Recognizing and Living Out 'A Vision of the Good'

By TODD GRAFF

The Church relives the amazement of the women who went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. The tomb of Jesus had been sealed with a great stone. Today too, great stones, heavy stones, block the hopes of humanity: the stone of war, the stone of humanitarian crises, the stone of human rights violations, the stone of human trafficking, and other stones as well. Like the women disciples of Jesus, we ask one another: "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" (cf. Mk 16:3).

-Pope Francis, Urbi et Orbi Message for Easter 2024

Greetings of Joy in this Easter Season!

This month, I am sharing an extended excerpt from an article written by DR. HOLLY ORDWAY at the Word on Fire website. It is titled, “Developing a Vision of the Good.” The article is being reprinted with permission, and with thanks to Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. It can be found online at: wordonfire.org/articles/developing-a-vision-of-the-good/ I was deeply moved by the wisdom and insight offered by Dr. Ordway, and the spiritual challenge it offers to each of us in these days of such suffering and division. I pray that we will take her words to heart!

If I may state the obvious, there is a lot of suffering in the world, a great deal of wickedness, folly, exploitation, and general disregard for the good, true, and beautiful - and our media ecosystem is perfectly calibrated to deliver a constant stream of disturbing and distressing news about this into our daily life. We do need to know about some of this, to be sure, but if we subsist on a steady diet of reports of the evil, false, and ugly, disturbing changes can happen in our psyche.

One change that can happen is that we become apathetic and simply accept that this is how things are, and there’s no point in trying to change anything. But another change, more subtle perhaps but no less harmful for that, is that we can become so geared up to fight falsehood and ugliness that we end up seeing the world around us only in terms of what we are against, and not what we are for.

We should always be able to echo the words of Faramir in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

We must love what we defend, more than the satisfaction of knowing we are defending it; we must love and enjoy what is good for its own sake, not just because it proves the other side wrong or gives us the thrill of being right. The good, true, and beautiful must be real to us, more real than the discourse around it. By living a life that is grounded in these principles, we make them real to ourselves and, therefore, to the people we know. One of the ways that we can cultivate this quality in our lives is through our choice of ordinary activities on a day-to-day basis: the things we do, read, and watch, not just the principles we hold in the abstract.

On an ongoing basis, one of the ways in which we can keep ourselves grounded in the good, true, and beautiful is to ensure that at least some of what we take in for enjoyment - leisure activities, reading, films, television - presents a vision of the good.

Some of these habits are, on the surface, very ordinary. Have a meal with a friend or with your spouse; put your phone away - yes, all the way away, not merely set aside on the table - and enjoy a relaxed, leisurely conversation. Don’t take any pictures; just enjoy the time together. Play with your children, or with your nephews and nieces, or godchildren, or your friends’ children. Potter around in your garden (a glorious way of bringing oneself ‘down to earth’) or go for a walk outside; at least some of the time, don’t listen to music or a podcast or anything, just be present with your thoughts and really pay attention to what’s in front of you.

This will help you recognize the good, true, and beautiful in your everyday life, among the people you know, not in the abstract, but in the particulars.

Another helpful way to counteract the sheer negativity of much of what we consume in the news and on social media is to have a regular infusion of what we might (somewhat misleadingly) call "light" reading or "light" viewing. We can recognize "heavy" reading or viewing easily enough: serious, worthy material that engages with important issues and themes, complex and challenging texts.

But heavy reading is tiring to the mind, just as heavy lifting is to the body: it does strengthen the mind, as physical effort strengthens the body, but in order to get the most benefit out of it, one must also have rest and recuperation.

Light reading and viewing can get a bit of a bad rap, as if it were "escapist" and unworthy, but that is to misunderstand the nature of "escape." Tolkien addresses this in his great essay “On Fairystories,” declaring:

I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which “Escape” is now so often used. ... Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prisonwalls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. Just so a Party spokesman might have labelled departure from the misery of the Führer’s or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery. These words are just as relevant today, when each of us can so easily live in prison-cells formed by our awareness of all that is wrong with the world. Do we talk only of jailers and prison-walls?

Or do we have a sense of what is outside those walls? What we read and watch should help us to stay connected to the good, true, and beautiful, so that we have a real sense of what goodness is like (not just an abstract quality) and recognize beauty in our day-to-day lives, not just as something ‘out there’ to visit someday.

Dr. Ordway’s message is especially relevant in these Easter days. The darkness that surrounds us does not have the final word. The broken body of our Crucified Lord was transformed by the power of God into the glorified body of our Risen Savior. His wounds remained, but the suffering experienced in them did not. Our own experiences of suffering and trials now have meaning into eternity, and they will be transformed by the Resurrection.

We live in this hope, that God’s love which we can experience now in the goodness, truth, and beauty all around us is the final and eternal word of our lives and of creation. Deo Gratias!

This is the amazing discovery of that Easter morning: the stone, the immense stone, was rolled away. The astonishment of the women is our astonishment as well: the tomb of Jesus is open and it is empty! From this, everything begins anew! A new path leads through that empty tomb: the path that none of us, but God alone, could open: the path of life in the midst of death, the path of peace in the midst of war, the path of reconciliation in the midst of hatred, the path of fraternity in the midst of hostility.

-Pope Francis, Urbi et Orbi Message for Easter 2024

Todd Graff is the Director of Lay Formation & RCIA