Trusting to Cosines
July 9, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL TRUSTING TO COSINES /~\NE cannot be sure that the world is built on ideals, ^"^ but it is certainly established on cosines. The cosines are everywhere, flanked...
...Death dangles at the end of every cable which even momentarily disregards the mandate imposed upon it...
...Everywhere a rule governs, and the Tightness of the rule is proved by the success with which it eliminates disaster and fosters improvement...
...Use of the sacraments, instruction and participation in the liturgy are mass instrumentalities through which the largest possible number are to be influenced...
...The train sped through the air, on rails at a dizzy height," he writes...
...This he needs to adjust to the rhythm of God's will, as revealed in his own soul and especially in the Church...
...The cosines are everywhere, flanked by their mathematical kinfolk, and we consort with them as confidently and unconsciously as we live with air and water...
...And indeed many Americans must have wondered how that elevated can dash round sharp corners between which and the ground there is nothing but a hundred feet of atmosphere...
...What is quite as noteworthy is the fact that several different kinds of retreat-making now exist, from among which one can choose that best suited to his needs and temperament...
...It is seldom, indeed, that we reflect upon the amazing extent to which our lives are enmeshed in formulae...
...It will reveal to the soul the laws of its own life, so that it can participate in the work of the Church as a whole with greater understanding and effectiveness...
...But—and the matter is of the greatest importance—neither lighting nor thinking nor worship can be lawless or freakishly revolutionary...
...Men living under industrial conditions cannot achieve happiness according to an agricultural formula...
...But there is a middle ground between, which has been found especially appropriate for our time...
...The religious life properly so called is the "perfect" method to which a few are called...
...Elevators, little cages made to conform with natural laws as intricate as metaphysics itself, carry nonchalant human freight up and down, up and down...
...If the cars tumble, we shall see what happens...
...Matter as such does nothing...
...It also involves the individual and the individual's methods of action...
...Nothing of the sort in Chicago...
...Science is, therefore, basically the art of adjusting the implements used by man to principles latent in the universe...
...Plato seems to have thought that nature could be reduced ultimately to these tenuous skeletons of geometry...
...Nor is this any longer necessary...
...Every man has something which might be termed his spiritual rhythm—the organic movement of his personality down ways especially appointed for him...
...and there could hardly be a more hopeful index to the vigor of religious yearning in our time...
...Electric lighting cannot be controlled by the principles which govern kerosene lamps...
...Essentially this movement is a practical way of applying a part of the system of monastic life to the spiritual circumstances of the average man...
...The thousand and one other mechanical devices we use without taking thought repose fundamentally upon nothing more substantial than an equation...
...In the realm of religion the legislation written into the Mosaic code was no longer wholly adequate after Christ had profoundly altered the orientation of the personality...
...The engineer and the mathematician have arranged it all according to their intangible laws—incidence and the rest of those rules which are as easily learned nowadays as any irregular verbs...
...and if he had seen the city of the twentieth century, he might well have fancied that he was looking at illustrations for some weird philosophical poem...
...Life does change just as the instruments which serve life change...
...Accordingly we find the Church stressing constantly the formulae by the use of which this kneading process can be effected...
...Trains race over curves in plotting which no miscalculation has been allowed...
...We advocate Catholic Christianity because we believe it reposes upon a positive and credible Revelation, but we also advocate it because we find that it forestalls human catastrophe and promotes betterment...
...How queer, in consequence, is the notion that human living can escape thraldom to formulae, or the accompanying notion that such rules as exist change with time and place...
...Water for the morning bath comes down routes neatly traced according to the mandates of gravity and pressure...
...Ignatius, or to some similar method, increases...
...As a school, or a time of training, it has excellencies which cannot be too widely advertised...
...A recent visitor to the United States, Georges Duhamel, had an inkling of this while riding on the Chicago elevated...
...Only one must remember that the whole of this Christianity is not contained in any simple set of general rules, knowledge of which will suffice...
...Summer after summer, the number of those who submit themselves to the "exercises" of St...
...It would be an incomprehensible idea were it not for the truth it conceals...
...An automobile that fails to adjust its speed to an improperly constructed bend in the road is smashed in a mass of twisted iron...
...Let them go jauntily on, over rails like gleaming suspended swords...
...and though no one can tell where it ends and law (or form) begins, everybody realizes that two distinct things are present and that one is obedient to the other...
...Our Paris metro is hemmed in with illusory balustrades, which doubtless would not hold it back if it decided to leave the road...
...Each human being faces the task of saving not "a" soul, but his soul, with all the unfathomable individuality which the personal pronoun implies...
...Thus the general law can become the specific rule, for the advantage of one and all...
...This is the retreat movement, now flourishing so notably in this country and in other lands...
...Whenever this fact is lost sight of, disaster follows...
...The doctrinal, sacramental and liturgical truth according to which the Faith is operative must be kneaded in with the particular, though seemingly inconsequential, life of every man...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 10
