The Meaning of Life

I think I have figured out the meaning of life.

Well, maybe not the entire meaning of life, but I think I have a handle on something in our society that is completely missing.

Sacrifice.

We are one comfortable group of people in this country. We have our burgers and fries, our DVR, we have everything we pretty much need. We don’t suffer during medical procedures. We have it pretty good.

In fact, we have it so good that the idea of sacrifice makes people want to kill. They kill themselves rather than sacrifice. They kill others rather than sacrifice. They kill their own children rather than sacrifice. They might not even be sacrificing yet, but the prospect of sacrificing is enough to drive them to do things they never thought they would do. We are that scared of it. The idea that sacrifice might mean suffering is so scary.

How did we get like this?

Are we that addicted to pleasure?

Is it any wonder that college life plays out the way that it does on most campuses?

That marriages end at an alarming rate?

That the celibate vocation sits in crisis?

How about this idea for countercultural and a solution to the entire problem of mediocrity that plagues our world?

Life is about sacrifice.

There is no other way to put it. There is no other way sugar coat it to make it easier to swallow. There is no shortcut, no easy way to get around it, no way to hug it out. If you want the best out of life, the best out of existence, the best out of anything, then you have to be willing to sacrifice.

You want to be more physically fit? That means you have to carve the time out of your day which means that you have to ssacrifice things that you think are important. That means that you have to make the time to excercise. It means that you have to sacrifice the type of food that you used to eat. The type of food that is going to cause an early death, even though its sugar coated goodness seems to say, “Everything is fine as long as you feel good eating me now!”

You want to be smarter? That means that you have to sacrifice the idea that you know it all and take the time to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. It means that you have to sacrifice the desire to sound smart by shooting your mouth off, name and fact dropping, and in general - being a bore. It means that you have to listen twice as much as you talk. It means that you have to skip the summary notes and actually read the book.

You want to have a better relationship with your spouse and your family? That means that you have to think about what is better for them all the time. That means that when you want to relax and watch the game and eat chips maybe you should play with the kids. That means it is time to help the spouse. It means that it is time to go that extra mile to once again make it clear what is more important to you in your life. It means that you have to completely understand that your family is not there for your benefit, you are there for theirs.

You want to discern a vocation in your life as you wonder if the perfect mate is ever going to come along to rescue you from the possibility that you may be actually called to a celibate vocation? Maybe you need to sacrifice your idea of what the celibate vocation is. It is not a choice between happiness and sadness, joy and misery. It is simply the question, “How are you going to sacrifice your entire life? For a large Church or a domestic one?”

And in this lies the answer to the vocation crisis, which includes marriage and the religious and priesthood. It is about sacrifice. In the last fifty years we have stripped marriage of its meaning by making it about two people simply making each other feel good.

How could we be so foolish? Did we not learn from Henry VIII?

These feelings are not the stuff of love and Romeo and Juliet showed what fools we can be for thinking so. What happens when marriage is simply about feeling good and not about sacrificing to raise the next generation of saints?

Eliminate children, for they cause weight gain, financial hardship, limits on our ability to take trips around the world. They require sacrifice.

Eliminate children from marriage and you eliminate the need for marriage.

Eliminate the need for marriage and you eliminate the need for the celibate vocation.

Eliminate the celibate vocation and you eliminate the Eucharist.

Eliminate the Eucharist and you eliminate our greatest tool toward sainthood.

Eliminate saints and I shudder to think of the world we will have.

Unless of course, we start to embrace sacrifice. Not as the exception for exceptional people only, but the rule.