. Until that moment our freedom is unlimited.

G-d does not promise us anything in this life except two things. He does not promise us that we will be successful, he does not promise that we will be failures, he does not promise us any physical reward or any physical punishment while we are here. He only makes two promises to us. The first of these is absolute – it is promised to every man and every woman: it is life itself for so long as he deems we should have it.

“Then he said to his disciples, ‘That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and how you are to clothe it. For life means more than food, and the body more than clothing. Think of the ravens. They do not sow or reap; they have no storehouses and no barns; yet God feeds them. And how much more are you worth than the birds! Can any of you, for all his worrying, add a single cubit to his span of life? If the smallest things, therefore, are outside your control, why worry about the rest? Think of the flowers; they never have to spin or weave; yet, I assure you, not even Solomon in all his regalia was robed like one of these. Now if that is how God clothes the grass in the field which is there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, how much more will he look after you, you men of little faith! But you, you must not set your hearts on things to eat and things to drink; nor must you worry. It is the pagans of this world who set their hearts on all these things. Your Father well knows you need them. No; set your hearts on his kingdom, and these other things will be given you as well.” Luke 12:22-31 Jerusalem Bible

I believe we are entitled to take those words of Christ quite literally. No, not entitled, we are commanded to take them for exactly what they mean. It does not mean though that we have to burn our storehouses, our barns, our refrigerators and our pantries though.

The second promise made to us is conditional: we can choose whether we accept it or not. I will spend a little time exploring it.

It is an invitation to us to hitch our wagon of life to his and enter a dynamic relationship with him. In entering such a dynamic relationship we are still not promised worldly success — or failure: we do not have to become physically “poor and wretched”. (We do have to become poor and wretched “in spirit”. There is a big difference between the two but we’ll look at that a little later because it contains the elements of a paradox.)

When we enter a dynamic relationship to the Divine we open ourselves to a roller-coaster ride of daring, fun, danger and exhilaration that surpasses anything else that life can offer. He will place in our path people, careers, challenges and learning situations that themselves are dynamic and exciting. Depending on how we use our talents, skills and resources to master those situations, the next stage on the roller coaster ride will be carefully matched to our performance in the previous stage. There is never a promise of security, success or an absence of danger or pain. You can never predict in which direction your roller coaster ride will take you next. The only promise in this roller coaster ride is “peace of heart” and contentment with our lives at whatever stage of the journey we have reached. That is the second of his promises.

“Peace of the heart” and contentment are yours for the asking. The conditions requested of you to obtain that promise are not onerous.

How do we know all this? We know it because of the evidence of history and the evidence of experience. The evidence of experience is found by looking back on the lives of those whose faces radiate contentment. Look back at how they lived their lives and you will find, without exception, that they had hitched their lives to the Divine flow. (And I don’t infer that they necessarily had to be Catholics to do that!) Look back at the lives of those whose faces do not radiate contentment and you will invariably find that they were hitched to an illusion of one sort or another – money, power, security or some other humanly touchable “thing”.

The evidence of history is found in the recorded lives of the sages, wise men and women and the saints. It is also found in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Our Saviour was sent to us to teach us, and to lead us to peace.

But it isn’t peace in the sense of lack of wars and conflict between peoples. That is not the peace promised by G-d. The only peace he promises is peace in the individual heart. Nowhere does G-d promise us an absence from pain, conflict or hardship. His only promise is that peace of the heart whereby whatever our situation, station or circumstances in the here and now, our face will radiate that deep inner satisfaction that ultimately derives from the soul. You can be a Pope or a Prime Minister with the weight of the world’s problems on your mind; you can be a woman in labour; you can be dying of cancer; you can have just lost a million dollars; you can be a street kid, a destitute or you can be a lowly handmaid thinking yourself worthless to anyone – you can carry the unhappiness and pain of all these things and yet your face can still radiate peace of the heart and total contentment with your circumstances.

To be “happy” you have got be rich, powerful, good looking or healthy. To be “content” you can be rich or poor, powerful or a “lowly handmaid”, good looking or ugly, healthy or unhealthy. Contentment is not derived from things or circumstances, it is derived from our attitude to things or circumstances.

We find contentment when we treat everything that is material as a gift from G-d, when we treat each pleasure as a gift from G-d and when we treat each obstacle and challenge in life as a gift from G-d. Each of these gifts have equal weight in the eyes of G-d. The material gifts are for our sustenance, pleasure and fulfilment; the pleasures are a reward; the obstacles and challenges provide the mountains that need to be climbed to experience the exhilaration of success.

Life is really like mountaineering. To get to the top you have to expend a lot of energy and it requires a lot of training. When you reach the pinnacle you don’t stay there very long. You descend and then find another mountain to climb. The way to do it and find contentment is via one small step at a time. Each small step does not require the expenditure of much energy but each small step takes you closer to the summit. Each small step you take trains you for the step that has to follow.

Even if no one else can see each small step we take, HE does…