Finitude and mentality

Among the very interesting things about the human mind are the implications of its finitude.

To be sure, the human mind is capable of reaching toward infinity, but it cannot fully and truly reach that horizon by its own power alone, so people very often settle for a very narrow finitude: their little corner of narrow interests.

Ironically, in our hyper-specialized world, the most educated and learned among us, especially scientists, are often the most intellectually parochial. Their reality is their field of knowledge (and sometimes just their sub-specialty), period. Anything that does not fit within their worldview is nonsense.

For the less educated, their reality consists wholly of their daily lives and "the way things are done." Anything that does not fit within that universe is just crazy talk.

In today's (Saturday) brief Gospel (Mark 3:20-21), members of our Lord’s extended family are greatly disturbed. It is said that "he is out of his mind."

Why was this being said? Because our Lord’s words and action are detached from "reality" as they have narrowly constructed it.

Their narrowly constructed "reality", of course, was only a small part of true reality (at best). When God enters into their world in the person of Jesus Christ, exposing them to reality in its fullness, they defend their fragile mindsets with the conceit that something is wrong with the mind of Jesus, not theirs.

Now, there are people who say they are in contact with a reality different from that of normal people: some of them are saints, some of them have been constructing a "reality" that only exists inside their own skulls (often with chemical assistance), and some of them are indeed out of their minds.

Is Christ crazy or making it up? No, he verifies himself through his miracles and through the connectedness of his words and actions with the rest of reality as created and revealed by God.

You and I are called to connect with the reality of Christ: the true reality that encompasses, permeates, and transcends the narrow reality of our earthly lives.

People will try to label us as crazy or put us in the category of those with alternative realities inside their skulls, but in Christ we have the truth, which resonates perfectly with this God-created world, with salvation history, and what was placed in our hearts at creation.

With the grace of God we cannot be limited by the finitude of our skulls, of science, or of our mundane world. By the grace we can attain the infinity and perfection for which we were created through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.