[The
foolish rich man of Luke 12: 16-23] strikes me as a very exact picture of our
average modern attitude. Our technical and economic capabilities have grown to
an extent that could not have been imagined earlier. The precision of our
calculations is worthy of admiration.
Despite all the ghastly things
that have happened in this age of ours the opinion is continually becoming
stronger among many people that we are now close to the point of bringing about
the greatest happiness of the greatest number and finally ushering in a new
phase of history… but precisely when we seem to be coming close to humankind’s
redemption of itself, frightening explosions erupt from the depths of the
unsatisfied and oppressed human soul to tell us: ‘Fool , you have forgotten yourself…’
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, To Look on Christ: Exercises in Faith, Hope,
and Love
Reflection – This book was published
in 1991, compiled from previously given talks and homilies. I think the heady
optimism Ratzinger refers to here has become a little threadbare in the ensuing
decades and particularly in the past ten years. The 1980s are a long time ago,
and not just in terms of big hair and leggings. From financial meltdowns to
Ebola outbreaks, a resurgent Russia and the steady growth of the most radical
and violent forms of Islam, it would take a most determinedly optimistic sort
to believe that ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is just around
the corner. Any day now! Eschatology now! Well, if not now, then… uhh….
tomorrow! Or not…
That being said, the fundamental attitude
still is in place, namely that there is no happiness possible except that which
we attain by our own efforts. If it cannot be a happiness for the whole of
humanity, the kingdom of heaven on earth, then I will just grab as big a piece
of the pie as I can get away with and make off with it.
This returns us to the precise position
of the rich fool of Luke’s Gospel – once my barns are full, I can sit back and
relax and let the rest of the world burn. Whether we are ‘social justice
warriors’ determined to bring the final state of human happiness to pass by
some type of political action or big greedy pigs concerned only for our own
happiness, the same mistake is made, that happiness lies within human power of
action, and that in fact there is no other happiness to be had except what we
can fashion for ourselves in this world.
Of course my sympathies are more with the
SJW types (I wouldn’t very well have joined Madonna House otherwise), but
nonetheless it is a terrible trap, one that many decent and caring people have
fallen into. We are supposed to care, deeply and passionately, about the
sufferings of all humanity, and strive to do our bit, anyhow, to alleviate this
suffering.
But if there is no God, no hope for
redemption beyond this world and beyond our own choices and acts, if there is
in fact no kingdom of heaven, then our care for humanity will either burn
itself out and we will collapse into indifference, cynicism, and selfishness,
or we will be prey to more and more extreme ideologies which comes at a very
high price to our humanity.
Communism, fascism, and indeed radical
Islam are all examples of ideological projects to create the kingdom of heaven
on earth which inevitably entail killing everyone who seems to be getting in
the way: the infidels, the subsersives, the Jews—whoever.
And we are not immune to this in our
North American world. The ideology of the day on our continent seems to be that
of gender libertarianism—if only everyone gets to express his or her (or
whatever pronouns we come up with) gender identity and sexual preference
without censure in absolute freedom, then
we will all be happy. But to achieve that eschatological state of bliss,
those religions that hold to a sexual ethos rooted in the complementariness of
the genders and the sanctity of marriage must be silenced on this matter, must
themselves be censured and censored by state fiat if necessary. And this is a
growing sentiment in Canada and the United States.
All of this is based on this terrible
loss of our true selves and the truth of human happiness, the summa bonum, the true greatest good of
man and woman in God. Deprived of this, we are forced into desperate straits,
into a frantic and futile quest for beatitude in this life, doomed to failure
and yielding misery, despondency and rage.
Fortunately, the way back is always
available to us, and the true kingdom of heaven, the redemption given by God in
Christ Jesus is always ours for the asking, ours not for the taking but for the
receiving as a gracious gift of God’s mercy and love, and so we are free and
need not fall into the terrible traps of selfish greed, cynical apathy, or
ideological extremism. The beatitude of God is as near to us as the choice to
love and serve, pray and believe, in this present moment, and that is the great
redemption from human folly and failure in this world.