“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” – Romans 12:2
I recently had the opportunity to take a group of new faculty to Fr. Hesburgh’s offices on the thirteenth floor of the library. Besides the usual historic mementos—handwritten notes from politicians, pictures with presidents, and souvenirs from travels (even in an SR-71!)—I was struck anew during this visit by the most obvious objects: the books. Despite Fr. Ted’s mixed legacy, one thing is surely admirable: he was a devoted priest who was grounded in reality. These books are windows into the reality Fr. Ted sought to understand; unlike Fr. Ted, even on this campus shaped by his legacy, I worry students are losing the ability to be squarely grounded in reality.
In his office, the visitor is surrounded on all sides by books thick and thin, new and old, academic and popular. But two things struck me anew during this visit. First, the sheer diversity of topics: Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, treatises on the role of the laity in the world, strategies for peace building, deliberations about civil rights, and insights into aeronautics. Not only are the topics diverse—but it is also clear that Fr. Ted voraciously read these books. Being an academic, I could not resist the temptation to peruse them. We find, like relics within them, handwritten correspondences with the authors; asterisks annotating points deemed important; underlining marking significant points; question marks perhaps indicating challenge and doubt.
Fr. Ted sought wisdom and understanding by reading books, which gave him insights about the “signs of his times.” Not only the books, but also his travels, time spent in nature, encounters with popes, paupers, and presidents were all encounters with the very real. They were encounters with flesh and blood, north and south, spring and fall, poverty and wealth, life and death, sin and grace.
On October 22, the Church celebrates the Feast of Pope St. John Paul II, who reminded us in his first encyclical that there is one ultimate reality: “The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history.” This radical claim is embodied in our own university mission statement. We take our inspiration from “Jesus Christ as the source of wisdom and from the conviction that in Him all things can be brought to their completion … [presupposing] that no genuine search for the truth in the human or the cosmic order is alien to the life of faith.”
The difficulty with these claims, though, is that they make demands of us. There is a truth; the truth is found in the Person of Christ, who reveals the human face of God. We must be obedient to and respond to the truth. By responding to His call, not merely out of external obedience but out of an inner reorientation of our hearts, we are called to love as He loves. But this love is demanding. And it is a messy kind of love—the kind demonstrated by the saints like St. Teresa of Calcutta, who carried the maggot-infested dying to a home filled with love; and Dorothy Day, who loved little by little each day amidst the wretchedness of the urban poor; St. John Henry Newman, who battled profoundly dark bouts of depression and spiritual darkness; and St. Carlo Acutis, who offered the suffering of his cancer for the pope and the Church.
Living and loving while grounded in reality—here in a dorm, in a classroom, among a student club, and amidst faculty members—means that reality can offend, hurt, challenge, and even make us feel uncomfortable. But what happens if we don’t ground ourselves in an awareness of reality, of Christ in our midst? We will descend into the chaos that is evident in our society; the use of violence, force, and power. The imposing of my will, my truth, my reality upon you. Political assassinations, protracted wars on global levels; on local levels, the cancellation of speakers who are deemed offensive, the “unfriending” of people on social media with whom one disagrees, and all the familiar manifestations of a culture deeply wounded and broken.
If we shirk the hard task of being grounded in reality—encountering God’s love and loving the other for his own sake, pursuing truth together—we will further descend into the imaginary world of social media echo chambers, AI-generated deep fakes (including, now, videos), cursory and shallow curiosity encouraged by a constant access to and flow of information. Turning to these modes of existence (according to my students, sometimes for eight hours a day!)—as either distractions from the hard work of dialogue, or comfortable escapes into the company of those “like us,” or relaxing diversions from the thousand pinpricks and difficulties of each day—cements us further in a world that is of our own making, and not given to us.
To live in reality is to encounter Christ and, in Him, to find one another—through disagreement, dialogue, discourse—and by means of such attentive encounter to be led more deeply into wonder and awe: wonder and awe that I am standing in front of another immortal being; wonder and awe that this being can communicate God to me; wonder and awe that God has placed Him and me in this world together; wonder and awe that there even is a world to begin with. What a gift!
The inability to recognize the gift results in a hyper-focus on myself and my world I have created. Our university will be a training ground for highly paid utilitarian technocrats, rather than a place of encounter, where our study, teaching, research, and service embodies and sends forth a community in service to the truth—to Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, and to the real world God has made.
Reading books, genuinely encountering others, being grounded in the world-as-it-is (with all its joys and sorrows), will enable us to genuinely work for a culture as-it-should be, but this task requires that we should be demanding of ourselves, even when others are not being demanding of us. TikTok, Sora, Instagram, Snapchat and all the like will not demand anything of us, except all that really matters—our attention and our ability to live in reality. Taking time simply to go outside on a walk, to reflect, to pray, or to stop and talk to a fellow student or professor (put the phone down!) leads us beyond ourselves to awe and wonder about the uniqueness of every individual, and perhaps even to seeing them as a gift. Awe can help us to grow in sincerity, to show gratitude, and to admit of our need for help. Wonder can inculcate a generous spirit within us that turns our hearts toward others.
In this month dedicated to the Rosary, we would all do well to turn once again to Notre Dame, Our Lady, who was grounded in the ground of all reality. He Whom the world could not contain but Who contained the world chose to take up a home in her womb. This reality led her to respond in wonder and awe: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has looked with favor on His lowly servant.” That is the reality by which we should live.
John Sikorski is a founding editor of the Rover, a moral theologian, and an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Business Ethics and Society Program.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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