The Fundamental Religious Problem

"The normal man has an obscure sense of the existence of a spiritual reality and a consciousness of the evil and misery of an existence which is the slave of sensual impulse and self-interest and which must inevitably end in physical suffering and death.

"But how is he to escape from this wheel to which he is bound by the accumulated weight of his own acts and desire?

"How is he to bring his life into vital relation with that spiritual reality of which he is but dimly conscious and which transcends all the categories of his thought and the conditions of human experience?

"This is the fundamental religious problem which has perplexed and baffled the mind of man from the beginning and is, in a sense, inherent in his nature."

Christopher Dawson, Christianity and the New Age, Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia, 1985, 27-28.

Blessed Advent!