Newspaper Page Text
Supplement To The Georgia Bulletin, March 28,1985
Life. Worth
OK, how
living at 45?
about 60?
By Katharine Bird
NC News Service
At 45 and again at 60, Jesuit
Father Walter Burghardt asked
himself, “Is my life worth living?”
Both times, and especially when
he was 60, he answered “with a
resounding and literal By God,
yes!’”
I interviewed this well-known
educator at Georgetown Universi
ty in Washington, D.C., where he
is theologian in residence. Having
seen his book “Seasons That
Laugh or Weep” (Paulist, 1983)
where the comment above ap
peared, I wanted to ask him some
questions about how Christians
fine-tune their outlook on a life in
which expectations of the future,
memories of the past and a com
plicated life in the present mo
ment sometimes seem to compete
for attention.
□ □ □
The history of the Christian
community reveals “we are a
pilgrim people, moving like light
ning it fits and starts, advances and
regressions,” Father Burghardt
said in our conversation.
He added: “Faith gives a vision,
a way of looking at reality, how I
get there, where I am going.”
For this theologian, a
knowledge of history — our per
sonal history as individuals and
our history as a Christian com
munity — is crucial in developing
a perspective on life.
“If we are to find our way
through our future, we must find
our way through our past,” he
writes in his book.
□ □ □
For the Christian “the most
demanding type of memory is
memory of the passion, death and"
resurrection of Jesus Christ,” the
Jesuit says. It is in connecting the
human story with the story of the
suffering Jesus that Christians
learn how to transform the events
of their lives into an opportunity
to explore God’s works among
them.
This suggests that growth can
be hard.
Essential to growth as Christians
is learning how to let go, Father
Burghardt observes: “Time and
again, from womb to tomb, you
have to let go. And to let go is to
die a little; it’s painful.”
But, he continues, for the
journey to go forward, you have
to “let go of the level of life
where you are now, so as to live
more fully.”
Fine-tuning one’s outlook as a
Christian almost inevitably in
volves adapting to change — in
oneself, in others, in the cir
cumstances of one’s life. Flannery
O’Connor, the Catholic novelist
and short-story writer, represents
for Father Burghardt what this can
involve.
At age 25 Ms. O’Connor
discovered she had incurable
lupus erythematosus; she died at
39-in 1964. In his book, he tells
how much he admires her realism
and her ability to adjust to her
drastically altered situation.
He writes: “She described her
human and Christian struggle as
‘not struggle to submit but a strug
gle to accept and with passion. I
mean, possibly, with joy.’”
Despite the long nights of suf
fering she experienced — suffering
that meant she seldom was able to
write more than three hours a day
— her concern was for others,
not for herself.
Father Burghardt points out that
Ms. O’Connor was able to write
to a “specially dear, troubled,
questing friend: ‘You will have
found Christ when you are con
cerned with other people’s suffer
ings and not your own.’”
Father Burghardt adds: “I wish I
had known her. There was so
much Christ-life in that frail frame
— grace on crutches. The end of
her life simply capped all that had
gone before.”
The Jesuit indicated that in the
course of his long life he’s had to
adjust to many changes. “To the
challenge of change I could hardly
respond ‘no, thank you,”’ he says.
At one point, the challenge for
him was how “to react to a
changing world, a changing
A supplement to Catholic newspapers,
published with grant assistance from Cath
olic Church Extension Society, by the Na
tional Catholic News Service, 1312 Massa
chusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C.
20005. All contents copyright ® 1985 by
NC News Service.
30
church, a changing
priesthood...My problem was how
to harmonize past and present,
tradition and reform.”
He comments that for him the
answer was to adapt creatively to
new challenges, to find ways to
“continue to discover God, sense
his presence” in the people and
circumstances of his life.
And a sense of humor helped:
Gradually “you come to see
yourself in perspective as you
really are,” Father Burghardt says,
“a creature wonderfully yet fear
fully made, a bundle of paradoxes
and contradictions. In brief, you
can laugh at yourself and you put
your trust in Another.”
(Ms. Bird is associate editor of
Faith Today.)
/ With the passage of time comes the
As, / inevitable challenge of change, says Jesuit
Father Walter Burghardt. In an interview with
/Katharine Bird, the theologian suggests that
/ adapting to change means growth. And it means
letting go.
□ Faith Toda