Dr. Albert Rossi: Today I will reflect with you on one of the deepest questions for humans: What is the meaning of life? One way to look at the meaning of life for me—what do I have as my primary meaning of life—is to look at: What is it I do for my leisure? Or another way to ask the same question is: Wherein do I find comfort? [Laughter] If I’m really looking for comfort, do I turn to food or something else, or do I try in some way, haltingly, perhaps, to turn to God? Of course, life is a process. We try to go back and forth, I know in my own case. [Laughter] In that sense, the meaning of my life, I can say the right things, blah blah blah. But existentially, really, it shifts. I’m a human being and I don’t continuously, all the time, put God as my primary meaning of life. I just need to say that. And perhaps you don’t either.

I’m prompted to do this because of a book that I just bought called The Meaning of Life, published by Life Magazine in 1991, with interviews and responses and photographs of very famous people around the world then. Very interestingly, one of the interviewees is Fr. Thomas Hopko! [Laughter] Fr. Thomas Hopko is included with a lovely interview about what is the meaning of life, and we’ll look at that.

“Yogis ponder the question on lofty hills. Theologians and clergymen and -women study it and rephrase it and return to it again and again.” That’s the way the book opens. That’s the way the book opens, and in the Old Testament, the book of Micah answers the question, “Why are we here? What’s the meaning of life?”—answers the question with a question. Quote from Micah: “What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?”

If you don’t mind, I’m now going to read the short selection of Fr. Hopko in this book, Meaning of Life, by the Life Magazine publishers. Fr. Tom writes:

We are here for communion with God who is love, the One in whose image and likeness each one of us is made. We find this communion by loving as God loves us. Love is radical self-giving for the good of another, the denial of self by which our true selves are born. It is the emptying by which we are filled, the foolishness by which we become wise, the weakness by which we become strong. It is the dying through which we become alive for unending life.

In this world, love always entails sacrifice and suffering, fidelity and forgiveness. It is fulfilled only in death. It is our sole source of joy. My spiritual father often said that the miracle of all miracles is the ability to transform through love the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail of the routine drudgery of everyday existence into paradise; the ability to become ourselves at each moment, a fresh paradise to those around us, thereby becoming gods by grace for those who are gods to us.

Each person accepts or rejects communion with God in his or her own unique manner. For some, the way includes an encounter with Christ. For all, it includes the encounter with God’s word and spirit dwelling within us. There are in any case no techniques for its accomplishment. The act of communion comes always as grace. For those who know it, it is not life’s meaning, purpose, or goal; it is life itself. God with us, making us what God is.

[Signed:] Fr. Thomas Hopko

I would simply comment on that: it’s a brilliant analysis comparatively on these so many others who write. What jumps out at me at Fr. Tom’s wonderful essay is the claim that

The miracle of all miracles is the ability to transform through love the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail of routine drudgery of everyday existence into paradise; the ability to become ourselves at each moment a fresh paradise to those around us.

For me, that— I don’t know how to say it. That’s just—I’ll say apocalyptic. It’s like mind-shattering. The smallest detail, in seemingly insignificant detail, of routine drudgery of everyday existence. We all know that. We all do dishes; we all do laundry. We know routine drudgery. And the claim is that we have the power to transform that in terms of what is the meaning of life—to transform that into—to use Fr. Tom’s beautiful word—paradise.

I’ll now play a song to help us understand in a different way, through melody, what Fr. Tom is talking about.

Choir: God is the Lord and has revealed himself to us. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.

Cantor: All the nations surrounded me, but in the name of the Lord I destroyed them.

Choir: God is the Lord and has revealed himself to us. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.

Cantor: I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord.

Choir: God is the Lord and has revealed himself to us. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.

Cantor: The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Choir: God is the Lord and has revealed himself to us. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.

When the stone had been sealed by the Jews, and the soldiers were guarding thy most pure body, thou didst rise on the third day, O Savior, bringing life to the world. Wherefore, the hosts of the heavens cried out to thee, O Giver of life: Glory to thy resurrection, O Christ! Glory to thy kingdom! Glory to thy dispensation, O only Lover of mankind!

Dr. Rossi: That song, in a way, elevates our thinking into a different mode, different meaning-of-life mode. We’ll call it intuitive. That’s about all I can say about this very profound question, that Fr. Tom answers so, so brilliantly. With that I’ll close, asking you and me to support Ancient Faith Radio with our finances and with our prayers.