“If you will, you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live. He has placed before you fire and water: stretch out your hand for which ever you wish. Before a man are life and death, good and evil, and whichever he chooses will be given to him. For great is the wisdom of the Lord; He is mighty in power and sees everything. The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him, and He knows every deed of man. He has not commanded anyone to be ungodly, and He has not given anyone permission to sin.” (Sirach 15 : 15-20)

Why is it that all too often humanity chooses the perspective of the nay-sayer instead of the Way of Truth? If the great apes can outdo us in athletic prowess at the ripe old age of 75 then as ‘superior’ as we are, we’re all too often taken in by the trend popularised in the not too long ago by-gone era of professional tennis for instance, that 27 years of age was already ‘too old’ and consequently most players had retired by then…..

Sure enough, humanity has been far more affected adversely by the decision of Adam & Eve to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree than the animal kingdom had been, all because it was humanity through Adam & Eve that sinned against God and as a result we humans have much more responsibility to bear than the rest of creation…..

In his essay entitled Beyond Reason? The Problem of Solving the Meaning of Life, Fr John Moffat* uses a polemic from Scottish philosopher David Hume to illustrate why the world thinks the way it does predominantly about the stuff of miracles hence the popularized myth that nothing can be achieved beyond the bounds of what it claims as ‘achievable’ or as ‘irrefutably proven’ by ‘verifiable’ human reason and therefore this sorely derives from a very limited notion of what constitutes “natural law”. Just because something “is so” most of the time or even merely much of the time is not because it cannot be otherwise but only because the world chooses its’ limited blinkered vision to live by instead of the boundless wisdom of God.

Essentially, Hume’s take on this subject presupposes that the miraculous are a contravention of the laws of nature. However, like Moffat, I have to disagree with Hume on that point and state that instead miracles are benign manifestations which are outside the “normative” realm of experience. They act not so much in violation of the laws of nature since anything which comes from God, effectively cannot violate any of those other things which by virtue of divine decree, God has set in place, and this includes natural law on all the levels to which God has ordered this law and everything in the created universe centered within, upon, and around it. It is only superficially ‘apparent’ that miracles are a contravention of the laws of nature. In fact, they do not so much contravene these laws as extend their normative boundaries in an extraordinary way that manifests the will of the One Who is holy, sacred, or divine so as to instantaneously transform a situation contrary to this divine will into one that is in complete conformity with it.

Therefore, we can by virtue of the miraculous, extend the normative boundaries of our life experience through anchoring ourselves in a most un-worldly way of getting in touch with reality – that is, through the spiritual experience of transcending worldly conventions and consciousness when we immerse the ins and outs of our daily life in the practice of Gospel values.

The idea here is to escape the prison of the demonic secularist ‘reality’, to transcend it so to speak, in order to be able to live sanely in a world infested with all kinds of psychosocial anomalies.** I cannot go out most of the time without feeling oppressed by the atmosphere of Godlessness. It’s a public sphere without a familiar face, just random nameless crowds, which by and large most of the time do not exhibit any sense of warmth or amiability. Their resonance is mostly cold, indifferent, closed in on themselves or extrovertedly hostile.

Attributing false delineations to the God-given genders is also wrong. There is this false presumption alive in our heavily secularized society that raising boys is very different emotively to raising girls. Somehow, there’s this pseudo-scientific or even pseudo-spiritual argument which says, albeit incorrectly, that boys need to be raised with attention given to so-conditioning them that their masculinity is exerted in an over-powering and exaggerated way. The perception given to masculinity as though it ought to be perceived as a nature imbued with heartless rationalism is nothing but warped and bereft of truth.*** But too many modern parents are convinced that this is the way.

Using a most, if not the most profound of ancient examples as reflected through contemporary cinematography to dispell this wicked myth comes from the modern Hollywood epic The Passion of the Christ by director Mel Gibson. There is an eye-catching and heart-wrenching scene in the movie where on the way to Calvary, Jesus’ Mother sees Him fall, overshadowed by the enormous weight of the cross beam He was carrying. Upon witnessing her Son fall a distant memory returns to her mind and heart. It is of a time when her Son was only around 6 or 7 years old, maybe younger and He was playing upon the stoney or rocky ground outside their home. He took a fall over some of the rocks which immediately caught the attention of His Mother. At once she shot up out of her task at hand and ran to the scene of His fall exclaiming a desperate cry of “Joshe!” as she ran to Him, full of love and compassion, and knelt down to help Him up. She took Him in her arms and hugged Him tight, seeing to it with all the Maternal care of her heart that He was ok.

I am using this vivid example as a contrast to the largely cold and valueless parenting styles that have become synonymous with the modern era. In this most strident and unforgettable of scenes from a contemporary cinematic classic, a Way of being is eruditely presented to us, one that, in its marvelous ability to bring the best out of our humanity, outshines the rest and consequently remains unequalled.

And this is the most exemplary model – that which we see in Mary. The model of perfect humility combined with unceasing love that is both abundantly earthy and yearningly heaven-sent. And this is the optimal balance of God-given human qualities which contain only that which is virtuous hence these cry out the extollation of choosing LIFE instead of DEATH as one’s life motto. And tragically, this is what today’s world is blatantly missing, and this is especially so in those places where the secularization of society has a greater say and sway both in the public sphere and in private life. Even the notion of family life as promulgated through the concept of the nuclear family does not match the ideal which the Gospel exhorts us to live by, at least not in how most live out family life in the contemporary context. For there is a repetitive chasm between too many families and other families, between too many families and single or lone individuals, and between too many single or lone individuals and other single or lone individuals. There are too many chasms and these are too wide to cross over between them. And it is precisely the problem of this chasm epidemic that is not even within the “normative” boundaries of the natural law as God had established it. It is rather, the diametrical antithesis of the miraculous, which I will describe as that which extends the normative boundaries of the God-given natural law in an extraordinary way to conform something out of alignment with God’s will into perfect alignment with it. And because this chasm epidemic is the antithesis of the miraculous, it is therefore the normative inverted and turned in upon itself. And as a consequence, those who suffer because of this are subject to the affliction of an accursed nature since they predominantly encounter the situation of the “normative” being inverted and turned in upon itself; as though they’re just living in a ‘magnetic bubble’ where they are subject to the magnetic pull of forces operating between themselves and ‘the universe’, outside of their control. While I realize that John Newton’s laws of gravity will in some respects, fit rather snugly within the parameters of this theory, when seen in such a cynical light, such a take on Newton’s theory does not leave much room for anything else. Hence, that which is in the order of the miraculous is the only legitimate and lasting cure for such afflictions. And rightly so, because God created the universe a certain way, and it isn’t the way alot of theological modernists or pop-psychology fans like to think of it as. In view of this, as Christians, we are called to be champions of the miraculous. We are to extol and practice those virtues which open the path to saying “YES!” to LIFE, thereby closing the path to misery and DEATH.

And this here is why we need a revolution, one founded on Gospel values that does not end up producing sects or cults. It is so that we can have this extollation and practice of these virtues multipled like the loaves and fishes in The Feeding of the Five Thousand. Too many sects and cults have been tragically borne as a result of people seeing these chasms and wanting to see them done away with but they were at the same time, in other ways not listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit long enough or discerningly enough before trying to do something constructive about bridging these awful chasms. And too many lives have been ruined as a result of these terrible piece-meal and often contortedly eccentric efforts at overturning the rule of these chasms by forming community anew but not in the manner after Jesus & His family who held the moral virtue of interpersonal compassion at the forefront of everything they did. And Jesus excelled in this, since for this cause He came to earth and for this cause He died, and for this cause He rose from death to give LIFE it’s proper place and due, and that is in triumph over DEATH. For as death glories in its sting, it is but only for a while. Life, by contrast, glories in its triumph, and it will see days unending. And so, it is best for us to walk in the path of life by choosing as Jesus did, to want to extol and excel in the moral virtue of interpersonal compassion, and by so doing, the proliferation of interrelational chasms will diminish. And because such an endeavour is a spiritual battle, perseverance is needed to complement. We cannot win this battle in an instant but we will indeed win in due season by the added virtue of the grace and armour of God.

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Endnotes:

* Moffat, J., “Beyond Reason? The Problem of Solving the Meaning of Life”, in The Way: A Review of Christian Spirituality Published by the British Jesuits, Vol 59, No. 1, January 2020.

** Ursua, M.P., “Feminine Psychological and Spiritual Clues to the Spiritual Exercises”, in The Way: A Review of Christian Spirituality Published by the British Jesuits, Vol 59, No. 1, January 2020.

*** Sydney Morning Herald: Men are embracing ‘positive masculinity’ and say it’s working – despite the backlash:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/men-are-embracing-positive-masculinity-and-say-its-working-despite-the-backlash-20221026-p5bt1k.html?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAQ4ZDVhLqfgMhVGL7nhtuugYrFgQEqEAgAKgcICjCA2O8KMILezwE&utm_content=bullets&gaa_at=la&gaa_n=ATKjfPEDAu1NCoQ4bEPURWbrB1xXwTq8a9MOiZzaUV7DZAxLlJFykA2KEXOJIVrTOUZSlU3MyYmYDVLBvJajxX5Wbdi0&gaa_ts=635e84d1&gaa_sig=c64bJ2TGPIvnwUOXaQZJRA8hx1cUC_VtfYhnSvHAEBilVICpNUm-0VqQGWJdA-aZLUpE_oXQJYCGwRvc3tgJGA%3D%3D