Life's Questions & Answers

Life’s Ultimate Questions and the answer

Thank you for being here today.

Brian Kelsch Theology Teacher

Thank you for being here. Honestly, thank you.

Bishop England High School bkelsch@behs.com

Let’s Pray

● Take a deep breath ● Beg for the grace

● Imagine the place

● Imagine the people

● Act it out

●

Speak to Jesus

● Our Father

Nativity, Gerard van Honthorst

The Transfiguration, Raphael

Divine Mercy, Noah Buchanan

What are we trying to do in this session?

● Discover the fundamental questions of our lives.

● Reflect on the fundamental questions.

● Find the answer to the fundamental questions.

● Hear the voice of Jesus.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge, What is Truth?

The fundamental questions.

● We know these questions exist.

● Disney, Universal, Paramount have made millions asking the question without asking the question.

● These questions burn within us.

● We sing the songs, we do the dance, our eyes fill with tears because we long in our hearts for the answer.

Les Mis., Who Am I? 2012

There a lot there…

Tangled, Disney 2010

The Fundamental Questions

● These questions speak to the depth of who we are.

● Let’s look at what the Church has to say about these questions.

● St. John Paul II in 1998 writes the encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio or in English Faith and Reason.

Fides et Ratio Preamble

Define Understand

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

Fides Et Ratio Preamble

● Faith - The theological virtue by which we believe in God and all that has been revealed to us (CCC 1814).

● Reason - faculty of the human person to form judgments. These judgements give man the knowledge of God and allow for a personal connection with Him (CCC 33-36).

○ Judgement - Not necessarily moral judgments.

● Truth - Reality in its fullness, the way things really are. (Luigi Giussani, The Journey to Truth is an Experience and God at the Ritz)

Fides et Ratio Preamble

Define Understand

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

Fides Et Ratio Preamble

● God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth

○ From our birth we have longed to understand reality

○ What a gift to be born with a sense to ask questions about the world around us

● come to the fullness of truth about themselves

○ I can understand the reality of who “I” am

By asking questions about the world,

■ I can come to know who “I” am

■ I don’t determine who I am, reality around me does

■ The way I encounter the world reveals truth and I can respond to the reality

○ Isn’t that the world we encounter today?

○

So what are the questions? - FidesetRatio1.

In both East and West, we may trace a journey which has led humanity down the centuries to meet and engage truth more and more deeply. It is a journey which has unfolded—as it must—within the horizon of personal self-consciousness: the more human beings know reality and the world, the more they know themselves in their uniqueness, with the question of the meaning of things and of their very existence becoming ever more pressing. This is why all that is the object of our knowledge becomes a part of our life. The admonition Know yourself was carved on the temple portal at Delphi, as testimony to a basic truth to be adopted as a minimal norm by those who seek to set themselves apart from the rest of creation as “human beings”, that is as those who “know themselves”.

So what are the questions? - FidesetRatio1.

Moreover, a cursory glance at ancient history shows clearly how in different parts of the world, with their different cultures, there arise at the same time the fundamental questions which pervade human life: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?

We now have the questions

● Who am I?

● Where did I come from and where am I going?

● Why is there evil?

● What is there after this life?

● Who is Cotton Eye Joe?

So, Jesus is the answer.

● Duh.

● But what does the Church have to say about Jesus being the answer?

● Gaudium et Spes

○ Joy and Hope

○ Saint John Paul II

○ This time in July 1965

This will be on the test! GaudiumetSpes22

“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.”

This will be on the test! GaudiumetSpes22

● only in the mystery of the incarnate Word

○ The Word became flesh and dwelt among us

○ There is a scandal here

○ Our infinite God enters into our finite space

● does the mystery of man take on light.

○ The questions now begin to take shape

○ The world around us begins to make sense in the light of Christ

○ I know find dignity in the other person because I understand the mystery of their life

This will be on the test! GaudiumetSpes22

“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.” Christ