February 16, 2012
What is life? It is a mystery. The famous Philosopher Gabriel Marcel would define mystery as that thing which I am part of. Life is definitely part of me. At times it thrills, at times it satisfies, at times it showcases the greatest of my gifts while at some other times it even pins me down or hangs me upon my weaknesses. Life is that which ushers itself with a cry and takes its leave with a moan. All this gives life its meaning.
Life is popularly associated with movement, for that which does not move is suspected as though dead. Science also upholds the layman’s notion of life as activity. Bishop Fulton Sheen would go one step further in defining life as an imminent activity. The lowest forms of beings are minerals and chemicals formed deep inside the earth. Needless to say they that are part of the mineral kingdom, belong to the non-living. To these activity is supplied from outside. For living things activity is supplied from within. A plant grows from within. It has the power of generation, it can grow mysteriously by itself and it can nourish itself. But a plant is made to remain fixed in one place. The greater the imminent activity, the greater the life. An animal has a higher life than a plant, the beast a fuller life than the grass it eats, so the bird than the pollen it gathers. Therefore animals have a double imminent activity, that of movement and the other of sense perception. But animals are bound to their instincts.
Moving one step higher in the hierarchy of all created things is the creation of human beings. Human beings have a higher imminence of thinking and willing. What makes human life special is the capacity for knowledge and for love. A thought in the mind of a human being is equally spiritual as is that activity of an animal towards generating its kind. The Psalmist has wonderfully said that life consists in knowledge. Others are doomed to sameness; humans on the other hand are gifted with creativity.
Above all things, we have the capacity to commune with the Ultimate that is good, true and beautiful. A stone will fall with the law of gravity, an animal will be a slave to his instincts where as a human being has got a free choice to make, to do or not to do all that lies in front of it. This choice comes from within. We are co-creators. We have the right to make anything as our food, the power to harness the waterfall, to even treat nature as we like. But how can we become perfect? Neither minerals, nor plants or animals or even human beings can be looked up to as models of perfection. Perfect life is that which is free and independent of everything else. That is what I would call God.
Life is God’s greatest gift to us and what we do out of it is our gift, given back to God. The glory of God is man and woman, fully human and fully alive, happy and holy. Life is full of experiences and the only thing that we have to do is to pursue these experiences awaiting us. That is the imminence. Don’t we find so much meaning? Yes, Life is wonderful and worth living.