Reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Of course, this is a continuation of this long passage. Then Jesus continued speaking to his disciples. As the father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love.
You will live in my love if you keep my commandments even as I have kept my father's commandments and live in his love. All this I tell you, that my joy may be yours, and your joy may be complete. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. In the first week of May, May 3, our holy father landed in Korea.
May 3. And at the airport of Seoul, or however you pronounce that, my Korean isn't what it used to be. It's in the same class as my Polish. But anyway, when our holy father landed in South Korea and at the airport he delivered, of course there was a speech of welcome, and then he replied and he spoke in English. That's an interesting little point, not French but English.
And in the course of his remarks, which were extremely well chosen, he paid tribute to the cultural ancestry of the Koreans. To the Confucianism, to Buddhism, and then he paid tribute also to the Protestant missionaries. Now towards the end of this discourse, which wasn't long, several 100 words, he hears a sentence that struck me and I, well, it just struck me and that's the reason I am bringing it in. Our holy father said, we know that in order to be fully human, man must transcend himself and seek the ultimate reality and meaning of life. Now this is not an unusual theme with our holy father.
It comes in time and time again. But notice what he's saying, in order to be fully human, you have to transcend yourself as you are. You say this doesn't make much sense. How can I if I'm human, how can I transcend my humanity? Well, of course, that's true.
But the problem is that in our humanity, we embrace so much that isn't human. You look at the cabbage growing in the garden and you can say, have a lot in common with that cabbage plant. And you look at the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field, and you can identify with all of them. You are part of them. And then you look at what we know to be spiritual creatures, call them angels or anything you wish.
We talk about the spiritual order, the ideal order. We say that we belong to that too, and that's part of us also. And our holy father in this sentence is simp is saying we know that in the order to be fully human, man must transcend himself. No, he did he didn't say his humanity. Transcend himself and seek the ultimate reality and meaning of life.
And every thinker, whether he be a positivist or a secular humanist or an atheist or an agnostic or an idealist, they all have faced this question, and we call them philosophers. But they are a handful of the population. After all, we talk about the great age of Greek culture, and art, and philosophy, but how how many philosophers were giving you the absolute outside number in the whole population? And you know what they did to Socrates. Man has to have something more than himself, even if it's just a cat or a dog, or a canary in a cage, or getting a swimming prize.
The name that's been in my mind all morning, I might just as well bring it out, is John Stuart Mill. The late night contemporary of John Henry Cardinal Newman, the son of James Mill, the great disciple of Jeremy Bentham, the leading light of the utilitarianism, and a great champion of women's rights, John Stuart Mill. Here's a man that by the age of 21 felt that life wasn't worth living. He had done everything he wanted to do. He and he was on the verge of committing suicide because he did not have an answer, what is life all about?
What saved Mill? These these are his own words in his autobiography. He had an illumination. You call this a mystical experience, a religious experience, call it what you want. But something happened to him just like it happened to Descartes and Pascal and all the rest of them.
And the great illumination that Mill got was this, I must live for others. We call it altruism. That that became the driving force of Mill's life, and he gave himself utterly to it. Just as how he had been living as he saw it for himself, now he saw he must give himself entirely for the other, whoever the other is. And we call that altruism, and that became the great, you know, the great shibboleth.
Because you see a good hard headed common sense person will say this, why should I prefer you to me? Why? Well, you say because it gives me satisfaction, it gives me happiness, it gives me gives meaning to my life. Well, that's just an elevated form of hedonism. You're coming back to where you started.
Instead of going out and drinking or using dope or using sex or what have you, you're using your neighbor as a tool to your own satisfaction or fulfillment or what have you. But anyway, that's what saved Mill. He saw he there had to be something more than self. He had to transcend self. And let me tell you, a good athlete has to trans transcend self.
Anybody who's accomplishes anything has to transcend self to some extent. Now the question is, what do you choose that will make this sensible, reasonable, adequate, adequate. This is going to strike as rather odd, but just last night I was reading a book that came across my desk about Fred Astaire, the great dancer, and the pains that man took to have his dancing perfect. That he would go through a routine fifty, sixty, 70 times till the people working with him were almost disgusted. And then how he practiced.
You may remember that dance that he did with his hands in his pocket. Try that sometime. How he worked on that worked on that as if that was the end and the beginning and the wholeness of life. At that moment, it was. But then you have to ask yourself, is it worth it?
It isn't enough to have something that transcends yourself. The next question is, is it worthwhile? Is it does it make sense? What is the reality that should take precedence over self? My neighbor?
Why? Why? You see you hear so much talk to today about being good to you, being community conscious and all. But the question is why? If you take God out of the picture, why must I do that?
Why should I do that? And if you say, well, because it will give you fulfillment, it'll make your life happy. That's just a form of hedonism. That's all. And it's a it's a demeaning thing.
You are using your neighbor as a tool, as an instrument towards your own satisfaction. And even Immanuel Kant said that was the worst possible sin, immorality that you can commit, is to use another human being as a means and not as an end. And so our whole I the more I read to this man, the more I admire him. The way he pulls things together and lays it on the line. Notice, he's not bringing in here great high theology.
He's bringing in here the common experience of mankind, whether it be Confucius or Buddha. You've got to have something to take you out of yourself if you're going to be truly human. The the answer that Christ gave was himself on the cross. In the name of the father and of the son, holy spirit. Amen.