I watch very little television. I have never really liked the medium because I find it much too passive. But every now and then, I do begin to watch a movie. There is even the rare occasion that I am able to stay to the finish, despite all of the commercial interruptions. This time of year I notice a curious thing: in the world of television the "holiday season," as they call it, seems principally to be celebrated by means of old movies or of new movies which are remakes of old ones. One gets the impression that contemporary culture, at least contemporary television culture, is incapable of expressing the "holiday season" and that a return to the past has become our only access to "the season."
It is certainly the case that we must go back a few decades in order to use the word "Christmas" with any degree of comfort. For this reason alone, we can understand the use of old movies: one cannot, after all, celebrate "the season"—a celebration must celebrate something, like the birth of Christ. Our contemporary cultural pluralism precludes a real celebration of anything. But I think that there is something even more essential to celebration that the last generation still possessed, and that we are in grave danger of losing: to celebrate, one must be in awe of something.
Real celebration requires a sense of wonder and awe. More than this, celebration is a public expression of awe and wonder: we can celebrate when there is something—anything—about which we share a common sense of wonder. And this is at the heart of our contemporary problem: there appears to be nothing that commands our common wonder. We no longer wonder, for example, at the birth of a child. Instead, we plan to use our technology to determine the sort of child that might be adequate to the needs and tastes of the parents. We are told that, with a little genetic manipulation, we will soon be able to determine everything from intelligence to height, weight and eye color. Again, we no longer wonder at the world or the cosmos: the world is not "creation"—creation, after all, requires a creator—but is, instead, nothing more than a materially determined reality which we can turn to our own ends. Even those who doubt our capacity to care for the environment do not appear to find it wonderful or awful—in the strict sense of "filled with awe." Instead, they consider it fragile and threatened, more an object of pity than of wonder.
Our poor, miserable little culture seems to have lost its capacity to wonder and with it, its ability to celebrate. The old movies remember a happier time when, in our naiveté and ignorance, we thought that there was still something to celebrate. But was ignorance really the source of the wonder that was lost? Must we be naïve to be in awe of something?
Wonder is not born of ignorance, but of mystery. To be in wonder, we must be as attentive as we possibly can to what actually happens. We must probe the event so thoroughly that we are able to appreciate the moment at which we have exhausted our knowledge, and stand at the threshold of something that is real, but hidden from our sight. Wonder requires knowledge, it literally feeds upon it. The crisis of our contemporary culture is not that knowledge has replaced wonder; in a way the contrary is true: having misplaced our knowledge of things, we have lost sight of the things that are truly mysterious, truly wonderful. Let’s explore a few examples.
In generations past, the birth of a child was a source of wonder. We knew that we were in the presence of a mystery: an event which we could not possibly comprehend in its entirety. Now, however, we have ceased to contemplate the event itself, and have focused, instead, upon the narrow question of how we might manipulate it. Our knowledge of certain particulars has increased, but we have ceased altogether to consider the whole. The mystery has fallen away because, in our rush to analyze certain particulars, we are in ignorance of the whole.
Everywhere we see the same disregard for the whole in favor of the part. Armed with our psychology, we can account for the particular phobias of certain individuals, but we seem to think that we can thereby comprehend the whole of what is human. Anyone who has ever fallen in love knows perfectly well that this is not the case. When we stand in the presence of someone whom we love, our real knowledge of the other is soon exhausted, and we stand in the presence of a mystery. But, because our culture never regards the other as a person—a center of subjectivity wholly other than ourselves—and settles only for an individual whose particular acts we attempt to analyze, we remain too much in ignorance of the other to intimate the mystery. Our lack of awe is not born of knowledge and sophistication. It is born of ignorance.
What can we do to inform our culture? How can we awaken the knowledge that has been lost? How can we, therefore, retrieve some of the wonder that is, after all, essential to our happiness? The answer lies in retrieving our sense of the whole. We must focus upon events, not merely upon an analysis of certain of their components. We must attempt to penetrate the whole event of the birth of a child, and not merely speculate on the particular manner in which we might interfere with it. We must open ourselves to the event of encountering another person, and not merely attempt to understand certain of his or her actions. We must restore our regard for what really occurs in life and in nature, rather than focusing upon that small part of it that is open to our analysis.
Our Church has called the laity to redeem the culture itself. The charisms have been given for this purpose. They are gifts. As such, whenever they are exercised, they produce an event—something whole and entire—which occasions awe in the recipient. As we become more aware of these gifts, our own capacity for wonder is reawakened: we begin to see things whole once again. When a stranger is seen and welcomed, when the dignity of one who suffers is called forth, when someone is taught or encouraged or healed, we are presented with events which, in the end, defy reduction to particular psychological or material determinations. We are also in the presence of something which can occasion a celebration: a shared wonder in the presence of what has occurred.If we are to accept the gifts which God has given to us, we must commit ourselves to wonder. We will be able to do this through our attentiveness to things and to people. Along the way, we will teach our culture how to look upon the world—and restore to our contemporaries the sense that there might be something to celebrate.