There seems to be within us a gravitational pull towards shallowness. We become anesthetized by superficiality and lulled into a banal existence. It is easier to scroll through endless memes than to spend time thinking about any one thing deeply. It is easier to scroll through endless photos than to visit a museum, to listen to a jingle than to a symphony, to adopt quick and easy political slogans than to wrestle with complicated questions, or to binge watch shows than to read a book. At times, it feels like enormous effort is required to resist the black hole of nothingness that wants to swallow us. There is something in us that is pained by beauty, goodness, and truth. We flee from them because it is as if these things were calling out to us and reminding us that our life–and reality itself–is far deeper and grander than we can begin to imagine. When we encounter beauty, goodness, and truth, they pierce and wound us. They do not solve the ache of our hearts. Instead, they deepen that ache. They awaken in us a greater awareness of the Mystery. They make us long for more beauty, more goodness, more truth. The meme or the slogan basically says, “Here it is. Now you don’t have to think anymore.” Sometimes we seek to be distracted from our heart’s questions rather than living those questions. We are afraid to be with ourselves, so we throw ourselves into a thousand activities. We are afraid of the questions our hearts ask. We see this even in our desire to help others. When someone is suffering or grieving, we tend to want to give them the solution that will put an end to the questions of their heart. We somehow expect that by saying, “Well, she’s in a better place now,” that that should put an end to the person’s grief. Platitudes and moralisms can become, in a sense, the memes of the spiritual life. “Try harder. Be better. Let go and let God. It is what it is.” In our desire to “solve” the questions of the heart, we attempt to stifle the heart. I think this is why at funerals there is such a temptation to declare immediately that every person who has died is in heaven. The grieving heart at the moment of death is filled with profound questions: “What is the meaning of life? Where is God? How could God allow this to happen? Where is this person now? What about the sins this person committed? Will I ever see this person again?” There is always a temptation to eliminate these questions as if the mourner’s heart requires an urgent solution. So, instead of entrusting this person whom we love into the Paschal Mystery and seeking comfort in Christ, we just declare that the person is in heaven now. Instead of allowing Christian Hope to enter and provide its healing balm, we attempt to eliminate the human heart from the equation. We basically say, “Stop asking such profound questions. Let me give you a platitude instead.” Sometimes I watch television shows like “Law and Order.” There’s a predictability about them. There’s a crime, an investigation, an arrest, and a conviction. It all happens in sixty minutes. Everything is resolved. Done. But life would be rather ho-hum and boring if everything were so neatly packaged. Christianity is not a list of moralisms or platitudes designed to silence the cry of the human heart. Christianity does indeed answer the deepest questions of the human heart but not in meme-fashion. Instead of attempting to solve the mystery of our existence, it draws us more deeply into that mystery. Christ did not come to give us the answers to an exam question. It is in and through His friendship that–slowly and over time–our hearts are awakened and our life is revealed to us. Last year, I read a beautiful novel entitled, “Olav Audunsson.” The main character possesses elements of illumined goodness and shadowy darkness. Throughout, the effects of grace, but also of sin are present. Every time the resolution to his difficulties is within reach, it escapes his grasp. God does not magically end the tension of Olav’s life. It is in and through the circumstances of Olav’s life that God works, slowly and over time. Sometimes, we might wish our life were more like the sixty-minute television episode where things are all resolved before the commercial break, but that would get old, fast. Instead, our life is a long novel. It involves twists and turns and elements of light and of shadows, the effects of our sins and the sins of others do not magically disappear. So too, in hidden, unseen ways, grace is at work, drawing us along. As we enter into these beautiful months of the year, let’s pray that we might resist that urge towards shallowness, and instead be drawn by the friendship of Christ into that deeper way of life that truly awakens and answers the cry of our heart. Your Brother in Christ, Fr. David Barnes