The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up
yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save
it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and
death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and
you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given
away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised
from the dead. Look for your self, and you will find in the long run only
hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you
will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
C.S.
Lewis in Mere Christianity.
We live in an era engaged in one of the most stunningly
hopeless projects in all human history: the project of trying to find our
meaning in life by focusing exclusively on the self. America is convinced that
if only we “could be ourselves,” we would be happy and at peace. Gigantic
amounts of money are spent each year to do this.
The search for the autonomous, perfected self, when coupled with consumerism,
means we labor under a heavy burden of isolating, demanding individualism: “I
am what I make myself to be, with reference to nothing except what I purchase
or the ideology with which I identify.” For homo
americanus, each day brings with it the labor of defining the self vis-à-vis the “other” – and,
increasingly, seeing the other as an enemy who must be converted to one’s own
point of view or else to be removed from view, so that the autonomous self may
reign supreme. This leads to a state of continual struggle, conflict, and
antagonism between rival “selves,” resulting in the current embittered state of
affairs in our nation. No solution is possible as long as we hold to the Creed
of the Supremacy of Self.
Catholic Christianity, of which we are a part, has a
completely different understanding of selfhood. Its basis is found in our
understanding of God-in-Trinity. In reflecting on the Trinity, we learn, among
other things, that the self may only be understood only in relationship with
the other, and that “self” is ultimately only meaningful in communion. If God
is “one Being in Trinity of Persons” and we are made in the image and likeness
of God, then we, too, find ourselves
not in competition with others or by negating others, but by entering into
fellowship with our neighbor through an ongoing communion in God, the author
and fountain of life, love, and relationship.
Years ago I asked my spiritual director – a solitary
monastic – about her most important work each day. She said: “My work is prayer
– to God the Holy Trinity and in intercession for my neighbor and the world;
only then may I be truly me.” By living
in communion with God the Holy Trinity, she is able to live as a full and
participating member of the Body while remaining solitary. In the process, she
lives out her true character and vocation. As Lewis said, when we seek Christ we
find not only communion in God, “everything else thrown in.” Indeed, we find
our true selves.
On Trinity Sunday (June 11 this year) we will give special
thanks for the gift of knowing God-in-Trinity. At the end of St. Timothy’s 10
am liturgy we will sing the solemn Te
Deum, one of the Church’s oldest and greatest prayers of praise. We will
enter into the mystery of the Trinity through worship and adoration…both as
individuals and as a part of the mystical Body of Christ that is His Church. We
will offer our entire selves to God, so that we may receive our whole beings
back again, restored, renewed, and revealed as “beings-in-communion” eternally
sharing in the knowledge and love of the Holy One-in-Three.
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