I just finished reading this comprehensive and timely essay in First Things by Michael Hanby, an associate professor of religion and philosophy of science at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America, very a propos on this day dedicated to same Pontiff.
Therein, the good professor sums up in a way I find remarkable the malaise of our modern condition, in society, but, more so, in the Church, a loss of the transcendent, of the eternal, the immutable, the real and, overall, the truth itself, with life reduced to a bland, technocratic and ultimately hellish mediocrity. All philosophy is a footnote to Plato, wrote Alfred North Whitehead, and, we may add, all theology is a footnote to Christ, and the eternal revelation He offers as the, not a, path to eternal life. I am the Way and the Truth is a truth that was always at the heart of Pope John Paul’s own teaching from his very first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, the Redeemer of Man, reiterating the core of our Christian vocation, whether consecrated, lay, ordained, married or single: To immerse ourselves in eternal truth, so that we may be saved, and lead all the souls we may to Christ, to Truth, to Life.