OH GOD, WHERE ART THOU?

Last year, when I came back from a mission in Haiti, I shared with Sr. Marcan, a dear friend, the misery and suffering I had witnessed. She asked, ”Father, why is there so much suffering in the world?” My response, without thinking, was, “Perhaps, to help us open our hearts.” In light of the earthquake that has devastated this poorest of nations in the Americas, perhaps, both the question and my response seem even more applicable today. The latest report today from Food for the Poor colleagues in Haiti says that the actual condition there is at least 100 times worse than we see on TV. Additionally, some of you have said, if there is a God, why do we have such a painful history of genocide, atrocities of war, inexplicable inhumanity?

Those wiser than I have stated that God does not micro-manage our lives; that God has granted us freedom (otherwise we would be mere puppets, less than fully human); not unlike perhaps forcing another to drink a love potion so as to be enamored of us. But without their freedom of choice, it would be an illusory relationship.

Is there a God? What is the proof? Why believe?

In “The Brothers Karamazov”, Feodor Dostoyevsky includes a story about a young widow with child, distraught at the loss of her husband, who goes to a holy man, Father Zossima, and says, “All my life I have believed in God. Now I am in such sorrow, I do not know what to believe. Prove to me that there is a God.” The holy monk responds, “I cannot prove to you that God exists. But you can. If you give what you have to help the needy you will find proof of God’s existence. And the more you give the more certain you will be. Until you have nothing left to give, and then you will have no doubt whatsoever that God exists…and is with you.” Some of you said as much, stating that your faith is the result of such a holy encounter…in yourself…or in others.

Perhaps, this faith is one born of necessity. About 40 years ago, a man dying of cancer wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book. The man was Ernst Becker. The book is “Denial of Death”, wherein he writes that all of life is a quest to cope with our struggles, difficulties, and suffering, but most especially with death. We seek to extend our youth (through exercise, medicines, cosmetic surgery, etc.); to take control and somehow find that holy fountain of eternal youth…to make ourselves like gods. He wrote that there are different coping mechanisms for the challenges of life: power, fame, wealth, sex, wisdom, religion. Each works to some extent. But the best response to life’s challenges and our daily deaths, he wrote, is…faith.

There is a difference between religion and faith. Perhaps it is best explained by a line in the 1932 movie, Shanghai Express, with Marlene Dietrich. In the story, she encounters a former lover on a train, one she had tricked 5 years earlier to test his faith in her love. He failed, and they moved on with life. Now on this encounter they find that they still love each other. On that same train is a warlord who also falls in love with Shanghai Lily (Dietrich). When he makes a pass at her, her former lover strikes him. Later the warlord takes control of the train and seeks to punish the lover by gouging his eyes out. Lily goes to him and tells him she will go with him wherever he likes if he will spare her lover. Though he is spared, when he finds out that Lily is going with the warlord – without knowing the reason – he becomes angry with her. A missionary traveling on the train guessing her reasons for going with the warlord asks her about it, and his suspicion is confirmed. Still later, the warlord is killed. The missionary wants to reconcile Lily and her lover by telling the lover of Lily’s act of sacrifice, but she says, “No. Love without faith, like religion without faith is meaningless.” (So as to not hold you in suspense, the lover finally has faith in Lily’s love and they go off arm-in-arm.)

What is the faith that gives meaning to our life and how does one get it? Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish Philosopher and Theologian, who was born some 200 years ago, wrote that faith begins with “a leap of faith”…a desire to believe. In this leap of faith we discover more fully what we want to believe; the beliefs that make us who we want to be.

Faith in God may begin with this. But it is more. True faith is more than religious adherence to the standards of one’s Church, and more than a cold response of the mind to commit one’s life to a set of convictions, to set a course of action that shapes our life as we might desire…it is a love affair…that gives fullness of meaning to our life, and gives life to us...and through us...even to God.

Where is God?...in every life-giving act of true love.