No one who has heard Nuala O'Faolain's recent interview with Marian
Finucane on RTE radio or read the transcript of their conversation
will have been left unmoved by the writer's tragic predicament.
She is dying of cancer and, faced by that terrible, unconquerable
fact, she described in most graphic terms her impotence, her wretchedness,
her regrets and, finally, her despair.
It is remarkable that she should seek to communicate with the
Irish public about her experience in the time that she has left
with us. What can we learn from what she says? Listening to her
we are reminded of the irreducible nature of human desire. We
have a question (a need, an entreaty) within us about our lives,
our origin and our destiny, which demands an answer. Indeed, we
are this question. And this question, like all questions, has
an answer. What, remotely, might be the basis for the conventional
idea that the answer to the wonder that is human life might be
a void, an abyss, a dark, empty place? Surely, such a hypothesis
is at the extreme end of pessimism, unsupported by the cumulative
empirical evidence of even the most limited or difficult of life
experiences? Why, in a time of unprecedented blessings and privilege
have our cultures conjured up such a desperate scenario as the
putative outcome of human existence?
We, followers of Christ through the concrete experience of the
Christian community, believe that the Mystery took mercy upon
us and became flesh and presented Himself as the answer to Death,
to the dramatic finality of things. We feel very close to Nuala
in her heartfelt desire that life go on, that no one be forgotten
about, that love, beauty, knowledge go on and never die. We also
find ourselves asking "am I a testimony to this desire, where
I am today?" We say to Nuala: “Why, gazing at the wonder
of the gift that has been your life, would you imagine that a
hair on your head remains uncounted?”
We live in times when the public language has booby-trapped the
very concepts most essential to our survival. Our culture holds
its unbelief to the fore like a shield, and manages in its language
to disable the very words with the power to save us. To speak
of Jesus Christ, even where His word is most desperately required,
is to risk misunderstanding, hostility and ridicule, to utter
the very message of salvation into an enveloping fog of prejudice
and pessimism.
But Christ is the one and only answer to the stark witness of
Nuala O’Faolain, a witness that is as much that of her age
as of her own, much-valued, public voice. She has another voice,
no less potent or truthful, as have we all.
Christ came into the world to put an end to Death. To be open
to this possibility is the summit of reason. Either this is true
for us - and this requires a daily verification - or Christ is
a mere consolation, and is ultimately, tragically, useless. We
accept that many in the modern world, who reject Christ or gloss
over Him in pursuit of a more “rational” hypothesis,
are in some degree reacting to an overly simplified version of
His teaching, as well as employing a limited concept of reason
to investigate the possibilities of existence. Both these phenomena
are products of flawed humanity’s tendency to reduce the
Mysterious to manageable concepts. But the Mystery is a paradox
that at once embraces us and retreats from our attempts to capture
or comprehend it. It is knowable only in the simplicity of being,
in surrender to the ferment of life in the knowledge of being
safe.
There is a thin but definite line between life as drama and life
as tragedy. The difference can often be in a slightly-altered
perspective. Am I merely an accident of biology or part of something
transcendent, something that pre-existed my earthly life and will
go on for always? Even the most pessimistic among us admit to
the continuation of love; but of what does this essence comprise?
Surely it has its roots in something given, something additional,
something “transcendent”.
What is decisive for us who follow Christ is the recognition of
a Presence in our lives - a Presence that accompanies us every
step of our earthly journey, even through the valley of Death
itself. For us, that Presence is a "You" - someone you
may bump into or encounter along the way. Just as it was for John
and Andrew two millennia ago, we have the opportunity to ask with
wonder "Who is this man Jesus of Nazareth?" And what,
other than a self-denying pessimism, could have convinced us that
the account handed to us through history, verified along the way
by countless human beings much like ourselves, is not the most
persuasive evidence the meaning of human existence? How, driven
by the deepest desires of the human heart, can we reject such
a miraculous incidence of correspondence, of harmony between the
question of the human heart and the answers contained in the Gospels?
The only possible reason is: because we do not think ourselves
worthy.
There is one further wonder: it does not matter, for He thinks
us worthy.
To verify that this is true we need to be simple, that is to rediscover
our authentic selves beyond the babble of the common mind, to
let the human heart with all its needs and questions launch us
forward in the verification of an hypothesis about life - that
of the possibility of an impossible correspondence with our desires.
It requires, yes, a leap of faith, but as Oscar Wilde said: “You
can only believe in what is incredible”. The answer to the
Mystery of life can surely not be straightforward, but will inevitably
strike us as exceptional. This exceptionality in the Christian
story, which our culture presents as evidence of implausibility,
is, on the contrary, indicative of Truth.
To become open to the Truth about ourselves and about reality,
we need to remove ourselves from the common mindset of conventional
culture, to render ourselves available to what is Mysterious.
And for this it is necessary for us to separate ourselves from
public thought, public language, to retreat into the recesses
of our own human hearts, to seek out the innermost desires of
the human condition. This is a decision we can take, but the process
is not, beyond that point, to be governed by human will. Once
I decide to submit myself to the undertaking, the rest is done
for and to me. What is required is a kind of surrender, which
enables Reality to re-integrate me into its mysterious Way. What
is to be lost, except pride and a pointless certitude, and how
small a price is this for the recovery of all that I am?
And what if this modest price were to be demanded for just one
day? - a single day of a skeptical life in which doubt and pessimism
might be suspended? - even by way of a scientific experiment?
- and the consequences noted and absorbed? We cannot promise that
the full Truth will reveal itself in that 24 hours of earthly
time, but we can say that the process will not leave the human
being unmoved, unaffected, unaltered by the influence of the Mysterious.
We can promise that such an exercise, conducted in openness and
honesty, will be sufficient to open a new way of seeing that perceives
not darkness but at least the possibility of Eternal Light.
Ireland
