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One frequently finds articles and stories online about how hard it is for poor kids who have been admitted to Ivy League or other high-end, prestigious universities. Despite the financial assistance they receive, it is not enough to afford them everything they need, much less make it possible for them to keep up materially and experientially with those kids from affluent families. The universities, confronted with their discomfiture, promise to do even more.
Personally, I was more fortunate. My parents had the means and the willingness to pay my tuition and fees. I had to work to pay my other living and recreational expenses. Even so, I could not dream of doing or having what the affluent kids at my school enjoyed. My dad came from no financial means at all. He worked and earned everything it took all the way through a dozen years of grad school, by the end of which he had a wife, a house, and three kids. Even then, it was nonetheless an example of not being able to afford everything you need.
In hindsight, I do not consider myself deprived, though at the time there may have been some lament. Everybody notices what others have that they do not. When I hear stories of college students’ suffering, I recall my own experience, which makes me want to holler at them: Of course you don’t have everything you want or need! Of course you resent those who do have it! Of course this causes friction in your relationships and disappointment in your lot!
Not only material things cause this friction and disappointment. The same effect comes from the inevitable human shortfall in physical appearance and ability; social skills, friends, and relationships; academic and leadership ability; and even families – especially if there be a lack of loving parents who are still married to one another. Aware of what we lack, we see or presume that others have it. The result is a separation among people, a perceived distance of experience and expectation that leads to resentment and envy.
It is a short and logical step from experiencing this universal insufficiency and disappointment to thinking that one is being willfully or programmatically deprived. The groaning students contrive, or are instructed by reporters, politicians, or professors, that this grief and sadness is somebody’s fault, an intentional privation, a contrived and imposed privation, perhaps on the basis of disability, ethnicity, sex, or some other such identity. Friction develops into accusation and conflict.
But this alienation is characteristic, even symptomatic of the human experience; the wealthy, handsome, and successful themselves do not escape it. It is the result and evidence of original sin; we all experience it. No program or payment can level this playing field or equalize this balance. No human effort can eliminate the distance and disappointment that grows between souls.
There is only one place where such alienation is itself completely alien, and that is the inmost being of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nothing is withheld, everything is offered, all is received and gratitude returned. This is perfect love, lived, offered, and sustained. This is what we lack.
The unspeakable mystery of the Holy Trinity is no arcane point of theology, but the ground of our being, and its goal. God alone withholds nothing. To allow the Spirit of Truth (to) guide (us) to all truth is be rescued from our alienation from God, from our true selves, and from one another.
Monsignor Smith
