Catholic Church paves paths on life's journey

Published: Friday, October 30, 1998

Friday, October 30, 1998

RELIGION: 'Universal' faith explores, celebrates nature with optimism

By Father Bob Sadowski

If life is a journey, does it make any difference which direction we head? Is there any meaning to the journey, or must each person create meaning from odds and ends discovered through chance and circumstance? Is the human search for fulfillment a futile quest that ends in either illusion or despair, or does this yearning reveal a deep truth about our natures?

Having spent some time studying a variety of religious traditions, I find much to interest and inform me in Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucian thought, Taoism, Judaism and Islam. But the answers that I find most satisfactory come from a particular tradition within Christianity: Roman Catholicism. What is it about Catholicism that attracts me, as well as over 900 million people worldwide?

At its best, Catholicism celebrates the goodness of creation. While the Big Bang may explain how the world was created, the Catholic faith is more interested in exploring what it means to be created; " ... and God saw that it was good" (Genesis 1:21). The basic Catholic instinct is to believe that this goodness runs deeper and stronger than all the attempts at evil, oppression, injustice and violence combined. Ours is an optimistic faith.

This optimism is undergirded by the Christian conviction that the great mystery that we call God is no stranger to the human condition, but dwells in our midst. We believe, as other Christians do, that the one we call the Author of Life participated fully in human form in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

While no one can claim to fully understand God, we believe that in the life, actions and teachings of Jesus, the divine and the human fully intersect. There is one pattern from Jesus' life that stands above all others as we try to make sense of our own lives; the cross and resurrection stand at the center of our faith.

For Catholics, suffering is not an illusion to be transcended by enlightenment. Neither suffering and death induce existential absurdity or despair. Rather, we experience our entire lives as a series of dying and rising. In high school, we identify ourselves and our lives with a certain community of friends and experiences. Graduation is the death of that life, and the gateway to new life is, perhaps, becoming a student at UCLA. Here a "new" identity is formed, but the time comes for that identity to die, too. A new resurrection awaits after graduation. The process of death and resurrection is the pattern of our lives. A lifetime of these experiences prepares us to face physical death with the trust that this too is part of the pattern.

These three elements: 1) that the goodness of God's creation is stronger than sin, 2) the Incarnation, and 3) that the Cross yields to Resurrection, form the matrix that gives rise to the distinctive elements of Catholic spirituality.

The Catholic Church is first and foremost a community of people on a journey.

Here Catholicism runs counter to the cult of individualism that predominates American culture. If Catholics feel uncomfortable with the question, "Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?" it is only because our instincts see personal conversion as always being situated within a community of believers.

When adults enter the Catholic Church through the Rite of Christian Initiation, it is always a communal journey.

Similarly, we Catholics see our family of 900 million as universal in scope and nature. In fact, the word "catholic" means "universal." Because we exist on every continent, we are constantly challenged to avoid the myopia of expressing our faith through any one set of cultural symbols. As James Joyce wrote, the Catholic Church means, "Here comes everybody!"

Another distinctive feature of Catholicism is our willingness to celebrate the presence of the sacred in the world. God's continuing presence in the world is the source of the sacramental structure of the Catholic Church. We experience the invisible and intangible love of God in visible and tangible ways. When the community gathers, a meal of bread and wine is transformed into a Eucharistic Banquet: the presence of Christ in our midst.

As Catholics consume the Body and Blood of Christ, we ourselves are transformed to be the presence of Christ to the world.

To be true to that calling, the Catholic Church takes staunch stands on issues of peace and justice.

Education, health care for the poor, hospices for AIDS patients, soup kitchens, refugee services, battered women's shelters, defense of the right to life for both condemned criminals as well as unborn innocents and halfway houses for prostitutes and substance addicts are all part of the Catholic call to continue doing the work of Jesus.

We recognize that we often fail to live up to our own best ideals. For this reason, we also strive to be a community of healing and reconciliation.

Sometimes we need to ask forgiveness; we offer forgiveness freely to those who seek it.

Healing, forgiveness, celebration, joy: all are parts of being a family called together by God.

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