Karenina and the given

Not wanting to give away the dramatic ending to Tolstoy’s masterpiece, Anna Karenina, which I finished today, I will just tell you that it’s worth your time. Not only did I find myself oscillating between sympathy and hatred for various characters, but sometimes for the same character. His way of dealing with the more profound questions of life certainly reaches its pinnacle in the end that cannot be reached except by making the whole trip. He doesn’t spare us even the smallest struggle.

What emerged for me as the most salient point was the trajectory of various characters towards madness or openness. Those who remained open to an answer to the questions that so many others escaped only to end in madness, discovered in themselves something new: a newness that, as one character says, “...I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given, because I could not have got it from anywhere.” Only one who is open, who allows oneself to be opened, can be able to receive such a revelation.

Providentially, this same thought was enunciated by St. Gregory of Nazianzen in this morning’s Office of Readings: Recognize to whom you owe the fact that you exist, that you breathe, that you understand, that you are wise, and, above all, that you know God and hope for the kingdom of heaven and the vision of glory, now darkly as in a mirror but then with greater fullness and purity. You have been made a son of God, coheir with Christ. Where did you get all this, and from whom?

A life that is not open to the possibility of newness ends in madness, because the infinite desire of the heart cannot be repressed or shackled. Only openness, openness to the unexpected and unforeseen, can open the door to the depth of life. It is given...always given through life. 

Tolstoy’s genius: I looked for an answer to my question. And thought could not give an answer to my question—it is incommensurable with my question. The answer has been given me by life itself. So into life we go, with all of our questions and curiosity: open to the answer that the Maker of all things holds out to us. The Answer that took on flesh and dwells among us.