“our purpose is to know God, to love God, and to serve God. The meaning of life is really that simple.”
What is the meaning of life?
***Spoiler Alert for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ***
“The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” is a satirical science fiction novel by the late Douglas Adams. The book takes great delight in poking fun at human nature. One of the major plot points of the story is the answer to the meaning of life, or as the Adams put it, “the answer to life, the universe, and everything.”
To answer this question a large computer named “Deep Thought” is constructed. The computer is as large as a city and so sophisticated that it becomes self-aware. It tells its programmers that it can answer the question but it will take seven and a half million years.
Generations later, the descendants of the original programmers eagerly await the answer. Right on time, Deep Thought reveals the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, to be “42.”
The problem, the computer then goes on to tell them, is that they never really defined the question.
***End Spoiler Alert***
Is there a simple answer to life the universe and everything? Is there an easy-to-understand purpose that gives our lives meaning? There is, and it both sublimely simple and incredibly complex.
For simplicity we need look no further than the old Baltimore Catechism. To the question, “why are we here?” or “what is our purpose?” the answer is that our purpose is to know God, to love God, and to serve God. The meaning of life is really that simple.
There are many ways to know God, We can know Him through the world He has created and the Word He has sent to us. And the more we come to know God the more we love Him. The more we love Him, the more we want to do things for Him, the more we want to serve Him. And we serve God best by serving our brothers and sisters.
But we can go even deeper. Because ultimately, the meaning of life is about a relationship. Without that relationship there is a void in our hearts.
The Dawn of Reality Television
In the 1960s and 70s, Phil Donahue ushered in the age of talk shoes and reality TV. It also started us on the road to relativism that has led us to where we are today. So-called “Donahueites” have a very inited, linear view of life. There was nothing before this life and there will be nothing after. Therefore the purpose of life is to enjoy yourself and grab as much pleasure as you can, so long as you are not harming others.
And so we see an endless parade of depravity, disordered lives, selfishness, and degraded nature that pass for entertainment. To voice an objection, to seek to champion absolute truth over the moral relativism that infects contemporary society, is to be “cancelled,” shouted down and labelled intolerant and hateful.
It is a grim world view, one without hope, without joy, without a relationship that will survive even death.
There have been many well known people who have attested to the emptiness of such a life. Author H.G. Wells wrote at the age of 61, “I have no peace. All life is at the end of the tether.” The poet Byron said, “My days are in yellow leaf, the flowers and fruits of life are gone, the worm and the canker, and the grief are mine alone.” Henry David Thoreau famously said, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.”
The cure to this malaise is a relationship that transcends time, that transcends death. It is a relationship with Jesus that fills that God-shaped void in our hearts.
When it comes time for Jesus to take up His mission, he begins to call disciples to Him. He finds them through John the Baptist, who has been preparing the way of the Lord for some time now.
As Jesus walks along the banks of the Jordan River, John points him out to two of his disciples. Jesus is the one, the lamb of God, the Messiah.
John the Baptist sends his disciples to the one who is greater than he. John does not even consider himself worthy to be the slave of Jesus. So he sends Andrew and another disciple to Jesus and Jesus accepts them with the invitation, “Come and you will see.”
The disciples have been sent to follow Jesus without knowing anything more about Him. But before long Jesus confronts them and asks, “what are you looking for? What do you seek?” In other words, Jesus asks them, “where are you looking for meaning in your life?” They don’t really know how to respond. They want to know more about Him, where is He at home, how can they get to know Him better? How do they build a relationship with Him?
And Jesus responds with an invitation for them to accompany Him, to learn more about Him.
Jesus always invites us to learn more about Him. Blind faith does not serve Him. Blind faith cannot defend itself or convince others to follow. Andrew, the first disciple, sat with Jesus and learned from Him before he left to bring his brother Simon, with the words, “We have found the Messiah.”
The answer to life, the universe, and everything, is not the answer to an equation. The answer to the meaning of life is a relationship to be lived out. It is a personal relationship with Jesus, the Messiah.
Pax Vobiscum
The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time