Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [164]
Moreover, it is from the object that the attitude derives not only its moral sign but its distinctive note and quality. We know nothing definite about the specific quality of an act of love or of fear, of a mood of joy or enthusiasm, until we know the object to which it is directed.
Its value lies secondly in its consonancy with the hierarchy of values
The value-test of an attitude lies, secondly, in whether the intensity of our response, the role which an object plays in our soul’s life, is consonant with the objective order of values. Thus, our joy about someone’s conversion should be greater than our delight in a brilliant intellectual achievement.
Above all, what is intrinsically important or noble should delight us more than what is merely agreeable to us: for example, we should rejoice at having found God more than at having gained some earthly treasure.
Hence, it follows that so long as we have not found God it is good for our spirit to be restless. Suppose the mere possession of earthly goods could satisfy us to the point of undisturbed happiness: this would mean a counterfeit happiness, a false harmony, and therefore a negative value. To be sure, we have seen (in Chapter 11) that earthly goods never can really gratify our longing; but the illusion that they can do so is obviously worse than valueless.
Inner peace is possible only in God
So long, then, as we ate separated from God, as we have not found Him and are not reconciled with Him, we should have no peace. Blessed are the Advent souls, unsatisfied in the world, awakened to the truth that God alone can give lis true peace, witnesses to St. Augustine’s, “Restless is our heart until it reposes in Thee.” Unhappy, however, are the restless who find not God, though He has spoken to us; who flee communion with God; who refuse due response to the fact of our redemption by Christ.
Those who are content in this world are farthest from God
We must not seek peace for its own sake, and on no account must we seek any and every kind of peace, but seek God and content ourselves with that peace which He alone can give our soul. Those restless in the world are nearer to God than those satisfied in the world. For the former at least take account of Truth insofar as they (in this fundamental sense) give the world the response due to it, and experience the objective evil of separation from God subjectively, too, as the evil it is. But they are unblest insofar as they do not recognize the whole Truth but pass by the true metaphysical situation of man—and, in particular, the radical change it has undergone owing to the Redemption—without yielding to it the right response.
Our transformation in Christ necessarily implies true inward peace. Yet, those are most remote from God who possess a false peace; those who, absorbed by purely terrestrial goods, are sated and content without God; those who smugly reject the knowledge that no creaturely thing can ultimately quench our thirst; those who escape being disquieted by the incertitude of the future and the impermanency of all earthly things, because they are too busy with the concerns of the moment ever to collect themselves at all. They live thoughtlessly as though this life were never to end; as though the warning which the holy Church addresses to us on Ash Wednesday, “Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return,” had no validity for them.
Some of them squander away their lives in shallow pleasures; others, again; are so engrossed in their daily concerns that, though not leading an agreeable life at all, they simply find no time to stop and think. The complete enslavement of their attention to the practical task immediately ahead deprives them of any leisure for feeling their want of peace. Like beasts of burden, they tread along their path in dull monotony, without ever becoming sufficiently awake to feel