What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death.He has no intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics. Men are put into this world, he realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars. And, with Burke, he knows that "they will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Russell Kirk
In the paragraphs above, from A Program for Conservatives, Dr. Kirk addresses conservatives. However, I believe he also describes the calling of the Christocentric Life. His words remind us of our pilgrim status in this world of tears. We are not called to material success. We are called to obedience. We are called to love. We are called to love He who is Love Himself. A society where a large number of Christians know and live this calling will be transformed. The True, the Good, and the Beautiful will find their true place in our culture only when many more of us are obedient to Love.
O my God, I love Thee above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because Thou art infinitely worthy of love; I love also my neighbor as myself for the love of Thee. Amen
Inspiring! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Winston;
ReplyDeleteSince I've not read Dr. Kirk's entire lecture, I don't know what he thinks about the role of Christians to loving transform society from within. Reading this snippet alone could lead one to think he might advocate some kind of contemptus mundi ("flight from the world")
It's much more difficult to both remain in the world as leaven, and, through self-abandoning love that mimics and is empowered by Divine love, transform it. This is the vision of John Paul II in Christifideles Laici, as you know. He wrote, "in particular the lay faithful are called to restore to creation all its original value. In ordering creation to the authentic well-being of humanity in an activity governed by the life of grace, they share in the exercise of the power with which the Risen Christ draws all things to himself and subjects them along with himself to the Father, so that God might be everything to everyone (cf. 1 Cor 15:28; Jn 12:32)"
Yet it cannot be simply an activism devoid of contemplation and prayer. If that happens, then yes, what we produce on our own is merely mechanical - a sad, dead mockery of genuine transformation.
Pope Benedict put it beautifully in Spe Salvi, in a passage on St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the importance of prayer in upholding the world around us:
"Bernard explicitly states that not even the monastery can restore Paradise, but he maintains that, as a place of practical and spiritual “tilling the soil”, it must prepare the new Paradise. A wild plot of forest land is rendered fertile—and in the process, the trees of pride are felled, whatever weeds may be growing inside souls are pulled up, and the ground is thereby prepared so that bread for body and soul can flourish[13]. Are we not perhaps seeing once again, in the light of current history, that no positive world order can prosper where souls are overgrown?"
Imagine writing this in a post-war world, confronting the evil of the Soviets, and having so many observing, taking every word you write as a definition of conservatism. Kirk, nearly alone, sitting at his typewriter in an old Dutch barn, a block or so from his house.
ReplyDeleteWinston, I found out this week that Kirk wrote this as a part of a series of lectures at the University of Detroit.
ReplyDelete