“Peace,” she replies. “Or perhaps joy.”

After a moment she asks him, “What about your own word for life?”

“You wouldn’t want to hear it.”

No, she probably wouldn’t.  The word he is thinking of is “futility.”

Josh, you may remember, is the ex-Christian with whom I correspond from time to time. He admits that a certain amount of happiness is found in life, as well as a certain amount of pain and sorrow.  But at the end, he concludes, it all means nothing.

While he has lost the sense of any meaning to life, Josh has found purpose in his current crusade against Christianity. He has become what we might call a dysvangelist (or more etymologically correct, a “dysangelist”), one who proclaims, not Good News, but bad or disordered news. His co-religionists include the band of in-your-face “new atheists” whose books are hot sellers these days. Josh is less eloquent than they, but no less fervent.

Josh’s mission, however, appears to give him no joy. It is one thing to spend a Saturday afternoon in what we consider meaningless activity. It is quite another to live a life of futility. Something deep in us insists that life has meaning, and the refusal of this basic instinct has the effect of throwing our minds and hearts out of kilter – of untuning, so to speak, the strings of life.

Here are two quotations, one reflecting a psychological approach to meaning, and the other a uniquely Christian insight:

As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy … through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy

Every Eucharist is a celebration of our trust that in Christ meaning will triumph in ways that we cannot guess or anticipate. Vaclav Havel, playwright and previous President of the Czech Republic, defined it thus: ‘Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’”

Timothy Radcliffe, OP, What Is the Point of Being a Christian? (New York: Burns and Oates, 2006), 17.

For the enemy has pursued me,
crushing my life to the ground,
making me sit in darkness like those long dead.

Therefore my spirit faints within me;
my heart within me is appalled.

Answer me quickly, O Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me,
or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.

Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning,
for in you I put my trust.

Teach me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.

(Psalm 143:3-4, 7-8)

EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.

Who had put it there? Did every Times-Union vending box carry this assurance, in startling contrast to the messages found in the paper itself? Or had a hope-filled vandal struck?

Was it pure chance that I was sitting there gazing at this mystifying communication? Or was it a reminder to me of a truth that I was neglecting?

The sign on the newspaper box was one of those small mysteries that have no explanation (mysteries are not puzzles to be solved), but which nudge us into mindfulness.

I thought of the words Julian of Norwich heard from Jesus:

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

I thought also of Romans 8:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (8:28)

Events of our own lives, however, can sometimes make it very hard to believe that all manner of things will be well. Reading the newspaper, watching CNN, or surfing the internet, we may find it even harder. What about the genocide in Darfur, the war in Iraq, or global warming with all its implications? What about the victims of Hurricane Katrina who still reside in tiny FEMA trailers? What about the homeless couple who appeared at our door the other day, eager for work that we could not offer?

Christians live in hope. We are always looking not only at what we see here and now, but toward what is promised. We live in hope of the fulfillment of all things, which in some deep sense is present to us even now through the Resurrection of Jesus. We believe that time is going somewhere, not just in circles. God is leading us beyond where we are now. Our future is good.

So we contemplate the Resurrection, and we cling to hope. We continue to hope beyond all hope. For nothing in our lives is wasted. Goodness, despite all appearances, does prevail.
. . . . . . . . . .

P.S. A friend called after reading the above reflection. She wanted to know if Sister Elizabeth found her sunglasses. So for all who feel as if you have been left hanging, I am happy to report that yes, she did find them right where she left them.

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘therefore I will hope in him.’

(Lamentations 3:19-21)

The other night, in Atlanta, I attended a magnificent performance of “The Play of Herod,” a 12th century music drama. A friend, Butch Spivey, sang the title role. In “The Play of Herod” we saw acted-out and heard sung in medieval plainsong and polyphony the story of Christmas, Epiphany, and the slaughter of the innocents. Afterwards, we drank mulled cider and sang Christmas carols in front of a blazing fire.

The next morning I walked down a steep hill to church for Sunday Mass, where I returned to Advent anticipation. We sang “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”; the third candle of the Advent wreath was lit; and we listened to one of the beautiful seasonal readings from the prophet Isaiah. The church was draped in purple.

Perhaps it is fitting to experience Advent as a hodge-podge. Life itself is a hodge-podge, blending waiting and fulfillment, joy and sorrow, birth and death. We cannot choose simply to engage in the pursuit of happiness, which the Declaration of Independence tells us is our alienable right, for unalloyed happiness not only escapes us, but, I tend to believe, is overrated as a goal. In the “Play of Herod,” when the Magi present their gifts to the newborn Christ, they sing (more or less translated from the Latin):

Accept gold, sign of a King…
Incense, for you are truly God…
Myrrh, sign of the tomb.

We read in the gospel of John that myrrh was used, after the crucifixion, to prepare Jesus’ body for burial (John 19:39-40). Thus nativity — the birth of a king, the incarnation of Emmanuel, God-with-us — already brings us into contact with Good Friday. And of course the resurrection is already implicit in the cross.

So in Advent, a season that can be as mixed-up as life itself, we wait in hope, knowing that Jesus has already come – and will come again. We gaze toward the star that lightens our path, even as we often grope in the dark.

We kneel before both the manger and the cross.

We weep for the mothers of children killed by a ruler to protect his own reign; but we rejoice in the conviction that evil and death have already been defeated.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing…

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
“Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.”

(Isaiah 35:1-2a;3-4a)

• - Holy Thursday: none
• - Good Friday: on Univision, a movie entitled, “La Vida de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo.”
• - Holy Saturday: on the History Channel, “St. Peter: The Rock” and “The Apostle Paul: The Man Who Turned the World Upside Down”; and on the Travel Channel, “Where Easter Began”
• - Easter Sunday: on the Discovery Channel, “Jesus: The Complete Story” (complete?); and on our ABC affiliate, Charlton Heston in “The Ten Commandments”

I’m not complaining, especially when I consider the quality of some of those Christmas shows. But I do ask myself the reasons for the difference. This is what I have come up with, although I am sure there are other reasons as well: Christmas is to a certain degree a more accessible mystery. Everyone loves a story about a baby. Add animals and angels and an evil king who kills babies and three wise men bearing gifts and it becomes even more attractive. Besides, most of us accept the virtue of giving and the concept of peace on earth, at least on an abstract level.

Easter, however, is another matter. We can grasp the notion of resuscitation (by CPR, for example). We can perhaps just begin to wrap our understanding around the thought of a near-death experience during which it appears that one takes a step into the next life, only to be sent back with no further fear of death. But resurrection — being raised after bodily death to a new, transformed life in God and never having to die again — is beyond our human ability to comprehend.

According to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, some of the early Christians also had problems with it. Paul himself had difficulty trying to explain it to them. Using the image of seeds, he says, “It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.” The oxymoron “spiritual body” serves only to emphasize how incomprehensible is this mystery to our human minds.

Resurrection of this sort, as opposed to near-death or resuscitation or the revival of corpses in a horror movie, is not something commercial television can deal with profitably — and if truth be told, not something we know how to deal with ourselves. Nevertheless, this same disconcerting mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus is what lets us know that we are not abandoned, assures us of forgiveness, and promises us a future of joy and hope — a future with the Beloved, a future which is Christ.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)