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We are, by our very nature, beings who search; our whole history confirms it. Many are the fields in which we seek and seek again and then find and sometimes, after having found, begin to seek again.
Among all these fields in which we are revealed as beings who seek, there is one which is the deepest. It is the one which penetrates most intimately into our very essence. It is the one most closely united with the meaning of the whole of human life.
We are creatures who seek God.
The ways of this search vary. The histories of human souls along these paths are multiple. Sometimes the ways seem very simple and near. At other times they are difficult, complicated, distant.
Now we arrive at our “eureka’’: “I have found!’’ Now we struggle with difficulties, as if we could not penetrate ourselves and the world, and above all, as if we could not understand the evil that there is in the world. But even in the context of the Nativity stories, this evil showed its threatening face.
Many have described their search for God.
Even more numerous are those who are silent, those who consider everything they have experienced along the way as their own deepest and most intimate mystery: what they experienced, how they searched, how they lost their sense of direction, and how they found it again.
We are, by our very essence, beings who seek God.
And even after finding him, we continue to seek him. As, for example, in a famous quote from the French philosopher, Pascal, Jesus says to man, “Take comfort. You would not be looking for Me if you had not already found Me’’ (B. Pascal, Pensées, p. 553: le mystère de Jésus).
This is the truth about man. It cannot be falsified. Nor can it be destroyed. It must be left to man because it defines him.
What can be said of atheism in the light of this truth? A great many things should be said, more than can be enclosed in this short address of mine. But at least one thing must be said: it is indispensable to apply a criterion, that is, the criterion of the freedom of the human spirit.
Atheism cannot be reconciled with this criterion—a fundamental criterion—either when it denies, a priori, that man is the being that seeks God, or when it mutilates this search in various ways in social, public, and cultural life. This attitude is contrary to the fundamental rights of man.
But I do not wish to dwell on this. If I mention it, I do so to show the beauty and dignity of the search for God.
Why was Christ born? Why did he come into the world? He came into the world in order that those who look for him can find him. Just as the shepherds and the magi found him.
Excerpted from an address at a general audience on December 27, 1978.
