The quest is constantly about faith seeking understanding and that is very real for a culture of restless hearts and scattered minds; in short, all of us. And it is a quest for truth and for truths held sacred in a time, perhaps, of unprecedented uncertainties and questionable certainties. Such is the context in which God’s Word has to be proclaimed and his Sacraments celebrated and this is no matter of dogmatic assertion but an attempt to be faithful and prayerful and to engage with one another.

In Christ,

(Fr.) David Curry

The idea of disconnect is very real. I recall the times in December when looking for “the perfect” Christmas tree on a Christmas tree farm. 20 minutes to a half hour later (and a long way from the car) the feeling of disconnect, resulting in a glazed donut feel/look becomes quit disturbing when one realizes that most of the trees far into the lot look the same as the ones near where the venture began… Not unlike “being lost in the cyberspace of competing ideas” except that the ideas in this case are trees… Will I ever learn? However the quest for answers to spiritual questions does not always lead to ways that keep us from one another (buzz word – community) and from God at least in the area where I reside… Yet I sense the question asked of Jesus so long ago still resonates loudly today in our so-called post modern world with the words “what is truth”?

Thanks for your comment. In the context of the sermon, I am critiquing the assumptions of the market-state with its marked tendency to treat everything as a commodity. Without taking away anything from the nature of the spiritual quest which, of course, can be pursued in any number of ways, this tendency is itself an expression of a kind of alienation, as existentialists, too, would see it – God becomes who or what we want God to be, everything is inverted; this tendency is untenable intellectually because of that inversion and contradictory; and finally, this tendency is unlivable because the desire for the ‘maximizing of opportunities’ conflicts with the reality of limitations, the limitations that belong to our creatureliness.

I agree with you on one level about the “market-place of ideas”, recognizing the power and truth of ideas, but that should not hide the sad reality of folly and nonsense that captures so many, too, and so easily. Why? Because of the kinds of disconnect, I think, that increasingly affect us. Why is it that we look for answers to spiritual questions in ways that keep us away from one another and from God? In so many ways, we are connected to the disconnect and struggle to hold ourselves and one another accountable to truth … lost in the cyberspace of competing opinions. Somehow, I suppose, this too has to be one of those ideas in the hope and prayer that God will speak to such questing souls.

In Christ,

(Fr.) David Curry