We are all familiar with the funny image of the philosopher:  someone who walks around with his head in the clouds, tripping over things on the ground.  The absent-minded professor, we call these ones who think no practical thoughts, but only talk about esoteric and abstract things.  How different is the traditional, the classical image of the philosopher.  We may find it surprising, but in olden times the figure that often came to mind was of someone much more like a child.  Yes, a child – full of wonder at things, existence, a wonder that Aristotle said is the beginning of all philosophy.  “It was through the feeling of wonder,” he wrote, “that men now and at first began to philosophize."

     What happened?  Why the change in our image of “the philosopher”?  Well, it seems to me, the image that we have of the philosopher changed, because the questions philosophers ask have changed.  With the child, in solidarity with youth, the philosopher used to ask the “Why?” and “What?” questions:  “Why do I exist?” – “Why does anything at all exist?” – “What’s it all about, Alfie?” – “Why is it that things seem to be moving toward a goal – an acorn to an oak tree – and yet they then die and seemingly just dissolve into nothing?” – “Why do human beings, who also die, still have intimations of some kind of unendingness?”  And so forth.  In the arrival of modernity, so-called philosophers have given up on these questions; they now tend to ask only the “How?” and “How to?” questions.  This leads them into ever smaller and more isolated areas of specialty, and they no longer really share the deep-seated, the child’s interest in mystery of the universe.

     I have always been more sympathetic to classical, traditional philosophy, with the viewpoint of the child.  But at the same time, there is something to the modern abandonment of real philosophy:  after all, centuries and centuries have passed, and the greatest thinkers of many times and places have all been asking pretty much the same questions, and yet coming up with answers that seldom, if ever, really agree.  Still though, one has to think, if all the best minds of the past were all asking the same questions, then it is most likely that the questions are the right ones, the important ones.  But the answer?  The answer always seems to be just out of reach, hovering just above or beyond human reason.  And the moderns have decided that philosophy cannot find the answer, at least not in its fullness.  And they are right.

     But they are wrong to think that philosophy cannot find the answer because there is no answer, because things are simply meaningless.  They are wrong to tell us that it is best to stop asking the questions and get on with fixing the flat tire, trying to recover from that failed relationship, seeking some solace in entertainment and distractions of all kinds – you know the “modern” viewpoint, yes, that defeatist philosophy:  “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die” and “carpe diem” (seize the day!).

     Problem is, these sayings are not modern at all; they are thousands of years old.  These are the sayings of the classical pagans – mentioned by St. Paul in today’s second reading – who have given up on trying to find the answer to the riddle of life and simply give themselves over to the pleasures of the moment.  Sure, there were among them some who were noble in their aspirations for something higher than riotous, selfish and decadent living.  But by the time of the coming of Christ, things were rather bad off; we hear the pagan despair from one Pontius Pilate, who looks right into the bruised and beaten face of Jesus Christ and asks – perhaps even with some honesty – “What is truth?”

     Not a childlike question.  Rather, an adult question, full of ennui, boredom, discontent – what used to drive people to the shelter of religion.  And there were many kinds and styles of religion (like modern America’s menu of faddish spiritualities), religions that did not articulate a real answer to the philosophical questions, but rather offered a kind of relief in mystery, obscurity, ritual, with some vague teaching about an after-life.  The religionists and the philosophers did not get along, obviously.  They were worlds apart by the time that the Christian story begins.

     And that of course is exactly why this story is so fascinating, so appealing, especially to children.  For Jesus seemed to relish trying to awaken in His hearers those nagging, perennial questions about life, meaning, purpose, death and the possibility (oh so deeply longed for) of liberation from guilt and death itself.  Examine His parables, and you will see what I mean.  But then our Lord would not offer, as an answer to these discomfiting questions, a formula, a technique of meditation, an 8-fold path.  He always and everywhere had only one answer to human longing for meaning and forgiveness:  Himself.  “I myself am the bread of life,” Christ exclaimed in today’s Gospel, “No one who comes to me shall ever be hungry, no one who believes in me shall thirst again.”

     That’s why Christianity, Catholicism, has always been friendly to philosophy and philosophers.  They, God bless them, were asking the right questions.  And that’s why the Church looks upon the essence of every religion as something worthy of investigation and correction, because the major religions of the world knew, deep down, that the answer to these troubling questions had to be mysterious, as mysterious as any real relationship has to be, especially a relationship with God.  Philosophy articulated the pressing questions about life and prepares the mind to receive the answer.  But the answer has to be revealed, not simply “figured out.”  That revelation is Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God’s communication of Himself – the sum of all answers – to us.

     “Faith seeking understanding,” is the Catholic motto.  Faith (that is, religion) seeking understanding (that is, the philosophical endeavor), a very unusual combination in the history of the world, and that’s because the answer is unique to Christianity, Jesus Christ Himself, who urged the people around Him to ask in their hearts those childlike questions so that they then would look intelligently to Him, at what He was saying, at what He was doing (especially as He was dying upon the cross and rising from the grave) and see that He is indeed the Answer.  “I am the bread of life,” the food for which your soul, your heart is longing.  “I am,” He said over and over and over again; “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Follow the childlike questions to the only Answer.  “I am,” Christ proclaimed.  “Follow me.”