Against The Grain

If man excludes himself from the temporal-eternal tension, he will be strangled by the senselessness that permeates everything and that forces itself upon him as the result of his life. Then he will fall into the confusion of an unenlightened existence, into whose twilight no illuminating sun can break through to him. He will find himself distracted by the multiplicity and the opposition of the various values to one another, if no divine order prioritizes his tastes, works, and affections. In the end, he will succumb to the barbarism of the most popular values and the most trivial material goods of the time. He will be possessed and hunted and driven, no longer a free man and no longer master. Through all of this, he is not merely offered certain basic experiences of existence that everyone must pass through, but is instead delivered over to them. He has fallen into the experience of limitation. He experiences himself, and the world, and all things as limitations, even though the colorful wings of his mind, of his yearnings, press beyond all limits. Left to his own devices, he cannot rise above these limitations. He falls prey to the impression that the world is futile and, what is worse, that human life is futile. At this point, he is in danger of remaining stuck in that experience of melancholy into which fate sends him again and again, because he no longer hears the intrinsic message of circumstances and the intrinsic song of events. The world readily becomes a place without comfort, to which it is hardly worthwhile to become accustomed, although he does not know any way out. Alternatively, all these experiences, which repeatedly offer opportunities for a view of the whole, can be rashly passed over and a cheap “Carpe diem! [Seize the day!]” raised as a colorful banner. The great deception begins, the time of noise and crowds, organized feeding-frenzies, and massive festivities. Until suddenly the earth quakes and the subterranean thunder -- which one wanted to drown out with screaming, because one failed to understand it -- breaks forth fully and mightily and fills the day with its call to judgment.

That is the path—of a people, of a generation, of an individual -- into the wasteland and void of a life without joy. Moreover, if people and things are permitted to remain in this condition, it will only get worse. An aversion to one another has seized hold of creation. The harmonic song of the spheres dissipates in an orgy of gore and of willful annihilation that creatures are beginning to perpetrate against all creation.

Only one thing will help, and that is to hear the call of John the Baptist.

-- Alfred Delp, priest and martyr. (1907-1945)