Wednesday, April 23, 2008

A sentinel in the modern world…

"The scientist's condition as a sentinel in the modern world, as one who is the first to glimpse the enormous complexity together with the marvellous harmony of reality, makes him a privileged witness of the plausibility of religion, a man capable of showing how the admission of transcendence, far from harming the autonomy and the ends of research, rather stimulates it to continually surpass itself in an experience of self-transcendence which reveals the human mystery".
––Pope John Paul II, 7/17/85.

A sentinel only makes sense as one watching on behalf of something else. The very desire of man to know (sciare) indicates a field of being and goodness that exists logically prior and ethically superior to the field of being within the range of natural knowledge. Man, whether he knows it or not, seeks truth on behalf of the God who is Truth. His desire for the former is a function of his desire for, and reflection of, the latter. Indeed, God rejoices in the truth precisely by rejoicing in His own being. His Word, the Son, divulges this world of living truth, in the Holy Spirit, and creation, wrought by the Word and Spirit, is man's share in hearing the goodness of ordered, dynamic being, which is to say, the goodness of God.

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