Anderson wrote a famous play about St. Joan of Arc, (which was adapted into a film starring Ingrid Bergman), that incredible French teenager (1412-1431) who dressed as a boy, and became a soldier whom the troops followed to victory in the siege at Orleans. Joan, inspired by the voices of saints who told her she was called by God to save France, lived and died with one purpose: to free France from its English invaders. What did it matter that she died young, barely nineteen, burned at the stake, when her soul was so on fire with sacrificial love for her country that she is still remembered today, almost six hundred years later, as an icon of courage? Joan famously said "I am not afraid....I was born to do this." Now, that's a sense of purpose!
So often our lives are dominated by negative energy over the things that we can't influence directly. We can't change how other people deal with their problems, or don't deal with them. We can't change world poverty or international wars, much as we worry about them. Yet, worry about the things and people that we can't change, can paralyze us so much that we don't have the focus and energy to devote to what we can change: ourselves. Because, we have the freedom to choose how we live our lives. If our lives are purpose-driven, we live for something beyond ourselves, and we continue to change and grow so that we can live out that purpose.
Living with a sense of purpose for our lives means being proactive, not reactive. Being proactive means knowing that we and we alone are responsible for who we are, what we do, and the choices that we make. Being reactive means painting ourselves to ourselves and to anyone who will listen as being a victim. Someone else has screwed up our life, not us. This is not true, ever.
Animals are essentially choice-less. They live by instinct: there is a stimulus, and they respond. Human beings, on the other hand, have self-awareness, imagination, a conscience, and an independent will. Others may try to shame us, manipulate us, or force us to act out of fear. We, created in God's image and likeness, are in charge of our own lives. When we know and believe in our own eternal self-worth, no one can shame us, manipulate us, or force us to act out of fear. We know we'll die some day. It's how we live that counts.
Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, a Jew, survived the worst kind of tortures, hunger, disease, fear, and manipulation; he survived life working as a slave laborer for three years in German concentration camps during World War II. He watched who lived and who died, meditated, prayed, and wrote a book about his experiences: "Man's Search for Meaning." In this book, he observed that the ones who lived had a purpose in life to live for that was greater than themselves. He observed,
"Those who have a 'why' to live can bear with almost any 'how.' When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves....We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
To discover our own purpose for living, all we have to do is ask ourselves who/what we most value in our lives. Is it our faith? Our relationships? Our jobs/ministries? Our talents? The art/music/writing we create? Our money? Our high profile? Our desire to be number one? Our health? Time is all that any of us have been given by God. What we value most is what consumes most of our time - our thoughts, our actions, our energy, our focus. Meditate on who/what you value most. Is this what you really, deep-down, choose to give your life purpose? Is this purpose something to live for that is greater than yourself? Or do you want to change? For you can only change yourself, no one else.
The maturity of human beings usually moves us from dependence on others to independence to interdependence. Interdependence in relationships means mutual and equal caring and sharing, believing in one another, and sacrificing for one another. In the depths of the moral darkness of the concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl discovered the greatest depths of meaning in life, and life's greatest purpose: love. He tells us,
"For the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of man is through love and in love."
For those who believe in God, God is Love Itself; eternal union with Love is life's ultimate purpose. Love - God - weaves us human beings together in eternal meaning and purpose, responsibility, sacrifice, and delight, hope and joy itself. Love - joy - hope - can carry us through any suffering that life has to offer. And life is always challenging us. Frankl observes, "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us."
One of the greatest enemy of a purpose-driven life is fear. Here is where God, as our ultimate meaning and purpose, helps us to face life with a lifted head and a steady heart: "For I am the Lord your God Who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, 'Do not fear, I will help you.'" When our lives are centered on God, when every morning we ask for God's guidance, we discover our priorities, and we live for a purpose much greater than ourselves - a daily yearning to discover the ways in which God calls us to love and to act. We are on fire with love for God, and for others, and that love is balanced with a healthy and wholistic love for ourselves as people of great, God-given worth. Life challenges us, and we can respond without fear. We can truly say with Joan of Arc: "I am not afraid....I was born to do this."
(With thanks to great teacher Dennis Mahaney, and his "Ministry Essentials II" adult faith formation class at St. Lawrence. )