Catholic Church paves paths on life’s journey

Friday, October 30, 1998

Catholic Church paves paths on life’s journey

RELIGION: ‘Universal’ faith explores, celebrates nature with
optimism

By Father Bob Sadowski

If life is a journey, does it make any difference which
direction we head? Is there any meaning to the journey, or must
each person create meaning from odds and ends discovered through
chance and circumstance? Is the human search for fulfillment a
futile quest that ends in either illusion or despair, or does this
yearning reveal a deep truth about our natures?

Having spent some time studying a variety of religious
traditions, I find much to interest and inform me in Hinduism,
Buddhism, Confucian thought, Taoism, Judaism and Islam. But the
answers that I find most satisfactory come from a particular
tradition within Christianity: Roman Catholicism. What is it about
Catholicism that attracts me, as well as over 900 million people
worldwide?

At its best, Catholicism celebrates the goodness of creation.
While the Big Bang may explain how the world was created, the
Catholic faith is more interested in exploring what it means to be
created; " … and God saw that it was good" (Genesis 1:21). The
basic Catholic instinct is to believe that this goodness runs
deeper and stronger than all the attempts at evil, oppression,
injustice and violence combined. Ours is an optimistic faith.

This optimism is undergirded by the Christian conviction that
the great mystery that we call God is no stranger to the human
condition, but dwells in our midst. We believe, as other Christians
do, that the one we call the Author of Life participated fully in
human form in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

While no one can claim to fully understand God, we believe that
in the life, actions and teachings of Jesus, the divine and the
human fully intersect. There is one pattern from Jesus’ life that
stands above all others as we try to make sense of our own lives;
the cross and resurrection stand at the center of our faith.

For Catholics, suffering is not an illusion to be transcended by
enlightenment. Neither suffering and death induce existential
absurdity or despair. Rather, we experience our entire lives as a
series of dying and rising. In high school, we identify ourselves
and our lives with a certain community of friends and experiences.
Graduation is the death of that life, and the gateway to new life
is, perhaps, becoming a student at UCLA. Here a "new" identity is
formed, but the time comes for that identity to die, too. A new
resurrection awaits after graduation. The process of death and
resurrection is the pattern of our lives. A lifetime of these
experiences prepares us to face physical death with the trust that
this too is part of the pattern.

These three elements: 1) that the goodness of God’s creation is
stronger than sin, 2) the Incarnation, and 3) that the Cross yields
to Resurrection, form the matrix that gives rise to the distinctive
elements of Catholic spirituality.

The Catholic Church is first and foremost a community of people
on a journey.

Here Catholicism runs counter to the cult of individualism that
predominates American culture. If Catholics feel uncomfortable with
the question, "Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and
Savior?" it is only because our instincts see personal conversion
as always being situated within a community of believers.

When adults enter the Catholic Church through the Rite of
Christian Initiation, it is always a communal journey.

Similarly, we Catholics see our family of 900 million as
universal in scope and nature. In fact, the word "catholic" means
"universal." Because we exist on every continent, we are constantly
challenged to avoid the myopia of expressing our faith through any
one set of cultural symbols. As James Joyce wrote, the Catholic
Church means, "Here comes everybody!"

Another distinctive feature of Catholicism is our willingness to
celebrate the presence of the sacred in the world. God’s continuing
presence in the world is the source of the sacramental structure of
the Catholic Church. We experience the invisible and intangible
love of God in visible and tangible ways. When the community
gathers, a meal of bread and wine is transformed into a Eucharistic
Banquet: the presence of Christ in our midst.

As Catholics consume the Body and Blood of Christ, we ourselves
are transformed to be the presence of Christ to the world.

To be true to that calling, the Catholic Church takes staunch
stands on issues of peace and justice.

Education, health care for the poor, hospices for AIDS patients,
soup kitchens, refugee services, battered women’s shelters, defense
of the right to life for both condemned criminals as well as unborn
innocents and halfway houses for prostitutes and substance addicts
are all part of the Catholic call to continue doing the work of
Jesus.

We recognize that we often fail to live up to our own best
ideals. For this reason, we also strive to be a community of
healing and reconciliation.

Sometimes we need to ask forgiveness; we offer forgiveness
freely to those who seek it.

Healing, forgiveness, celebration, joy: all are parts of being a
family called together by God.

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