Without a yearning for truth cultivated and deeply embedded in our character, we can easily be swept up in current intellectual fashions. Novelty and innovation exercise a powerful appeal. The rupture with old ways and old thinking, the replacement of them with the new, is not just an intellectual act. A subtle inclination of rebellion is often taking place. The desire to be independent in one’s thinking and in one’s decisions has a seductive quality, especially for the young. But often what parades outwardly as independence in thought is simply an unreflective need to embrace the ruling opinions of the time.
When no critical faculty is exercised from a source deeper in the soul, it is easy to fall under the sway of views disdainful of older traditions. In the religious realm, this is often disastrous. The incapacity to perceive sacred questions in the truths of religion leads sometimes to a permanent loss of interest in religious faith. At some point a soul must have, on the contrary, a profound experience of the sacred, which by its nature is always an incomplete taste, provoking a desire to know more. This need is fundamental for religious faith.
The contemplative life in one sense is an ongoing intensification of this initial encounter with sacredness. The indestructible drawing power of the sacred, rooted in changeless truth, carries the contemplative life forever. Intellectual fashion will seem quite unsubstantial and flimsy against this far deeper attraction for the soul.
Father Donald Haggerty
Father Haggerty, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is currently serving at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
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