Captivated by Truth

As the weeks of Advent inch to their end, the weeks of many academic semesters near their end, too. So the liturgical season tugs on our longing for salvation and holiness while the academic calendar stirs up students’ and teachers’ longing to be out of the thick of exams, essays, and late-night study sessions. But there is something to be gained from that mire of intellectual work, something that goes beyond good grades and useful degrees – and indeed, it’s something that has a lot to do precisely with that Advent longing.

Sometimes it’s assumed that intellectual work has little to do with a person’s spiritual life. The former is thought to fall into the realm of what’s “objective,” for instance – it has to do with coming to terms with hard facts and arguments about matters that go beyond just oneself. The latter, on the other hand, is viewed as having to do with what’s “subjective” – as dealing in one’s own internal, personal experience.

But in fact, study can and does have something serious to do with the holy life of a disciple. Saint Paul says: “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Our conversion involves bringing our own internal, personal experience into contact with the real. We’re meant to come upon “hard facts” that refer not just to technical disciplines but to those high truths for which we’re made … those truths about who we are, where we’re going, and what we’re made for. The search for that sort of wisdom is at the heart of a Christian calling; it’s part and parcel to what we’re made to do. 

The Church Fathers saw this. In the midst of the pagan societies they were living in, they used to call baptism “illumination.” They were mainly referencing an illumination of mind that the sacrament was meant to initiate – a honing and brightening of one’s sight toward all that is real and true. So for Christians, study, too, can be a pursuit of this illumination of mind. It can be a way of becoming what we are, as creations made in the image of the Logos.

So: for students, for scholars, for every human person with a mind, it’s good to remember that it’s actually part of our spiritual mission to study well. To learn to think and live in line with God’s mind. To allow our minds to be gripped and captivated by the truth, as much as they’re able to, such that a longing to be in communion with that truth is as much a fruit of our intellectual endeavors as any other spiritual practice. There are great graces available in the nitty gritty of end of term assignments and exams and essays, then – “transformation,” as Saint Paul says, indeed. Let’s be ready to receive it.