St. Mary Parish, Manchester at 210 West Main Street, Manchester, MI 48158 US - The Loss of the Transcendent, pt. 1

LIMITED TO THE HORIZONTAL
The origin of the modern day loss of the transcendent has its genesis in what is called the period of the ‘Enlightenment.’ At this time man’s focus became very insular, on the self and the rational. The residue of the enlightenment has affected the way many Catholic people view life.
One way of identifying the loss of the transcendent in life begins with a simple reflection on where we place our daily focus. If the majority of our thoughts are fixed on the here and the now, this means that we are fixated on the horizontal, the worldly. This horizontal focus is a result of the loss of a sense of the vertical, the eternal, God.
It is easy to lose a sense of the transcendent, living in a secular culture that more and more seeks to push God out of the picture, out of the public square. God is tolerated as long as he stays put in church buildings and homes and never steps into the world.
When man loses a sense of God, he also loses a sense of himself. When man loses a sense of the transcendent, it is easy for him to reduce everything to functionality. Man then begins to base his self-worth, his value, on what he can do, on what he can produce. This type of thinking once again is reflective of a purely horizontal view of life.
I can’t tell you how many times in my priestly life I have heard elderly people, or people who are disabled or seriously ill, tell me that they feel useless. This saddens me for they have accepted this horizontal view of life, that unless they can ‘do’ something, they are not ‘worth’ anything. A person whose life is permeated with the transcendent is blessed with the understanding that their life has value, meaning, and purpose simply because it was created by God.
OUR VIEW OF DEATH EFFECTS THE WAY THAT WE LIVE
Another way of gauging whether we have a sense of the transcendent in our lives is how we view death. Do we view death as the passageway to eternal life? If we think there is nothing after this life, it will have a profound effect on the way that we live our life; we will live simply for our self and for seeking the optimum amount of pleasure. We will see no value in such things as self-denial, sacrifice, or suffering. If we have no sense of the transcendent, the sacred, we will treat the bodies of the dead with disrespect and irreverence by denying them proper interment.
We see this more and more in the increasing lack of observance of burial rites and the hasty cremation of the bodies of the dead. The scattering of the cremated remains of human beings is also reflective of the lack of the transcendent and a lack of understanding that the human body, even in death, must be treated with the greatest reverence and respect.
With the legalization of abortion and euthanasia, we are losing our sense of the sacred dignity for, as well as the respect due to, the bodies of both the living and the dead.
As Catholics do we pray for the souls of the dead, the souls in purgatory? Do we have Masses offered for the souls of the dead, or do we think that they are not in need of spiritual assistance? Do we think that after death that every one goes directly to heaven? Are we planning ahead to have Masses offered for our own souls after death?
Are we planning to forego the sacred burial rites of the Church because we do not want to put our family through that ‘discomfort’? Do we believe in the resurrection of the body on the Last Day? Questions like these help us to identify if we have limited our view of the life to the horizontal, the immanent.

To be continued.
— Fr. Tim —