Years ago, I was with the Jesuit Refugee Service, helping out with Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees. Thousands of people were crammed in makeshift tents, thirsty for freedom, far from their war-torn homelands. And yet, it was a place where I experienced so much joy and goodness.
One day, one of my young Vietnamese students asked me about my country. At one point he looked straight in my eyes and asked me: “But you have such a beautiful country, family and friends. Why did you leave all that to come here in this hell of pain and misery?” For a minute I did not know what to answer. Then, spontaneously, I just blurted out: “I came here because you are here!” The young man opened wide his bright eyes, pointed his index finger at my face, and told me: “You are God!”
I was left speechless at his profession of faith. I discovered who God is and who I am!
Life can be a mystery. It can be a miracle. Our minds seek to unravel the mystery by seeking explanations. This is science. It is a precious gift for us humans. We need to understand how and why things are, how they work.
But scientific explanations and discoveries only take us humans a very short part of the way. Something within us pushes us way beyond. We need to find a purpose, a significance that goes way beyond all explanations, scientific or otherwise. Understanding how life works is still not living it. We still need to find its meaning.
Meaning takes us way beyond any kind of achievement, intellectual or otherwise. Meaning is always a pure gift given and received. It is a relationship. We find real fulfilment when we belong to someone. However exciting, explanations by themselves can be a terribly sad and lonely experience.
Philosophy, theology or psychology, just like science, can help us get an inkling of how life works. Meaning gives life to life because, when all is said and done, meaning is always a person. It is parents embracing their child, friends pouring their hearts open, two lovers watching a sunset, a peaceful, dying man surrounded by the family he has lived for.
Meaning is when you stop looking for a reason and discover a loved person as the only reason to live for. Meaning is when life becomes simply the overflowing inner joy and well-being that make our rationalisations irrelevant. It is knowing you are a beloved and a lover at the same time.
Meaning is when all questions fade away because the person next to you is the answer. It is when you yourself become the answer to those around you. Meaning always bears the name of a person. Because God is love, his second name is always yours and mine.
Yes, we need science to understand the marvellous machine that we call life. But to discover and experience its meaning we need relationships – solid, faithful, simple, transparent, committed relationships. Only then shall we discover that we are not puppets, cogs in a machine or power-hungry mini-gods manipulating the universe.
We will discover ourselves to be life-giving and loving gifts to one another – not lonely orphans, but children of a God, who is love. We will discover that life is not a mystery to be explained or solved but a miracle to be lived.
Fr Paul Chetcuti, member of the Society of Jesus