“The falcon cannot hear the falconer, things fall apart. The centre cannot hold”. William Butler Yeats wrote these lines in 1919 in “The Second Coming”, his celebrated poem prompted by the ravages of the First World War. Now, a century later, persistent echoes of his plaintive plea resound. Everywhere, it seems, one hears of the collapse of civilization. The question weighing on our minds is: will our descent into barbarism be a gradual slide on a slippery slope or a sudden fall from an undetected precipice?
This alarm sensed by students of history, indeed by those old enough to remember how things were just a few generations ago, is understandable. Consider the ills which affect our society: the decline of marriage and of the family, sexual promiscuity and perversion, the promotion of suicide and euthanasia, abortion, pervasive boredom and purposelessness, the confusion about sex and gender, out-of-wedlock births, etc. The virtues of solidarity, social responsibility, and moral awareness are replaced by radical individualism, radical autonomy and nihilism.
Sociologists suggest that a contributing cause of this collapse is the disappearance of religion in our lives. Perhaps so. More likely, though, our abandonment of religion is a consequence rather than a cause. In our post-Enlightenment minds our warped understanding about the role of reason in our lives has persuaded us that our intelligence is the supreme intelligence, that faith in something or someone other than ourselves is delusionary and that we alone determine our future. We fail to grasp Pope John Paul II’s reminder that we can only rise to our full potential on the twin wings of reason and faith.
But faith is not something we create. To believe this is hubris. A god or religion fabricated by us could not be God or valid. To worship in such a way would be idolatry. Rather, faith is belief in an exogenous reality we seek, a door which opens if we knock and admits us to an eternal and living Truth for which we, consciously or otherwise, long. Because we are created in the image of God we cannot be fulfilled with anything other than this Truth. Furthermore, as a result of the Incarnation the transcendent has infused the imminent. Our longing for fulfillment can now be satisfied. The portals of Truth have been opened to us. We have only to be guided to reach them.
The Lord’s Prayer provides some guidance. After honoring (‘hallowed be’) the Father and petitioning our daily fare and his forgiveness, we beseech him for his guidance (‘lead us’) and his protection (‘deliver us’). In other words, in this prayer we are imploring God – actually allowing God – to take the lead in the direction of our lives.
Whether cause or consequence, our society’s abandonment of religion is clearly linked to the corruption of our culture. However, the situation is not hopeless. Faith in God is not something we conjure up. It is a gift we have only seek to find, a gift God freely and unceasingly offers to all of us. There is cause for hope. Philanthropy is the handmaiden of this hope. Echoing the mysterious urgings of God’s Holy Spirit, it cures us of our radical autonomy and suicidal individualism and rescues us from the slippery slope and threatening precipice.
The Kingdom advances. We have only to open our ears and heed the falconer.