SMU Catholic Weekly Blogs

More on the Three Key Questions to Finding Our Life’s Meaning

(Adapted from material published by the Intersections Project at Boston College)

Last Week in this space, we covered three basic, but “big” questions that form the basic framework of discovering our unique purpose in life. These three basic questions are (last week’s full text can be found on our new & improved website: www.smucatholic.org):

1. What gives you joy?
2. Are you good at these things?
3. Does anybody need you to do these things?


Having thought about these three questions, consider the following:
• These questions tend to lead us to examine our self-awareness and our relationships with other people. But God is also part of the picture. We need to look at what God might be saying to us. What is happening in those quiet times when we seek meaning and guidance beyond our friends, family, and teachers—in prayer or listening to music that moves us deeply, in those encounters with mystery that catch us and make us stop in wonder, and in the challenging moments when we encounter death or terror or failure? Where do we turn to find support and meaning? How is God moving us towards life decisions? 


• Perhaps we now find ourselves entertaining several life choices. That would not be surprising at all. Vocational discernment is an evolving process, a journey. Our goals may change several times as we try out some choices and learn more about the match between our passions and the world’s needs. But do you feel that you are growing in possession of the kind of knowledge that will enable you eventually to narrow down these choices in the future or to figure out how to combine them?

• Do any of the ideals and directions you have identified require you to change course? Are there previous choices that you don’t want to pursue anymore? Are there new choices that lead in more promising directions?

• What resources at SMU (friends, groups, mentors, academic courses, service programs, retreats, etc.) do you need to make your new insights work in the months ahead?

• And, especially, are you getting better at noticing what’s going on in your life, reflecting about the things you notice, and turning these reflections into decisions?

Cyprian of Carthage

Cyprian of Carthage (200-258CE) was another North African Catholic luminary. As a bishop he struggled to keep the church united during state-sponsored persecutions, the election of an antipope, and debates over the sacraments. In one epistle to a colleague named Fidus Cyprian argued that infants should be baptized soon after birth, “Since in the kiss of an infant every one of us ought…to consider the still recent hands of God themselves, which in some sort we are kissing, in the man lately formed and freshly born.”

My Les Misérables

For some reason, when I was an undergraduate I did not read Victor Hugo’s classic novel (1862), Les Misérables, in any of my numerous courses in literature, and to this date I haven’t read it. That is a shortcoming that I have to correct.

On the plus side, I have been generally aware that the musical based upon the novel was a smashing Broadway hit for 16 years until closing in 2003.  The three most popular musicals of all time are, in order, The Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Les Misérables. After an absence of three years, Les Misérables is back on Broadway for a six month run.

Guilty feelings probably drove me to finally see it recently. For a brief summary, it is set in mid-19th century of French society and examines the nature of good, evil and justice. Jean Valjean, the main character, is an ex-convict (convicted of stealing food for his family) and is known in prison only as number “24601.” Upon his release after 18 years of confinement, Valjean becomes homeless until rescued by the benevolent Bishop Myriel. However, Valjean steals silverware from the bishop and is caught by Inspector Javert.

Bishop Myriel rescues Valjean for the second time, telling the inspector that he gave the silverware to Valjean. In fact, the bishop gives him more and pleads only that Valjean become an honest man.

Valjean goes off to build a distinguished career under an assumed name. Inspector Javert is convinced that Valjean is a criminal at heart, pursues him for 16 years. What happens next, I won’t tell here.

However, I suggest if you don’t read the novel or see the musical you will miss an insight on an important human condition. Telling you this is, you see, part of my own redemption.

Some books and musicals become classics because they tell a story for all time. That is true about the Bible, or most books of it (some are more insightful than others I would honestly have to say).

As I felt guilty about not having read Victor Hugo’s novel, I also had similar feelings about the Bible until forcing myself to read it (by taking courses). I could not imagine myself living my entire life and never having read the Bible or most of it, the most popular books ever.

Sometimes a little guilt can be good for you, particularly if it comes as part of understanding that being an educated person requires being well-read in the best literature ever written.

Three Key Questions to the Meaning of Life

(adapted from material published by Boston College's Intersection Project)

Next time you're wondering about why the heck God created you in the first place, try asking yourself these three simple questions? WARNING: the questions may be simple, but the answers may a take lifetime to find.

1. What gives you joy?
We are talking about joy, not happiness. Feeling happy often depends on external things, your physical well being, the weather, whether you had a good night’s sleep or a good meal. Joy comes from within and has to do with a deep and abiding sense of the rightness, the goodness, the fruitfulness of what you do with your life. It results from the harmony between your ambitions and your achievements. It is a gift that comes from acceptance and patience, from being at peace with the reality that surrounds you, even when that reality calls for change or when it challenges you. 
Joy comes from a quest that challenges you to grow, to learn more, to become more, to give more. Maybe you are good at several things. Which choices will not only use your talents but also stretch them?

2. Are you good at these things?
Do you have the talents to pursue the things that you are passionate about? Maybe it’s clear to you that you do. But maybe you don’t even recognize the talents that you have. Or maybe you do know some of the things you are good at but you don’t think they’re important. You don’t see them as real strengths. 

Unlike the question about what gives you joy, this question can’t be answered by you alone. Your talents and skills have been nourished by significant people in your life and by communities you have belonged to, both before you came to SMU and since. These relationships constitute a dialogue, a conversation about yourself with people who value you enough to challenge and support you. We seem to need these people and these communities to point out our talents to us, to give us a chance to try out our skills, and to confirm them as strengths when we succeed and even to tell us that we don’t have certain talents when we fail.

3. Does anybody need you to do these things?
The novelist and theologian Frederick Buechner describes vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” We don’t live for ourselves alone. Only in relationships—and especially when we give ourselves in love to other people, to communities, and to significant ideals—do we really discover the full meaning of our lives. But to belong is also to take responsibility for and to contribute to the group that has nurtured your ability to share yourself, your talents, and your time to help other men and women. This can mean sacrifice, putting aside your immediate convenience or interests to be there for someone who needs you. 
So a crucial third task is to define the horizons that give meaning to your life. Who are the people, what are the ideals, where are the needs that invite you to give yourself to them? Have you begun to identify these in your own life? Do they begin to suggest directions for your future?

San Ysidro Labrador

The earth represents creation, and creation is good. Saint Ysidro the Worker was a farmhand on a large estate in colonial New Mexico, where agriculture and animal husbandry dominated the economy. His employer disapproved of the time Ysidro spent praying rather than working, and one day when the estate owner confronted Ysidro he was shocked to see the saint on his knees praying while an angel drove Ysidro’s plow guiding a team of oxen.

What is the significance of Advent?

It is not too early to think about Advent --- the time on our liturgical calendar when the color vestments are violet and we symbolically know that Christmas is not far away.

Advent is a Latin expression "ad-venio" that means "to come to." Advent comes this year on Dec. 3. The Advent season is only 21 days. According to church practice since 1907, Advent is a period beginning with the Sunday nearest to the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle (Nov. 30) and embracing four Sundays. The first Sunday may be as early as Nov. 27, and then Advent has twenty-eight days, or as late as Dec. 3, giving the season only 21 days.

With Advent a new ecclesiastical year begins in the Western churches. During this time the faithful are urged to prepare themselves worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord's coming into the world as the incarnate God of love, thus to make their souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer coming in Holy Communion and through grace, and thereby to make themselves ready for His final coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world.

It cannot be determined with any degree of certainty when the celebration of Advent was first introduced into the church. The preparation for the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord (Christmas) was not held before the feast itself existed, and researchers find no evidence before the end of the fourth century, when, according to Duchesne [Christian Worship (London, 1904), 260], Christmas was celebrated throughout the whole church, by some on Dec. 25, by others on Jan. 6.

We read in the Acts of a synod held at Saragossa in 380, whose fourth canon prescribes that from the Dec. 17 to the feast of the Epiphany (Jan. 6) no one should be permitted to absent himself from church. We have two homilies of St. Maximus, Bishop of Turin (415-466), entitled "In Adventu Domini," but he makes no reference to a special time.

By the fifth century a "preparation" period was set aside for Christmas. By the sixth century "Advent" was widely celebrated in Spain. By the eighth century, "Advent" was celebrated by most Christians as a period of fast and abstinence. By the Middle Ages, Advent becomes more or less the liturgical celebration that we have today.

Dupe The Deacon is written by Chaplin Deacon Bronson. Email questions to ccm@smu.edu

I Am How I Drive

Ever get asked the question Who are you when no one is looking? That’s one of those profound, cut-to-the chase kinds of questions intended to get us to think about how we live our lives and whether we are who we perceive ourselves to be. It works well to stimulate deep thoughts about the moral life, but I think it has its shortcomings as a practical tool for measuring our life as followers of Christ. We need a question that cuts to the heart of what it means to be a Christian: loving God and loving others.

Try this question instead: Who are you when you are driving?

Now that’s a question that makes me squirm. If you’re anything like me or better yet, drive anything like me, you know what I mean. When I am on the road, I own the road. Anyone else is in the way. When I was in college I had collected so many speeding tickets on my record that I got turned down for a job as a pizza delivery guy. The first time I ever got a ticket, I got three (two for stop signs and one for speeding)! The judge made me do 10 hours of community service at the zoo. I was a terror on the road. Needless to say, three kids, a mini-van and a lovely but vocal wife later, I have slowed down a bit.

But Who am I when I’m driving? still works as a good question for measuring my life as a Christian. How can I claim to be a person following Christ’s mission of peace and justice for all when I am busy yelling at slow drivers in the passing lane and glaring at them as I blow past them. How can I, in good conscience, preach about the inherent dignity of all human life, when I question the very worth of the guy who has the nerve to pull out into the lane in front of me. How can I call others to serve one another when I can’t be bothered to let someone in during the slow crawl of rush hour traffic?

Getting behind the wheel doesn’t give me an excuse to leave behind my well-rehearsed Christian values. In fact, it might be the ultimate test. When we’re alone in our rolling cocoon, music blaring, cut off from the world around us, how do we act? How do we treat the strangers we meet on the drive home or to school? Who are you when no one is in the passengers' seat? could give new meaning to the old bumper sticker: “”Honk if you love Jesus.” Honk. Honk.

God on-the-Go

“I’m sooo busy!” That sums up the common complaint of many of us this time of year. No time to workout, no time to hangout, and no time for prayer. If that’s the case, here are a few websites that can help squeeze some Jesus into our life next time we have a few precious minutes to spare.

pray-as-you-go.org –The Jesuits in Great Britain are in on the podcast craze with a daily 12 minute mini-prayer service for your walk across campus. Each prayer session offers some meditative music, a reading from scripture and some questions to guide you as you pray. It’s not 12 minutes of anyone talking at you about Jesus, but rather a guide for your own prayer – like a prayer coach in your earbuds. I stumbled across this right after I got my iPod this summer and have been downloading it ever since. You can get it straight form the iTunes store or go to the website. Either way, once you get hooked, you’ll have no excuse not to build in 12 minutes each day for quiet prayer.

sacredspace.ie – Twenty million visitors have found this site to be a valuable stop each day. The Irish Jesuits have there own daily prayer that takes only 10 minutes. The format is simple and easy to follow. A series of screens lead you through five spiritual themes to contemplate in your daily life. Each helps you focus your thoughts on God and how God is present in your life and in the world. The site also provides additional guides and inspiration for those with more time to go deeper.

www.bustedhalo.com/faith_guides/online.htm - Sometimes we might just need a refresher on how to pray. Busted Halo has some great “online guides” including one on prayer. It addresses how to pray with traditional church prayers, with the Bible and even with your whole body. It also lists links to other great sites for further exploration and prayer practices.

St. Vincent de Paul

Catholic health-care institutions serve almost 80 million patients a year. Catholic hospitals comprise more than 10 percent of all US hospitals, treating about 15 percent of all US hospital admissions. Living in France during the seventeenth century, St. Vincent de Paul believed that hospital care was a vital ministry encompassing key tenants of the Catholic faith. He relied on his connections with the aristocracy to establish hospitals, orphanages, and charities. Today the St. Vincent de Paul Society is an international charity serving the globe.

How Is Jesus Relevant To Our Lives?

Oh. The answer is a dissertation and I have so little space. It is not usually good to start out with the negatives, but I need to quickly identify the conditions in which we find Jesus is not relevant.

That is, if we see him only as a historical figure 2,000 years ago. If we think that humanity today is somehow fundamentally different from humanity in ancient Palestine. And, if the "I" in us believes it is in complete control. It seems to me that we have the same basic needs today to understand our existence, how it relates with others and all creation, and what sets us apart as a people who have a destiny as opposed to a fate.

Fate is what happens to us, good and bad, that comes along in the journey of life. Destiny is how we order our lives so that no matter what happens to us we end up, as St. Paul says, "Having run the good race and come to the finish line." 

What Jesus did in gathering his disciples was to form a group that pondered what are the important things in life and how a people could attain them by working together. It is not any different today when a group in Catholic campus ministry gets together and asks questions: What does it means to have faith, what is faith comprised of and how do we identify the needs of our present time among all the people?

We teach in baptism classes that we do not reach the end of life’s race singularly. St. Paul did not reach it singularly. All his letters point to working in community. He came to the finish line with the brothers and sisters of the early church. Others took up the baton after him.

Jesus is relevant today when we emulate the pattern of discipleship and servant leadership, identify conditions today that impact humanity adversely and try to do something about them. In this effort we should seek truth (knowledge) and justice.

We should care for the needs of others, show compassion for the poor and suffering, realize that the "I" in us is more concerned about itself and, consequently needs a little reminding that everyone is in the journey of life together. If we participate in our faith community, we can see the potential destiny of all humans to reach a divine relationship with Jesus. That makes Jesus very relevant.