PERSpECTIVES

The Corpus Christi procession of Our Lady of Loretto Church in Cold Spring, led by Fr. Brian McSweeney, center on Sunday, June 6, 2010. Feast of Corpus Christ i

The glory of late spring in the Hudson Valley can reinvigorate the spirit after a long winter. On a fine June day, it is easy to agree with the poet T.S. Eliot that the “whole world is our hospital.”

But, by hospital, Eliot actually meant much more than the benefits a fine day can bestow. He meant “the whole world,” and all contained within, both the good and the destructive, from sunny days to natural disasters, from great joy to immense suffering. Everything in this life—very sight, every joy, every tribulation—is part of our treatment plan, the plan to restore fallen man to a state of glory. Even a great disaster can summon our courage and lead us to forget ourselves by serving others. Our failings and setbacks, if we choose not to give up, can make us stronger.

The problem of pain has troubled many believers through the ages, yet many people will go through great amounts of pain to improve not only their health but also their physical appearance. This is often necessary and good, such as training to keep oneself in shape or going to the doctor to have a cancer treated. Both training and treatment alike can be painful. We judge that a little suffering is certainly worth it in these cases.

But when it comes to matters spiritual— matters affecting the eternal health of a soul, rather than the temporal health of our body, we are, for some reason, hesitant. Is it possible, though, that the health of the soul, like the health of the body, requires sometimes painful training, discipline, and exertion? When we face a bad experience, what if we saw it as part of the natural, even divinelyordained, training for our soul? Just maybe every experience in this life is geared toward our own good; or, at the very least, we can strengthen our souls by making the best out of difficult experiences. Looking at life this way, we can try to make sense of trying times and bad situations. And we get to choose how we react, whether we use each of these experiences to improve ourselves.

We might see that what seems to be random or coincidental is actually part of a larger drama of life. “A poetical view of things is a duty,” wrote the English philosopher John Henry Cardinal Newman. “We are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in every event.”

But in our secular culture, the words “providence” and “providential” have fallen out of fashion; they are too profound and disturbing for polite company. Instead, many people prefer to refer to the curiosities of life as simply being “coincidental.” We encounter an amazing coincidence, saying, “wow, that was random,” and then continue the headlong rush through life, never stopping to make any connections to what might be a larger reality.

Is it just possible that our experiences in life are more customized than the options in a video game, a new car, or a super value menu?

In Evelen Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, a glass of wine gives one of the characters a profound insight: “This Burgundy seemed to me, then, serene and triumphant, a reminder that the world was an older and better place than Rex knew, that mankind in its long passion had learned another wisdom than his.” A glance at Storm King Mountain, or one of the old, otherworldly sloops sailing the Hudson, might have a similar affect on us. Of course, trying to divine meaning in all of our surroundings and experiences could drive one into a straight jacket—and would be a distortion of the way we are supposed to live. The better attitude would seem to be acceptance of our experiences with a sense of awe, trusting that Providence is at work.

There is much that might not make sense now, but if we take it on faith that there is a divine Word—logos, or logic, in Greek—directing, and even participating in, this drama, we will see, as Aquinas wrote in one of his Corpus Christi hymns, “beneath these signs are hidden / priceless things, to sense forbidden.”

J.B. Shea is a writer in the Hudson Valley.