Our Common Search for the True Philosophy of Life
F
rom the first years of youth, I have felt a bit like a stranger in a strange land, wondering for what purpose I came into the world and what principles, if any, govern this place through which we are all journeying. What are we to do with this life we have been given? What lies ahead of us, on the horizon? What, finally, do we need to know if our lives are not to be squandered, to be lived in vain and ended in futility? Such questions haunted me all the more because it seemed clear that everyone else must also be trying to answer them, and yet there seemed to be so few who were willing to address such matters except in superficial ways. In the midst of asking these questions while working my first job, with a large financial firm in Boston, I came across a notice in the Boston Herald concerning Fides et Ratio, a new “encyclical” by Pope John Paul II. I did not know what an encyclical was, but a strange urge came over me to find this one and to read it. Read it I did, and found in its opening pages affirmation of the issues that had preoccupied me. The 7
Praying the Nicene Creed.indd 7
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