What is the Meaning of Life?
God created us out of nothing, in love. He loved us into existence, and the whole reason He created us was that he wanted us to have the possibility of living with him forever, in perfect joy. The meaning of life is found in that.
If you're a thinking person, you've asked yourself that question, "Why am I here?" And I go back to the Baltimore Catechism. "To know him, to love him, to serve him in this life so that we can be happy with him in the life to come."
God's A plan for every man's life is that he become a saint. And his B plan is He doesn't have one. That's his only plan for every man's life, that he become a saint.
We want to imitate Christ. We want to strive to become the best version of ourselves. That's what striving to holiness is. Everything I have to do every day, each day, I do it out of love.
For men of faith the meaning of life is Jesus Christ. He is the pearl of great price. You'd sell everything else in order to have your friendship with Jesus.
We have to make sure our house is built on the rock because honestly that's the only thing that withstands the storm. Everything else in our life can disappear. Job, our physical home, the people that are closest to us, they can be taken away. But Christ is the rock that does not move. He is stationary. From this world into the next, He's the only foundation that will take us through death. So if our home is not built on Christ, if we are not imparting that faith to our children, what are we really giving them that is of ultimate eternal value?
Before anyone can become a man, he's first of all a son. And this is what is so interesting about Jesus. His two favorite words in the gospel are "Father" and "kingdom." His whole being and meaning of life comes from being the Son of the eternal Father. And I think this is really important for men to understand. Perhaps not all of us have had a terrific relationship with our biological father, but we have a heavenly father who is perfect in his Fatherhood and who loves us.
Baptism is one of the most significant days that any person will ever experience. I become God's son through the waters of Baptism. Through my Baptism, through your Baptism. God declares to us, "You're my son with whom I'm well pleased." And yet how often do you or I think about the impact of our Baptism? Let Baptism impact every day of your life from this point forward.
The word "discipline" is linked to the word "disciple". They have the same root word. If you wanna be a disciple, you have to follow the disciplines of the master. And so any man that's serious about becoming holy has to embrace certain disciplines. So from a daily standpoint, what do men need to do? They need to get up in the morning and pray and spend some time in silence. They need to read scripture and hear God's Word in scripture. And then at the end of the day they need to look back at what has happened and hold themselves accountable. What do we do on a weekly basis? Lead your family to receive the Eucharist in the Mass, it's absolutely essential to receive the graces that you need to enter into the spiritual combat. Or the monthly disciplines. The first is Confession. The other thing is to spend some time each month building a band of Catholic brothers. A fraternity of Catholic men is what's essential for men to grow into fullness of the faith.
If somebody says, "I don't have time to pray," I would ask them how many times they've looked at their phone today, how many podcasts they've listened to, how many Netflix episodes that they've watched. It's not that we don't have time to pray, it's that we don't have love to pray. Why shouldn't the first act of your day be to roll out of your bed onto your knees and to kiss a crucifix and to make an act of faith? That's something very simple, but it's something that sets us off in the right way. It's just a lie, I think, that we don't have time to pray.
In my 20's I changed my major to theater, and that really kind of launched me into trying to work in the business. I did "Karate Kid 2," "Top Gun," and I worked with Michael Mann, with DeNiro, and Pacino. I shot "Die Hard" while I was in university. See, I was about to sign the papers to shoot my own pilot, and then my agent said, "Whoa." She says, "You need to read this." Chuck Norris was saying let's do this television show with this character who's a Texas Ranger but he kicks people's butts with karate. I walked in, I go, "Chuck, I'm the only guy that really should be your partner in this." And he goes, "I know." I read the script and Chuck goes, "Yeah, that's it, that's the guy!" Man, that was amazing. For me, it was huge because immediately I was an international star. Shall we tell him, Walker? Why not? And all of this was a gift from God, but I think he was leading me to the crash. Because if I wasn't that high, then I couldn't have crashed so hard.
When I was shooting "Walker, Texas Ranger," I started to have an affair. And that precipitated a separation and then a divorce. And that was bottom for me. And everything was really about furthering my career. Running around, chasing girls, doing drugs. And so that was the way it was and that's what people expected. And that's what you looked for on the weekends. But on the outside it was like this kid is an all American, African American kid. But that's not what was going on. I had to get past that, you know, to see that that wasn't the real world. Is that where my life is? Not good. Ruinous is what it is.
One of my friends in the group asked me if I wanted to go to Mass. When I went to Mass that evening, just sitting there and the elevation of the host, the words of the liturgy, I think I heard it so very deeply. I stopped and talked to the priest, Father Bubba was his name, and I said, "Could I come in and talk to you?" And I just told him my story and then decided to look at the Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults. I came in the Church at Christmas Eve Mass in St. Rita's Church that year in 1995. I see how challenging it is for men to say, we need to sit down and pray. We're on a mission, that's our job. And so I was working seven days a week, second on the call sheet. You have to put that kind of intensity into striving to be the spiritual leader of your family. These are things that I'm learning every day.
And then I started teaching production and direction, acting, in the University of Texas system. As I say in my acting classes, life is messy, man. It really is, but God's got it all under control. And you're gonna come out on the other end in a better place. I'm a lot more trusting. I remember going through the tough times crying myself to sleep with the rosary because I needed Mother Mary. She's real gentle, she's real subtle. But she hangs with you, she sure hangs with me. Everything that I have achieved in this business it's because it was a gift from God. You gotta start the day saying "Yeah, you are God, and I am not." It's freeing, it's right, truly right, and truly just. Give thanks.
I think one of the great temptations for men is to seek power and to see other people as things to manipulate in order to get their goals. Since that's our great temptation, the important thing for us to realize is that everything we have is a gift from God, including any power we've got. St. Paul once said, "Is there anything you have that wasn't given to you by God?" And so humility becomes so important for us then, that we realize we are powerless without God.
And I know in my own life I've spent many, many years seeking to make myself perfect so I would be acceptable to my heavenly Father. But that's not the truth. God created Adam naked to be vulnerable so that Adam would need God and encounter him in that way. I am vulnerable because I need God. God desires us to be drawn into himself. In our weakness, St. Paul says, God makes us strong. And as man, I don't wanna accept that. I don't wanna acknowledge that. I wanna be powerful enough, but I'm not. I'm just as weak and vulnerable as everybody else. I need God to make up what is lacking in that.
How does this total dependence on God be manifest in our life? Everything is a gift, your life is a gift. The knowledge that my life is a gift, the knowledge that I'm a gift, that my wife's a gift, that my children are a gift, that my job's a gift, that my car is a gift, that everything I have is a pure gift from God. If we start to look at life through that lens, we start to become less selfish. Because we start to think, "I created this myself." No, you cooperated with God. You start to see that your cooperation enables all that happens with you. And it just becomes this great attitude of gratitude, and that I can do nothing good on my own, as Paul says in the epistles.
I think if men trust God's love for them, trust that he has a plan for them, that that trust will begin to move them to just live joyfully all the responsibilities that come their way and to embrace the things that break their hearts with faith. That is not to let that move them to give up on love, but rather move them to their knees, and then move them to receive from God the grace to continue to love with the help of God's mercy.
You cannot give what you do not have. Every one of is called to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, so a man needs to build in his own heart through his own virtue, through your own daily prayer, what it means to be a man of God, to really seek God's will. From there he can ask the Holy Spirit, "Holy Spirit, teach me how to lead my family." And the Holy Spirit will do it. The Holy Spirit will guide him. He'll send men into his life. He'll put the right books in his life. He'll put the right billboards, everything he needs to do that.
God is not far away.
From the Knights of Columbus
To view episodes of the Into the Breach video series and to access the study and other resources for promoting the series in your parish, visit kofc.org/intothebreach.
