Newspaper Page Text
September 3,1981
PAGE 5
Does Belief Fit Into This Modern World?
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and to take it.
Space exploration has shown what a tiny
speck this earth of ours is in the vastness of
the universe. Some people ask how
Christianity will fit into things centuries from
now if it is humankind’s fate to move beyond
the earth and colonize the galaxies.
Of course, as the universe expands before
the eyes of our modern explorers, this world
seems to grow smaller; its inhabitants come
into more frequent contact with each other.
One result is that Christians are brought face
to face with members of world religions like
Buddhism or Hinduism.
The discovery that other world religions
are now close at hand actually can be a source
of anxiety for some people. Our society has
seen many young people turn to Eastern
religions -- a puzzle to many parents and
others.
At the same time, the awareness of other
world religions can lead people to worthwhile
reflection on their own faith and to greater
understanding of its meaning. Perhaps,
witnessing the Buddhist reverence for all of
life, including nature, people begin to think
again about this aspect of their own faith.
World events also can make people think
about their faith. The rise of terrorism,
international conflicts, political
assassinations, revolutions, the arms race - all
these lead people to reflection on the meaning
of life and of God’s presence. Can Christianity
really help to bring about a better world,
people may wonder.
What happens when faith is challenged? Do
people turn totally away from religious faith?
More likely, what happens is their faith in
something else -- in technology or politics --
comes to exist side by side with religious faith.
That is a reason why reflection on faith
seems important. Faith needs attention.
Without it, faith may begin to erode, replaced
by a consuming devotion to other values.
Reflection on faith: That is what the new
series that begins on these pages this week is
really all about. Our hope is that reflection on
faith will be a means of our growing to full
stature in Christ, the final destination of our
faith journey.
Journey?
Yes, I think the life of faith is a journey.
Sometimes it is peaceful and smooth. Other
times it is less so.
The events along the journey’s route can
drive us to reflection on our faith: what faith
is, what it has to do with us, how it can come
to life for us and how we can invest ourselves
in it.
humankind’s fate is to leave this planet
and colonize the galaxies - or to
encounter other intelligent life. (NC
Photo from NASA)
SPACE EXPLORATION has shown
what a tiny speck this earth of ours is in
the vastness of the universe. One may
wonder what meaning Christianity will
have centuries from now if
BY NEIL PARENT
Several years ago, a journalist wrote a
moving account of his daughter’s last days at a
hospice in Oxford, England.
The daughter was a young professional in
her 20s and, according to the father’s
description, approached death from cancer
with great tranquility. Although she accepted
death in a manner one might expect to see in
persons of deep religious faith, she was an
atheist.
the young woman’s story became valuable for
me, provoking reflection on my own faith --
on its role in my life, what I was doing to
develop it, and on its great value to me.
Then, it occurred to me that motivation to
think about faith can stem from many
sources. It sometimes happens, as in the case
just mentioned, that we are led to such
reflection by an encounter with people who
place faith in something quite different.
There are people who place faith in the
basic goodness of human life rather than in
KNOW
YOUR
FAITH
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1 981 By N.C. News Service)
I can recall my feelings being in turmoil as I
read her story. I felt sorrow for those close to
her. I also felt some loss of my own that the
world was now without someone as talented
and sensitive as she.
But another side of me struggled to
understand how this young woman could
confront death devoid of fear or anger. To
her, death implied total annihilation. She
wasn’t thinking about a future union with
God or loved ones.
How does one cope with death without
religious faith, I wondered. As it turned out,
Christianity or another religious expression.
Often these people live by high moral
principles. They may seem enigmatic to
Christians.
Many of the world’s citizens place faith in
Marxist or Leninist doctrines for renewing
society. They are convinced, and they strive
to win others to their beliefs.
Some people place their faith in the powers
of science and technology. Startling advances
in these fields have given humankind greater
control over its own fate. More and more,
human beings assume the power to create life
The Gospel Of Mark
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
The Jesus of Mark’s Gospel is a tragic
figure, misunderstood, rejected, attacked and
executed. But paradoxically, this was the path
Jesus took to victory.
Mark wanted to get that message across to
his readers: The way to glory is the way of the
cross. To be a Christian is to follow Jesus -- all
the way.
So, who is this Jesus Mark sets forth as the
center of our faith and our life? It is not easy
to answer that question in one column since
the Jesus of Mark is as complex as the Gospel
of Mark. But it is possible to draw a
preliminary sketch.
The Gospel of Mark opens with the words:
“Here begins the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the
Son of God.” The word, gospel,” means good
news, so another way of saying this is, “Here
begins the good news which is Jesus Christ,
the Son of God.”
For Mark, the Gospel is not merely a
matter of the good news about Jesus. For
Mark, Jesus is the good news.
Since the Gospel of Mark will have a great
deal to say about belief, this introduction is
supremely important. It points up the fact
that Christian faith has as its object a person,
not just a set of truths or an ethical code. To
be a Christian is to accept Jesus and to live in
an intimate interpersonal relationship with
him.
When we refer to the Jesus of Mark, we
indicate that the writer is presenting his own
carefully worked out view of Jesus. He paints
a portrait intended to answer the needs of his
readers in their actual living of the Christian
life.
For Mark, quite clearly Jesus is the Son of
God. He uses the title sparingly but in
strategic places: Right at the beginning, for
instance, and in the climactic scene on
Calvary. Here Mark has the Roman centurion
make the astounding act of faith that no one
in the Gospel has been able to make up to that
point, even those who witnessed his miracles:
“Clearly this man was the Son of God!”
And what did the centurion see? A
battered corpse, hardly calculated to inspire
belief in divinity. But there is deep irony here
and profound theological truth.
It is not the divinity of Jesus, however, but
his humanity which dominates Mark’s
portrait. Though Mark refers to Jesus as the
Son of God and Messiah, a favorite title for
Mark is the Son of Man. This title colors the
entire second half of the Gospel.
Right after Peter acknowledges, “You are
the Messiah!” Jesus enjoins silence on him.
Immediately we read: Jesus “began to teach
them that the Son of Man had to suffer
much.”
This is the first of three predictions of the
passion in this Gospel. The shadow of the
cross falls across the Gospel of Mark to such
an extent that it has even been called a passion
story with an introduction.
It is not only the second half of the Gospel
that strikes this somber note. As early as
Chapter 3 we find Mark talking about some
who plotted against Jesus, wondering “how
they might destroy him.”
The cross is in view from the beginning,
and Mark never lets us lose sight of it. For him
Jesus is the suffering Son of Man who “has
come not to be served but to serve -- to give his
life in ransom for the many.”
Letters To A Woman Known As “A”
BY DAVID GIBSON
Flannery O’Connor received a letter in
1955 from a woman now known to the public
simply, and anonymously, as A. She opened
the letter and was pleased. The young woman
basically grasped what Ms. O’Connor was
trying to accomplish as a writer.
Like many fiction writers, Ms. O’Connor
often felt her work was misunderstood. Some
people thought her short stories were weird.
So, in her response to A, she wrote:
“I am very pleased to have your letter.
Perhaps it is even more startling to me to find
someone who recognizes my work for what I
try to make it than it is for you to find a
God-conscious writer near at hand. The
distance is 87 miles, but I feel the spiritual
distance is shorter.”
Then the Georgia writer explained: “I
write the way I do because (not though) I am a
Catholic. This is a fact and nothing covers it
like the bald statement.”
Two weeks later, A and Ms. O’Connor
exchanged letters again. This time the writer
told her new friend: “One of the awful things
about writing when you are a Christian is that
for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation,
the present reality is the Incarnation, and
nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is,
nobody in your audience. My audience are the
people who think God is dead. At least these
are the people I am conscious of writing for.”
In her letters to A, Mrs. OConnor tells of
the important role played in her work by
belief and by the church. Some fellow
believers might not share all her religious
views. But when Ms. O’Connor’s letters were
published in 1979, quite a few must have been
surprised at how large a role she attributed to
belief.
Ms. O’Connor suffered from lupus
erythematosus, a disease long controlled for
her by medication. Many people recall her as a
talented Southern writer whose gifts were still
developing when she died at an early age.
Perhaps others remember one of her stories
from television.
She raised peacocks on the farm where she
and her mother lived - an avocation, she said,
that “requires everything of the peacock and
nothing of me.”
And she possessed a riotous sense of
humor, often revealed in letters to her literary
friends, the Robert Fitzgeralds. Sally
Fitzgerald edited Ms. O’Connor’s letters for
publication.
Often Ms. O’Connor regaled Mrs.
Fitzgerald with silly child-rearing advice, not
meant to be taken seriously. And once, after
being photographed for her publisher, Ms.
O’Connor wrote the Fitzgeralds:
“They were all bad. (The pictures). The
one I sent looked as if I had just bitten my
grandmother and this was one of my few
pleasures, but all the rest were worse.”
Ms. O’Connor was concerned at times
about money. But her loyalties were strong
and she was known to sell stories to the lowest
bidder.
In an early letter to A, Ms. O’Connor said
she had lots of time on her hands. She
apologized for writing again so promptly, not
wanting to force A into “a correspondence
that you don’t have time for or that will
become a burden. ”
When she first wrote to Ms. O’Connor, A
was not a Catholic. But when she joined the
church, Ms. O’Connor wrote: “All voluntary
baptisms are a miracle to me and stop my
mouth as much as if I had just seen Lazarus
walk out of the tomb.”
In a letter to A, the writer said she thought
it was probably no more difficult in her day to
see Christ as God and man “than it has always
been, even if today there seem to be more
reasons to doubt.”
Nor did Ms. O’Connor think scientific
discoveries could explain her faith away. On
the contrary, she told A: “I think that when I
know what the laws of the flesh and the
physical really are, then I will know what God
is...
“For me,” she wrote, “it is the virgin birth,
the Incarnation, the Resurrection which are
the true laws of the flesh and the physical.
Death, decay, destruction are the suspension
of these laws.”
AUTHOR FLANNERY O’CONNOR doesn’t think
scientific discoveries can explain away her faith. “I think that
when I know what the laws of the flesh and the physical are,
then I will know what God is,” she says. (NC Photo by Joseph
De Caro)
Discussion Points And Questions
1. Neil Parent talks about the life of faith as a journey, in which events
along the way can drive us to reflect on our belief. Think about this and
jot down some experiences, past or present, you have had which led you
to think about your faith and which ultimately caused your belief to
grow. Discuss your discoveries with one other person.
2. Parent suggests people sometimes find their religious faith has come
to exist side by side with their new faith in something else, perhaps in
technology or in politics. Do you agree with this analysis? Explain your
answer.
3. According to David Gibson, author Flannery O’Connor was a
woman of deep personal faith. What does she say about the relation
between her beliefs and her writing?
4. According to Father John Castelot, what sort of person is Jesus as
portrayed in the Gospel of Mark?
5. Why does F ather Castelot call the act of faith in Jesus made by the
centurian at the foot of the cross an astounding matter?