Seek First the Kingdom - The March of Hope - Chapter 2
God Created the Heavens and the Earth
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One of the most remarkable, warming, and contemplative chapters in the Bible is undoubtedly the first chapter of the book of Genesis. To me, this, along with the following three chapters, provide humanity with almost every answer to the philosophical, moral, sociological, and psychological dilemmas that besiege our souls and leave us in a state of quivering imprisonment under the guardianship of the most ruthless of dictators, that is, religious skepticism.
This chapter is freeing to the soul as long as one reads and contemplates it with almost any other philosophical predisposition than that which seems dominant in our modern culture. The first sentence alone should be enough to bring all the desperately goal-oriented masses' activity, commerce, and progress to a complete standstill. Yet, the twenty-four-hour noise, rudeness, and general vulgarity of our modern society cannot be silenced long enough, nor the electronic gadgets turned off long enough, to hear the quiet whisper of the Spirit of God proclaim:
“In the beginning God created heaven and earth.”[1]
This is the whisper heard around the world. It is the whisper that has echoed for centuries in the stories, words, and various traditions in the brotherhood of humanity; it is the whisper that has led men to fight Crusades on the one hand or to choose the freedom of Lady Poverty as St. Francis did on the other. This is the whisper that begins the story that saved the world. That is until we decided that we did not like this story nor the demands it imposed on us, until we decided we could make a better world of our own.
This is the terrible dilemma we face today; the despair of the religiously starved Gilgamesh has been replaced full circle by the depression of humanity's wholesale rejection of religion through modernism and rationalism. In the time between the ancient Gilgamesh and our modern pharmaceutically enhanced cultures, though, we have been given an answer, a point of view, I should say, that truly sets matters in order, into an appropriate and authentic order where God is first, and our comfort, progress, technology, and ambitions are relative and less important than God. This point of view brings about health and wholeness as far as it can be experienced here. It promises the hope of an indescribably glorious and perfected free society elsewhere for the rest of eternity!
I want to first discuss this point of view on The March of Hope. Our point of view is the eyeglass through which we peer into the night, as did king Gilgamesh; it is the foundation for our actions, words, and intellectual development. Our point of view leads us to decide whose footprints we will follow. And hope, that the life-giving inspiration we all desperately seek, begins not just with any point of view but with an authentic point of view.
But can one find an authentic point of view? Does such a thing exist? Who would dare claim to know it? And if you did know it, would it be proper to tell others? Is it more important to affirm others in their own subjective thinking to not offend them in any way, or is it more important to tell others how to save themselves from depression and spiritual imprisonment? The modern-day ruminating, circuitous mental prison that so often depresses us is the result of the terrible dictatorship of skepticism, and cultural and political correctness began as a spark in the Protestant Revolution. The later conflagration grew into a raging firestorm through the French Revolution and twentieth-century atheistic communism.
The Catholic Church is the authoritative Christian institution established in history by Christ. The Catholic Church is the authoritative voice of Christ on earth. Understanding its point of view is crucial to establishing our hope and direction in life. This last proposition may not be acceptable to the reader, but I am only pointing out the necessary logic of taking this next step by one who, like me, does accept the authority of the Church.
The understanding of a different worldview, that of the Roman Catholic Church, was the first movement for me beyond The Freedom Dance and through the great doors at the castle walls of Catholicism to which it led me. This understanding has opened the panorama of an immeasurably large and beautiful mystical universe, one that is ordered in artistic and mathematical beauty, one that is profoundly colorful and astonishing, but one that requires our cooperation to bring it to life in our smaller, material world. We must order ourselves according to God's law and revelation to bring this kingdom down from the very heavens. More than that, we must desire it and hope for it. This viewpoint is the one that led me forward on the March of Hope.
I will begin discussing this viewpoint of the March of Hope from the point in my life's journey when the seed of conversion planted in my soul in 1984 fell to the ground, died, and bore forth the fruit of life. This moment is that one described in The Freedom Dance when I stood before a large and beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary while attending a retreat in the Pocono Mountains. When I looked up at her, I was healed body and soul of a terrible condition. Some may call my state an ancestral curse. Others may blame the possession of demons themselves. But however one describes the condition, healing was the first step in changing my worldview.
The retreat was a six-day silent retreat whereby we passed our days on end while barely speaking a word to each other. It was a most spiritually rewarding time that allowed me to stop, be silent, and listen to God in my heart and the depths of my soul.
I remember attending the following session the day after my intimate and profoundly moving experience with the Virgin Mary. The retreat master brought to our attention a scripture passage that has now become my own personal battle cry, the motto on my imagined coat of arms, so to speak. That scripture is Mathew 6:33:
"Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God's saving justice, and all these other things will be given you as well."
How this majestic proclamation rang through my soul! It was as if Our Lord and Our Lady had written a personal prescription to heal my devastated heart, a heart that was broken into tiny pieces as the result of seeking everything other than God's kingdom first in my life. This verse rang in my heart and head throughout the retreat as my personal direction from the Virgin and as a follow-up to my healing and restoration to sanity and serenity.
"Seek first the Kingdom of God" was my new philosophy and driving force. It was the foundation for a new worldview. Just as I had been blessed to know immediately in my conversion in 1984 that Jesus was truly present in the Eucharist, that Mary was the Mother of God and to be my Queen to whom I devoted my life, and, eventually, that St. Thérèse of Lisieux was my spiritual sister, I knew immediately then, at the retreat, that my life would be put into order only by redirecting my priorities and all of my values in life toward the kingdom that Jesus Christ had established.
This kingdom is not of this earth, yet it encompasses this earth and animates it. This kingdom gives life to the world because it is the kingdom he established through whom all things were made. God had created heaven and earth with order, beauty, life, and health! I began to sense what the opening chapters of Genesis were trying to say to us. I was starting to see the marvelous connection between the opening proclamation of the Holy Spirit in Genesis chapter one with the mysteriously similar statement in the opening lines of the gospel of John. The Old and New Testaments dove-tailed into one simple but powerful story. God created heaven and earth; through his only Son, Jesus Christ, all of this came into being. We were created for order, virtue, and communion with God. Through the created Adam's free will, humanity sought its own way to the ruin of all. Yet, God restored us through the very Son through whom we were all created. We were created and redeemed by Love itself! And it is to Love's kingdom that I must surrender myself to be fully healed and full of hope. This was the path of the mighty saints who had walked before us over the centuries. These were the footsteps I must follow. The pathway through the mysterious land of Catholicism opened up, and I could see the enchanting kingdom far in the distance. How irrelevant did the bickering philosophers and atheistic materialism of our modern world seem at that point!
I left the retreat with the sure knowledge that the answer to life's most profound questions, the pathway to peace and happiness, and the journey of hope to the great eternity promised by God lay in the rejection of the world as seen through the lenses of our modern culture. Only by orienting my life to the values, philosophies, reasoning, culture, and spirit of this kingdom about which Jesus spoke would I find the restoration of my life here and the hope of the life hereafter.
My worldview was already changing. I was beginning to desire heaven.
[1] Genesis 1:1 (New Jerusalem)