Journey and Destination

Catholicism is at once a journey and a destination. Catholicism is Christianity, the Good News, and the Good News is Christ himself. We know the familiar adage, “It’s not the man; it’s the message.” This is true, except when the Message is the Man. In the case of Christianity, we are called to point the way to the Man who is the Message: Jesus Christ. “Each individual layman must stand before the world as a witness to the resurrection and life of the Lord Jesus and a symbol of the living God” (Lumen Gentium 38).

If Catholicism is Christianity, and Christianity Christ Himself, then in a sense Catholicism is a destination. Yet it is also a means by which we achieve the eternal union with Christ for which we are ultimately destined. Since we are ultimately destined for an even greater intimacy with Jesus, one not obscured by the accidents of bread and wine, the way is open for one who is Catholic to continue ever seeking in this life a greater sense of the truth who is Jesus.

The way is open for Catholics, in essence, to seek and to discern the presence of Christ (and or absence) in different dimensions of human existence: in art, in media, in struggles, in relationship, in service, in thought, and in love. Catholic thought offers itself as a lens through which to see the world, and one finds that the world comes alive when viewed in such a way.

That, at any rate, has been my experience. The Catholic faith for me has always been an intellectual journey, a search for that which I have in a sense already found but can always know better and more intimately. In the same way that you can find a person and know that you love the person and desire to be with the person always to the end of your days, but you can always know something more about the person, so it is with the Catholic faith. Indeed the Catholic faith itself is summed up in a person, the Son of Man. What kind of man was he? How did he react to things going on in the world that surrounded him?

This is something every Catholic and every Christian, indeed every thinking person, has been given the opportunity to seek. In fact, beyond an opportunity, it is indeed our vocation, our calling in life, to seek him with all our minds, and, as we grow in knowledge of him, ultimately to love him more and more.

Therefore, in hopes of loving him more and more, we Catholic thinkers, and we pray our readers, will seek and discern the presence (and or absence) of Christ in all the different dimensions of human existence. We seek not to define doctrines, but to contribute ideas which have been formed by doctrines which already exist and enlighten man’s heart. These ideas will always be open to development and or correction. It is our feeble attempt to answer the central vocation of each Christian, “to seek Him, to know Him, to love Him with all his strength” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1). May this journey be fun and fruitful.