The following talk was delivered by Mr. Andrew Donacik at morning assembly on Monday, January 6, 2014. “A Loyola Student is Becoming More Religious”
Why Be Religious?
Monday, 6 Jan. 2014
It is not inconceivable that we should drift from religion today. Religion, after all, has been assailed, vigorously in recent decades, in the media. Even the most devout should be excused if they are touched by jaded exasperation. For the list of offenses is long and disturbing: religious leaders, time and again in history, have fallen precipitously from grace; religious pride has sparked impulsive acts of violence and fueled intractable long-term conflict in which, no surprise, the innocent masses have been sacrificed; religious elitism has shunned and marginalized certain classes of people, to engender selective, elitist communities. Current statistics lend possible credence to a trend of creeping religious cynicism. A 2012 study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life found that one-fifth of Americans do not identify with religion, and a third of those under 30 have no religious affiliation. Still, I believe religion’s accomplishments of peace, beneficence and ennobling unity far outbalance its sins. I believe religiousness is innately human—it is coded in our DNA—and that it affirms and vivifies our search for meaning, coloring us just like crayons bring a book of black-and-white pictures to eyepopping, chromatic life. Here are two ways that we can be religious. To be religious is to cherish community. For we are, after all, naturally social beings. We are not selfsufficient, but dependent on each other. We become steeped in wholesomeness and life-affirming meaning when we become vulnerable to receive help, and when we become determinedly generous to give it. Community for us human beings is symbiotic, is mutually supportive. The botony of the gigantic redwoods of California is evocative here. Wondrously mammoth, seemingly belonging to the terrain of the dinosaurs, the redwoods nonetheless support themselves with shallow roots. What prevents them from toppling to the ground like bowling pins, in response to the wind’s barrage? Redwoods we know must live in community. They weave their roots together underground, forming a steel-like web of support that keeps them upright. A solitary redwood, a redwood alone, wouldn’t have a fighting chance against the wind’s mighty onslaught. Life is unfair, we know this. All of us experience some pain in life. Some might feel loneliness; others, rejection. Still others might be stricken by addiction or illness or the death of a loved one. We need God. And God is manifest, made concrete, in community. To be religious is to cherish community. Psalm 91—I encourage you to turn this to strikingly beautiful poem—tells us that the Lord is our rock, our shield, our fortress. We need God. This is why we choose to go to Catholic Mass every week, or to whatever religious community we belong: synagogue, church, mosque and temple are but a few examples.
The Jewish Torah tells the story of Moses and the people of Israel, in wandering exodus through the desert, searching and seeking for the promised land. Desperate in hunger, they were saved from starvation when the Lord provided manna. As the Lord feeds us, so too, must we feed one another. To be religious is to be bread for another. Be bread for one another. In an impoverished and distressed world, use your imagination and strength to be bread for one another. Secondly, to be religious is to embrace mystery. I believe in science, its majesty, its regal elegance, its granite reliability of consistency and prediction. Science to me is the realm where you can hear the voice of God whispering with twinkling eye and jocund tone, “There is a lot to discover. But keep on, keep on. See if you can figure it all out.” Still, physics can tire me out, strain my sensibilities, particularly when considerations of the universe’s evolution are floated. Could science be limited? We now know that the universe is expanding outward into nothingness. This means that galaxies outside our own Milky Way are moving away from us. And not simply sauntering away lackadaisically, but accelerating away faster and faster! Physicists speculate that a type of energy, known as dark energy, might produce an antigravity force responsible for the acceleration. Dark energy, the hypothesis runs, might compose one-quarter of the universe. There’s more. A new version of the Big Bang model is gaining traction in the physics community. It’s called eternal inflation, and it says that untold parallel universes are constantly bubbling up from some ethereal background of primordial energy, known in the jargon as false vacuum. Oh my. Life really can be too mysterious some time. But, to reiterate, to be religious is to embrace mystery. We might borrow a page from the playbook of St. Ignatius of Loyola, entitled Spiritual Exercises. St. Ignatius invites his followers to practice a prayer technique called contemplation. It relies on the power of your imagination. Let’s go to Jesus’ last supper, the scene of the upper room. Imagine yourself truly present. Supply all the descriptive details, bringing the scene to colorful, concrete life. Where are you? At Jesus’ side? Where are the others? What do they look like? Savor this scene, suffused in mystery. And then listen. What does Jesus say to you? Shhh… just listen. Listening is a skill that needs to be cultivated. It is also a skill that has waned in an era of noise, where we are all seemingly shouting to make ourselves heard, with many conversations devolving into a competition of monologues. So practice listening, listening to Jesus. Listening’s primary requirement is quiet, quiet obtained for perhaps five to ten minutes every day. Listen to Jesus, to find consolation in the mystery that immerses us. My mind is playfully attracted to a certain icon of St. Ignatius of Loyola, who is depicted with two fingers lightly intersecting his lips. It’s as if St. Ignatius is urging us to silent composure, “Shhh…” Now the artist’s intention most assuredly was not this. Yet this evocative work of art speaks to me about seeking silence, a refuge from the constant wave of noise that besieges from all sides. To be religious, I believe, is to answer to a longing that is inseparable from the human condition. Two ways to discover our religiousness have been posited here: to cherish community—to be bread for one another; and to embrace mystery—to listen to Jesus, finding consolation if not affirmation in life’s mystery.