Many people today find themselves in the curious position of looking down a tree. They look around at a world of beautiful and terrible things. They see life and death, warmongers and peacemakers, saints and sinners, but cannot see down to the firm roots that permit all these things to exist at once.
The Ridiculous Man begins with a children’s story about a bug in a tree. In this short fable from the prologue, an ant called Saul lived on a long branch at the top of a large oak. The branch was a world unto itself with hundreds of small twigs sprouting from it, each with thousands of leaves protruding in every direction. In this city of leaves and sticks, Saul had everything an ant could ever dream of having. He was almost happy, but he did not know how the world around him—which seemed vast—fit together or its purpose.
Saul’s situation is not unique in today’s world. Western man has more material goods than could have been dreamed of by the kings and emperors of ages past, yet is disquieted. He constantly hears scientific reports about the cosmos and environment, yet is unsure about himself. He, like Saul, is a near-infinitely small creature looking down the tree—which is to say, looking at it the wrong way.
The scope of man’s natural knowledge is indescribably narrow compared to the knowledge of He who created nature. It is not nothing, however. In absolute terms, we know a great deal about our limited field of view. Through the natural sciences, we have been able to observe and infer the natural cause of everything from the motion of stars to the movement of the particles within atoms. We know how the human body works so much so that we are capable of creating medical interventions to cure diseases which had plagued mankind since the dawn of history. The material world, as a result of our ability to observe it, is perhaps as near as it ever will be to being completely subject to human dominion. As a result of human progress in gaining this level of control, humanity has come to see little else than the material world.
Just as the most dedicated economist comes to see things in the context of incentive structures and systems of utility maximization, so does the man who spends his time enjoying the fruits of man’s vast material knowledge see things in a material context. This is understandable—he knows little else. The problem arises when one intuits that there is a world beyond what can be seen from that leaf at the top of the tree—when one sees all that is around him, but instinctively knows there is more to existence than is perceived. It is in these moments that the apathy of a known and unconnected world comes to be seen as the cruelty of a connected, but unknown world. It is here that misunderstanding may turn to misdirected indignation as unhappy coincidences begin to look like malicious plots.
From our vantage looking down the tree, we do not see how it was created—how it is being created. We do not see how the seemingly random life and death of individual cells can be beneficial. We view the atrocities of war and the untimely death of an innocent child as people not privy to the plans and permissions of creation. Our tendency is to think expansion in all direction from ours is good and healthy, but we do not see that at times it may be like growing into a powerline, causing fire and the destruction of the tree as a whole.
Mankind is created for Heaven not for infinite growth or good fortune on Earth. It is to sainthood that man is called and, painfully, wars and early deaths often create saints. What may seem random at best and cruel at worst, may just be the road for untold millions to Heaven. One only need consider how complex a plan would be necessary for God to create a universe in which billions of men and women of free will across thousands of years are given the best possible chance of cooperating with His grace in such a way as to achieve their unique salvation. It is very unlikely that a creature as inseparably bound to time and space as man would be capable of being shown such a system and seeing any semblance of sense in it. It would be like showing an ant the driving directions from Paris to Rangoon—absolute madness.
To gain whatever semblance of understanding is available to us, we must learn to view the world as God views it rather than as we view it. Where we see a movie progressing through time with unexpected twists, God sees a painting in which unforeseen twists are but striking details creating beautiful faces and separating light from darkness. In the war in Ukraine, as in any war, the Lord sees the halos radiating brightly on the heads of those who risk life and limb protecting the innocent or who humbly remain true in their faith despite being given every reason to despair. It is important to remember, therefore, that avoidance of pain is not the operative goal of the universe created by the God who entered into it as a man to take on the pain and humiliation of crucifixion for the salvation, not of Himself, but of the world which condemned Him to death. Suffering, then, need not be a cause of despair, for it is often a means of salvation. Once aware of this, it becomes clear that we are like Saul, who “was lost in the only place he knew and would only know where he was once he finally journeyed into the unknown.” All the great saints knew that they were in the world, but not of it—that this life is an Earthly pilgrimage and not our destination. Saul leaves his home and risks his life that he may find it, because just as the meaning of the world is not to be found looking about it, so too life’s meaning does not come from within the life of the individual, but from without. It takes leaving oneself behind to discover more fully who one is. “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life [for the sake of Christ], he will save it” (Luke 8:24). In this grave formula, is found the key to a life well lived. A man’s purpose is found not in himself, but in He who created man. The man who clings to himself will never find the fulfillment that comes with purpose. He will always be lost and confused amid the rustling leaves of the world for which he was not made. In order to understand the world and himself, he must leave it behind, making no provisions for the gratification of worldly desires. The frightening and awesome reality of this dying to oneself is that it is truly a death. One takes “off the old man that belongs to [his] former manner of life… and [puts] on the new man, created after the likeness of God” (Ephesians 4:22-24). The old man “sets out to discover his world by leaving it behind and is never seen again.”
Frank J. Connor is the author of The Ridiculous Man and The Progressive Reports. He is a former journalist at Fox News and worked as an analyst at a prominent bond rating agency. Frank graduated from Villanova University in 2019, where he earned a degree in economics and wrote his first book. After years of discernment, he responded to a call to the Catholic priesthood and entered the Order of Saint Augustine in the summer of 2021 where he is currently in formation.
