Unquiet Hearts

Saint Augustine by Philippe de Champaigne, circa 1645-1650, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons

 One of St. Augustine's most famous quotes comes from the beginning of his Confessions where he begins with praise for God: "You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you."

Yesterday, Robin (born Robert) Westman shot into a Catholic church in Minnesota during a Mass attended by young children beginning their school year. I've read a little about his manifesto, and it's unmistakable that he had a tortured soul. And this reminded me of a passage in The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis:

And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.” 

scan of page 69 of The Great Divorce

 

I am not making a claim about Westman's final destination of either Heaven or Hell. We can pray (and I have) that he accepted God's mercy in his final moments. I am saying that the way we live now has an impact on whether we will choose Heaven or Hell, and will affect whether our hearts will harden or soften,... whether we refuse God's grace or accept it.

It seems to me that Pope Benedict XVI understood the great darkness in which people live in this modern age. From his inaugural Mass:

The pastor must be inspired by Christ’s holy zeal: for him it is not a matter of indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction. The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.  

  It seems to me that Christ Jesus saw all this darkness during his agony in the garden of Gethsemane. And it explains his expansive and infinite love to take all of mankind out this suffering. It explains his zeal to evangelize, to tell the Good News, "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!" Of course, this fire is not a destructive fire, but the fire of love brought by the Holy Spirit.

At his general audience yesterday (before the Minnesota shooting) Pope Leo XIV said (quote pieced together from Ines San Martin and CNA):

In the middle of the night, when everything seems to be falling apart, Jesus shows that Christian hope is not evasion, but decision. This attitude is the result of profound prayer in which God is not asked to spare us from suffering, but rather to give us the strength to persevere in love.

screenshot of post on X.com

 

Christians understand (or should understand) that by uniting ourselves to Jesus on the Cross, by sharing his love for the world, we are on the Way to Heaven.

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light"

screenshot of first reading for midnight Mass for Christmas