An address to seminarians: "be holy apostles".

Sherlock Holmes and his able companion, Watson, were camping one night. About 3 o'clock in the morning, Holmes wakened his partner and commanded him to look up and tell him what he deduced. Watson gazed at the starry skies and began to expatiate on their beauty and supernatural implication. An increasingly exasperated Holmes soon came to the end of his patience and blurted out: "No, you dummy, someone has stolen our tent!"

The obvious is not always so obvious. We cannot see what we cannot see. Optometrists report that a person can become completely blind in one eye without realizing it. One cannot see that he is blind. Such a realization requires insight, or some process of logical deduction. Similarly, a Christian can completely lose his faith without realizing that his faith is no longer there. Like Watson, he cannot see the missing tent and concentrates his attention on something far away. A faithless Christian may become an avid sociologist, but his lack of faith hinders his capacity to bring God into the lives of his brethren.

A great deal of education consists in restating the obvious. Parents should love their children, not merely approve everything they do. Teachers should not flatter their students, but challenge them to test the truth of things. What are the two most obvious "obviosities" that one might restate to a group of seminarians? Quite simply: be holy and be apostles.

1) Be Holy:

The tale is told of a Russian rabbi who had the reputation among the people in his village of being so holy that on Fridays he ascended to heaven and spent the weekends with God. A cynical newspaper editor assigned a journalist to stalk the rabbi and dispel this evidently silly superstition. The journalist followed the rabbi the next weekend as he was instructed. He observed one selfless and unceremonious act of charity after another. The young writer was so moved by the rabbi's obvious holiness and deep care for others that when his editor asked him whether the rabbi indeed ascended to heaven, he replied, "If not higher."

"Holiness" is derived from "wholeness" and simply refers to a fully alive, morally complete human being. Paradoxically, the holy person makes his holiness more obvious the more he tries to conceal it. Holiness does not require fanfare, bells, whistles, or media coverage. It is a light that is evident to anyone who can recognize the obvious.

It is better to be whole than to be fragmented. This principle, though obvious, one might say, also needs to be restated. What ballplayer, after hitting the ball into the centre field seats, would be content to stop at first base? After all, he might say, "What's wrong with a single?" No, one makes the complete circuit. Why would anyone not want to be everything he can be, to be whole and to circle the bases and arrive home? Man fully alive is the glory of God, and His most obvious indication that He is present to us in the world.

The Russian word for chastity, tselomudrie, means "the wisdom of wholeness." The more whole the person is, the easier and more reasonable is the practice of chastity. If we are whole, we have all that we need. Even Sigmund Freud, not exactly a friend to Christianity, knew something of this principle when he warned people against the "tendency to overestimate the unattained sexual object." We often idealize what we neither have nor need. What we truly need is what makes us whole and holy. We need God to help us to be all that He wants us to be.

2) Be apostles:

An apostle has something valuable he wants to share with others. His love for others impels him to share his life, the truths, and the goods he has discovered with them. The ancient Greeks had two words for life: bios and zoe. The former refers to biological life, the force that pulsates through any individual organism. But the latter refers to that abundance of life that transcends mere biological life and can be shared with others. The apostle shares God's life and is eager to share that life with others.

The apostle lives in the sunlit landscape of truth. He is not a skeptic; nor is he a coward. He sees something worth sharing and is realistic and confident enough to know that it is good. He knows that we should know the truth, love the truth, and know how the truth can make us free. He parts company with the fragmented fence-sitter who professes his affection for freedom yet renounces the only road, truth, that leads to freedom. Freedom is not attained through doubt, uncertainty, indifference, or fear.

In the movie The Accidental Tourist, the members of a particular household never pick up the telephone when it rings. Instead, they speculate about who the caller might be. The speculations are interesting. Each person has his own opinions concerning the caller's identity. And since no one ever answers the phone, each can safely maintain the assumption that he might be right. As long as no one picks up the phone, as long as the truth remains undiscovered, no one can be proven wrong. Everyone's "self-esteem" remains unsullied. Yet no one has ever been fired with apostolic zeal by private and untested speculations. One is not ready to give his life for a guess. The apostle, on the other hand, is armed with light and truth. And he invigorates his armamentaria with love.

It is better to be a "holy apostle" than to be a "fragmented fence-sitter." Better, indeed, for everyone.

The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre points out in After Virtue that contemporary ethics has become fragmented and disintegrated because the true subject of ethics, the human person, has been forgotten. As a result, every individual is said to have an equally valid opinion. In the dark, all opinions are equally valid! Agreement becomes impossible; tolerance becomes mandatory. Ethics hardly improves our benighted situation. It is like saying, "I used to be indecisive, but now I am not so sure."

Contemporary ethics has lost sight of the obvious--the human person. But the apostle is that most needed emissary of love, truth, and goodness who dares to restate the obvious and to bring its salutary blessings into the lives of people.

In a certain sense, contemporary ethics is like the omnivorous computer that gorges itself with images and with spam. The image is bereft of substance; spam is devoid of reliable meaning. The computer can neither love nor separate truth from falsity. Like the present ethical heresy, the computer is uncritically accepting and utterly non-judgmental. It is an effigy of the modern "liberal," for whom open-mindedness is equivalent to a fatal incapacity to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and truth from illusion. "Let us not decide what is good," Chesterton once said, with mock irony, "but let us decide that it is good not to decide."

Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Exhortation Pastores dabo vobis iuxta Cor Meum (I will give you shepherds after My Heart), reiterates the Vatican Council's statement that "The very holiness of priests is of the greatest benefit for the fruitful fulfillment of their ministry. While it is possible for God's grace to carry out the work of salvation through unworthy ministries, yet God ordinarily prefers to show his wonders through those men who are more submissive to the impulse and guidance of the Holy Spirit and who, because of their intimate union with Christ and their holiness of life, are able to say with St. Paul: 'It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me' (Gal. 2:20)."

Serving God and neighbour does not entail the suppression of self. Indeed, it is the road to self-realization, not in the context of narcissism, but in the broader domain of love and community. It may be wise to remember that in serving, as in the game of tennis, one always has the advantage. God be with you.

Dr. Donald DeMarco is Adjunct Professor, Holy Apostles College and Seminary. He retired from St. Jerome's College, Waterloo, this year.