During World War II, Pius XIII said that postwar humanity would be more changed than the map of postwar Europe. It is this postwar frustrated human or the modern soul, who interests us in this volume.
Such a person is, as the Holy Father predicted, unlike the people of earlier periods. For one thing, the modern soul no longer looks to find God in nature. In other generations, man, gazing out on the vastness of creation, the beauty of the skies, and the order of the planets, deduced the power, the beauty, and the wisdom of the God Who created and sustained that world. But modern man, unfortunately, is cut off from that approach by several obstacles.
He is impressed less with the order of nature than he is with the disorder of his own mind, which has become his main preoccupation; atomic [warfare] has destroyed his awe of a nature that can now manipulated so as to destroy other people or even to commit cosmic suicide; and, finally, the science of nature is too impersonal for this self-centered age. The old approach not only makes a man a mere spectator of reality, instead of its creator, but also demands that the personality of the seeker after truth shall not intrude itself in investigation. But it is the human personality, not nature, that really interests and troubles people today.
This change in our times does not mean that the modern soul has given up the search for God, but only that is has abandoned the more rational - and even more normal - way of finding Him. Not the order in the cosmos, but the disorder in themselves; not the visible things of the world, but the invisible frustrations, complexes, and anxieties of their own personality - these are modern humanity's starting point when people turn questioningly toward religion. In happier days, philosophers discussed the problem of man; now they discuss man as a problem.
Through his scepticism the modern man is thrown back upon himself; his energies flow toward their source and wash to the surface those psychic contents that are at all times there, but lie hidden in the silt as long as the stream flows smoothly in its course. How totally different did the world appear to medieval man! For him, the earth was eternally fixed and at rest in the center of the universe, encircled by the course of a sun that solicitously bestowed its warmth.
Men were all children of God under the loving care of the Most High, who prepared them for eternal blessedness; and all knew exactly what they should do and how they should conduct themselves in order to rise from a corruptible world to an incorruptible and joyous existence. Such a life no longer seems real to us, even in our dreams. Natural science has long ago torn this lovely veil to shreds. That age lies as far behind as childhood, when one's own father was unquestionably the handsomest and strongest man on earth.
Formerly, humanity lived in a three..............
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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