Since the fall of humankind, we have struggled with the falling apart of civilization. In our present time, we have faced a global pandemic, wars, and continued chaos in our communities with senseless acts of violence and disorder. In the early 1920s, William Butler Yeats wrote a poem entitled, The Second Coming. Its message is strong, adult, and ultimately quite depressing. Yeats sees a certain dissolution of civilization as he has known it; things are falling apart. What is at the root of this falling apart? He answers in a single line: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Where can we find hope that in this life, we can believe in something greater than the darkness we see in the world? Fr. Rolheiser writes that it is to believe in a different credo: “I believe in the Resurrection.” I believe in the resurrection of Christ, precisely, to the degree that we believe that the center holds or does not hold, namely, to the degree that we can, in any circumstance of life, say and mean: “Lord, all things are possible for you.” And, in the end, this is not a theoretical thing, a matter of orthodoxy or raw intellectual commitment: Do I believe in God or not? Do I believe in the empty tomb? Can I say the creed and mean it? Notwithstanding that these are important, faith in the resurrection of Jesus is something more down-to-earth and ordinary. It is a practical thing, an everyday trust, a feeling, a sense, however inchoate but real, that, in the end, there is a deep anchor that is holding everything together and that we, for our part, can get on with the business of living and can live in trust, knowing that our inadequacies, failings, and even our deaths, are not the final answer. Faith is a practical thing. It is to trust that God is in charge, nothing more and nothing less. To believe in the resurrection, the essence of faith is to look at everything, including death, and believe that the center will hold.
