A Lack of Commonality
I was at Mass today, somewhat dressed up for today’s version of “dressed up,” business casual. About 50 others and I worshiped on the feast of Corpus Christi. I didn’t know it was the Feast of Corpus Christi until I got there. How could I know? I live in a world where it is a constant struggle just to carry out the most basic tenets of Christian Faith. Nothing going on in my life would have been able to alert me that it was the feast of Corpus Christi. What is worse, is that I don’t know that there could be anything I could have done aside from looking up and posting a church calendar in my room, which I now have done, to alert me to the Feast. What I am getting at is that living one’s daily life in the manner that I and many others do is a struggle of utmost difficulty. At the very core, it necessarily becomes a very lonely endeavor.
With all of this in mind, I began thinking in Mass about the extreme lack of commonality in our lives and I realized that that is the one void that gets to the center of most of my thinking. In the United States if you live a secular life, which most of us do in the sense that we do not realistically put God or our Faith in Him at the center of our lives, then the only commonality we all share is that we have nothing in common at all. At first this seems impossible to overcome. However, there remains Hope on a very basic and natural level for any Christian attempting, however poorly, to live their life as a Christian. That ray of Hope is the belief that all humans share a common dispossession towards God. If there is anything that we can work to build on, it must be this.
To most, having nothing in common may not seem like a big deal; for others it may even be something to be cheered. However, if we were to survey our country today, a serious commentator would be required to admit that on the major issues facing our country, and even, maybe especially so in our own individual squabbles, we seem to be constantly talking past each other. If we were to make this admission, then we would eventually come to the conclusion that a lack of commonality is a very big problem.
It seems to me that this lack of commonality must be at the center of any modern Christian project. For it to be at the center of a Christian project, Christians would be required to first actively recognize that it was the central problem of life in the United States. Only from some sort of common recognition of the problem could we then begin actively engaging in building on top of that recognition. Unlike those of old, our case would be much of a re-building, making it easier and yet more difficult. However, for us to even recognize the problem, we must again start speaking and acting as if a problem exists, meaning that we must challenge the lack of commonality in Christian terms if we are to allow that void to be filled with a natural Christian understanding of the world. This “challenging” must eventually take place on a communal level if it is to be any type of challenge to the culture at large. However, for there ever to be a community at all, there must first be individuals who have challenged the culture on whom that community can build. Ergo, although I began on a pessimistic premise, I end hopeful for a world that has a very base level of common understanding on which to build a culture worthy of our dignity.
