Sunday, November 14, 2010

Seek and You Shall Find...

From a video posted during the week, I've taken an extract of the discussion between Fr. Peyton and Marshall McLuhen on Faith.

Fr. Peyton: I'd like to say that once upon a time you knocked on the door of the Church. You found something in there. You are a man so rich with blessings of intellect and other resources and yet you came up to the door of the Church to knock on it and to say 'I want to get inside'. Would you elaborate on that.


Marshall McLuhan: It's not the sort of story I'm really accustomed to talking about. In my own case, as a student of literature and the Arts I became aware of the enormous role the Church had played in underpinning these great human activities over the centuries. I was aware that the Church had always been on the side of art and intellect, and that the effects of the Church therefore were everywhere for men to see and admire. But the causes remain hidden. And as an approach to the causes I became curious to know what one had to do. And having as it were surveyed the world of conventional, historical, apologetics, argumentation and so on from many sides, I became aware that if you are really going to test the reality of the Church, you have to test it on its own ground. And the Church as a ground demands that we approach it by prayer. And I simply decided to meet that need of prayer as an approach to the Church and simply to ask "Show me, is it true? Just show me" and the evidence came unexpectedly and from many quarters, and unmistakeable, and I think that it might be a rather interesting scientific experiment for any non-believer, as they are called, to simply get down on his knees for a few hours every week and demand that that he be shown the reality of this unknown thing. And it doesn't depend, as anybody will soon discover, it does not depend upon concepts, theories, ideas. It is a thing with a life that is available to all who want to share in that life. But it must be demanded! "Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you." But you have to knock, and you have to knock pretty hard.

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