The Absurdity Of Reality
Imagine: we are gathered with our family and friends, waiting for a report on a very serious, life-changing operation for a dear friend. Finally, someone brings the good news that the wait is over. The operation was enormously successful, and we can celebrate! But instead of expressing our excitement, joy and gratitude, the whole crowd is aloof and unimpressed. Suddenly, we lose interest and return to our daily tasks. How anticlimactic. How absurd! How ungrateful!
And it’s even more strange that I actually just described a common experience at Mass – isn’t it?
God becoming man and God dying for us are the two most important events in all of existence. God’s choices radically transform our lives, but many of us make ourselves impervious to this transformation. Transformation requires vulnerability, and vulnerability requires an openness to experience and emotion. In this post-Enlightenment era, however, we have drained all value from experience and emotion. We only esteem reason, and God’s unreasonable actions are too difficult for us to comprehend. We can’t understand his actions, so they are too insane for us to be truly affected by them.
Of course, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) offers stellar insights on page 262 of “Introduction to Christianity:” “The purely calculating mind will always find it absurd that for man God himself should be expended. Only the lover can understand the folly of a love to which prodigality is a law and excess alone is sufficient.” The Catholic faith is based on our encounter with God and his excessive, insane love. Our lives will never be logical, and salvation history is even more ridiculous. We would never deem the cross “rational.” But our evaluations of these truths don’t negate their significance. God’s crazy love will exist regardless of our stamp of approval.
Mass is the celebration of these life-changing realities. It is meant to be an amazing expression of our joy and gratitude; but unfortunately, it has been painted as an obligation rather than a gift. Our exultant response to God’s love should be evident in the way we participate. But how often does our recitation of the responsorial psalm turn into drudgery or a convenient time to mentally consult our to-do lists?
In the past few weeks, I have repeatedly encountered the beauty of vulnerability. One of my professors teared up in class when reading passages from Augustine’s Confessions; several friends have admitted to crying in a particularly moving theology class of theirs; and during Mass one day, the stranger next to me was similarly overcome by emotion. I wondered what it was they had in common. Why was it that they could be so vulnerable, assured, and fully alive? I realized that they were each overwhelmed not by comprehension, but by their recognition and experience of God’s absurd, excessive love.
Collectively, we are often unenthused at Mass. Each of our lives comes and goes in a matter of less than a century; yet when we are confronted by the God of the universe and his dedication to us, we are nonplussed. We focus our lives on reason, but we must recognize that rational evaluations are only part of our existence. We must give credence to experience and emotion, as well. We must be unashamed to be moved to tears because the reality of our existence is baffling. It would be a true shame to flounder through life without grounding ourselves in God’s ineffable love. Let us embrace our full humanity. Let us sing loudly and cry freely. Let us experience the love of God.
