FIFTY-ONE
Ah, how rich and splendid and fecund this page is with material for reflection, for meditation, for inspiration!!
I could reflect on the profound philosophical and religious implications of these words from the top of the page, “...Todd and I were excited about it, though. We'd been TOGETHER BUT SEPARATE [emphasis mine] for many years already, so we figured we could handle whatever life dished out. We put it all in God's hands.”
I could comment on Sarah's words from the latter part of the page about the agonizing hours and days that preceded the immortal triumph of the twentieth of April in the Year of Grace One Thousand Nine Hundred Eighty-Nine.
However, on this beautiful morn of early spring I would like to focus on two small sentences from a passage that occurs about a third of the way down the course of the page.
Sarah says, “On April 20, 1989, my life truly began. I became a mom. I had no idea how this tiny person, my son, would turn me inside out and upside down with the all-consuming love that swelled my heart from the second he was born....”
“On April 20, 1989, my life truly began. I became a mom.”
I believe that these few words contain all the power of life in the universe, both divine and human, within their short compass. They occupy less than one full line on the page, and yet what vast stretches of truth and beauty and power they occupy in the order of the deepest REALITY of things!!
Ah, how to begin?!?
We may commence with some questions. How can Sarah say that her life “truly began” on that day in 1989? Was she not born in 1964? Was she not living a vibrant, active life all those years up to 1989? What does it mean truly to be alive?
To live, at the most fundamental level, is to partake in the mystery of Communicatio, that is, communicating, sharing, interchanging.
We observe this in nature, beginning at the level of breathing. Plants and animals and man/woman all share in the function of breathing in and out, of exchanging one gaseous substance for another.
Further, when a member of any species attains to a fullness of growth, to adulthood, it possesses the power to transmit, to communicate its own life to a new member of the species.
With men and women we see this law of nature revealed at a level and in a splendor that far surpasses the plants and (mere) animals.
Why is it that it resides in the very heart and bosom of our beings to desire, for example, to share a beautiful poem, share a new scientific discovery, share an ennobling or bracing experience with others? Why does Sarah recount with such delight in GR (p.20) the joy she and her family and her friends still derive from sharing with each other, for example, the splendid appearance of an aurora borealis in the majestic Great Land?
It is because we are created in the image of that God Whom Christians believe to be Triune, a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just as the Father eternally generates the Son and is bound in Eternal Love (the Holy Spirit) with the Son, so it is the delight of one human being to communicate things to another human being. This communicatio then creates a bond of happiness and joy between the two that is a faint shadow and hint of the Holy Spirit.
The essence, then, of life resides in this dual GIVING-RECEIVING, this COMMUNICATIO VITAE, this communicating/sharing of life, this TRADITIO VITAE, this handing on/passing on of life.
We observe this power at its crown and summit in the generative power that man/woman possesses. We hold this mighty power on several levels. And this is crucial: The exercise of this power requires that the one who exercises it have achieved relative perfection or “adulthood” at the level in question.
On the physical plane, only adults can procreate new human beings.
On the intellectual plane, only true Masters of their subject matter can effectively communicate, “bring to birth” in their pupils a knowledge of and love for a given subject (this is why I believe, for example, that only Masters should teach subjects like Latin and English, even in their beginning stages...rather than “teachers” who are only a “few steps” ahead of their pupils).
On the spiritual plane, it is one who is already himself/herself far advanced in the Love of the Deity, who can generate that Love in others (St. Paul, for example, whose thundering, deathless epistles speak to us with a living voice that reverberates down through the halls and corridors of the centuries...and right up to this very moment!!).
In fact, we Catholics speak of bishops as possessing the “fullness of the priesthood” because only bishops can create other bishops and priests; they hold the “adulthood,” so to speak, of the priesthood!
So this brings us back to our Sarah. She says, and says well, that her life truly began when she communicated that life to another being, her eldest child, Track!
I believe that ALL men and women are called to this same lofty vocation of the COMMUNICATIO/TRADITIO VITAE. But what about those who cannot or do not want to have children? I think that the calling can be fulfilled on many levels. A man or woman who never has kids need not feel sad or deprived at being shut out from this exalted human privilege.
He or she can generate knowledge, courage, light, clarity, brightness, love in other lives in an almost infinite variety of ways. There is no limit to the generous and gracious hand with which the Lord holds out to us all the possibilities and opportunities for fatherhood and motherhood, in the broadest and deepest senses of these terms!!
Of course, we all believe that Sarah has been granted a most special and unusual, nay unique, “mom's vocation.”
In 1989 she became a mom for the first time.
In 2008 she became a mom for the fifth time, with the birth of her precious little Trig.
In 2011 she is poised, we believe, to become the Mother of Her Country!!
