Vanitas and Caritas

[Sylvia L Edwards]

Crawford Kilian published the following (in slightly different form) in a
Vancouver paper five years ago; he offered it to another list as a gift of
the season, with wishes for a happy and challenging new year. I forward it
as a wlm.
>
>Vanitas and Caritas
>
>Even when Rome ruled the world, and Judea was one of its backwater provinces,
>the Romans had need of a terrible word: vanitas.
>
>We know it today as "vanity," but to the Romans it didn't mean trivial
>self-admiration. It meant emptiness, a sense that life is futile and without
>meaning. Today we still dread that emptiness. We live in a world of language,
>of symbolic meaning; we want to be symbols ourselves, to feel that our lives
>have meaning and purpose beyond the simple living of them.
>
>Vanitas: Over seven decades of war and oppression, scores of millions died to
>defend or to oppose the Soviet Union. Their sacrifices were in vain. The
>U.S.S.R. collapsed, the only state to wither away as Marx had foretold.
>
>Vanitas: To combat the Soviet threat, America turned itself into the world's
>policeman. To justify its military spending, it terrified its own people with
>Red scares. Having legitimized communism as a serious alternative to
>capitalism, the U.S. then crushed, subverted, or punished Third World nations
>that chose that alternative.
>
>Vanitas: After 50 years of hot and cold war, the American people seem
>addicted to violence. They even entertain their children (and ours) with
>movies and cartoons showing violence as the only means to safety, happiness,
>and a meaningful life.
>
>Vanitas: Some men try to find meaning in their lives by acts of violence--and
>pervert even that meaning by harming women instead of using violence to
>protect them.
>
>The greatest vanitas of all is the belief that the getting and spending of
>wealth, and the rule of the weak by the strong, gives meaning to our lives.
>We build shopping malls that are true Vanity Fairs, temples of emptiness. Our
>children drift through them, waiting for something meaningful to happen.
>Nothing does. Nothing can.
>
>Whether in ancient Rome or modern North America, vanitas dominates rulers and
>ruled alike. So we turn our politics into soap opera, and amuse ourselves
>with celebrity rape and murder trials.
>
>The Romans had another word: Caritas. It meant "costliness," but the early
>Christians changed its meaning to "love"--a costly love indeed, that sets the
>value of a human being, any human, far above gold or power or even life
>itself. We have corrupted its meaning into "charity," the support of the poor
>in ways that keep them poor. And we have corrupted Christmas, a celebration
>of caritas, into something more like a Roman holiday of gluttony and
>gladiators.
>
>Christ called the Romans' bluff, just as he calls ours. We may not accept his
>answer, but we cannot escape his terrifying, exhilarating question: *What do
>you mean?*
>
>Simply to ask it implies a response: That we may indeed mean something, that
>we can both give caritas and receive it. But if we are to love others as we
>love ourselves, we must first, indeed, love ourselves.
>
>Vanitas tells us we are worthless, undeserving of love, without some
>transient quality--youth, beauty, wealth, fame, power. Caritas says we are
>each of us precious in ourselves, and therefore deserving of all the love,
>respect, and care we need. That we are capable as well of giving such love,
>respect, and care to others.
>
>And that life without them is indeed vain and meaningless.
>
>Crawford Kilian
>Capilano College
>North Vancouver, BC Canada
>cki...@hubcap.mlnet.com
>

Sylvia Edwards