“Awokening” or “Awakening”

Was there ever a time when there was no time? To contemplate this oxymoron – addressed by St. Augustine in his City of God – is to bring to mind our belief that in some mysterious way all of us are in God’s hands. Perhaps in our own time we should meditate on this more deeply.

“Can the West Still Lead?” is the title of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.  Its geopolitical implications aside, the article invites reflection on the foundations of what was once called “Western Civilization”, that millennia old coalescence of Jerusalem’s monotheism, Athens’ philosophy and Rome’s law. Certainly, abiding elements of this heritage have been our beliefs that we are created in God’ image, that we are collaborators in the advance of his Kingdom, and that we are to obey his commandments. These beliefs constitute the ‘cult’ in the culture that has formed and sustained our way of life from Pentecost to the present.

Today, however, one reads about cancelling culture. It is intriguing to consider that the first culture to be cancelled was that prelapsarian world in the Garden of Eden, a culture which was lost when Eve and her hapless mate accepted the insidious proposition that they were like God.  Much like the seductive words of the serpent the rallying cries of the cancel culture movement play on our false pride. Their appeal is facilitated by the growing secularization of our society and the spreading nihilism and of what Pope Benedict describes as the ‘dictatorship of relativism’.  One has the impression that the foot soldiers in the cancel culture campaign have appropriated as a self-designation the term ‘woke’, a term which implies the desire, indeed the demand, to purge our heritage of its ‘pre-conceived’ credos and to replace them with new ones or, worse, with none.

The Biblical injunction “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” is one we, the heirs of western civilization, would do well to ponder anew. Fear in this sense is not a response of terror but one of reverence inspired by awe. Since the Great Awakening in the 1730s our nation has experienced several such phenomenal periods where we were aroused from our spiritual lethargy and reminded of our dependence as a nation on Providence. Maybe a new awakening awaits.

It is easy to lose hope. We are beset by moral decay. Large segments of our society have apostacized.  Materialism is deified. Sacrilegious deeds which only a short while ago would have appalled the mainstream conscience now pass as standard fare. What will become of us? Will western civilization become so unmoored from its foundations that it collapses?  Are we building our house on sand?

Do we dare hope to experience the ‘New Springtime” St. Pope John Paul II predicted? Made in the image of God each of us, consciously or not, longs for the transcendent. It is our shared nature to aspire to the true, the good and the beautiful. Will we be like the post-exilic Israelites in the Book of Ezra who ‘stirred by the Spirit’ restored Jerusalem? Will we believers of all persuasions, Christian and otherwise, be stirred by the Holy Spirit and regain our own teleological bearings. Will the words of the Second Vatican Council’s Guadium et Spes (10)  begin to bear fruit: “The Church believes that Christ, who died and was raised for the sake of all, can show man the way and strengthen him through the Spirit in order to be worthy of his destiny”? Will we be worthy of our destiny? Will the Holy Spirit show us how?

“Awokening” will give way to “Awakening’ and the Kingdom will advance.