Oh, To Be Inspired!
Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.
Week of January 16, 2017
Can you recall that special person who has inspired you for life? It may be parents or
relatives. This person may have played a significant role in your school years, that special person
who took a personal interest in your welfare. Perhaps you are that person who has inspired
others. A fictional character in a book or a film may have had the same effect. In real life for
example, Catherine of Aragon’s unbudgeable devotion to her husband, Henry VIII, was heroic
even when he placed her under house arrest to carry on with his mistress, Anne Boleyn.
Last week, Officer Steven McDonald was given burial honors at St. Patrick’s Cathedral
because of his courage, grace, and devotion. For thirty years, he was confined to a wheel chair
because of a bullet inflicted on him by a gunman in Central Park. During the course of those
years, he came to forgive the one who inflicted irreparable suffering on him.
What Does It Mean To Be Inspired?
In 2 Timothy 3:14-17, St. Paul writes: “All Scripture given by inspiration of God, is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man
of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” The Greek
adjective θεοπνευστος, that is, theospneustos means God-inspired or God-inbreathed. It is clear
that God’s inbreathing prompts the devout man and woman to be filled with God’s Spirit at work
within.
The Latin infinitive inspirare means to breathe or blow into, to fill someone with the urge
or ability, especially the ability to do something creative, to be filled with confidence to
transcend oneself. Inspiration on the human level.
Scriptures that Inspire
We are inspired by others because they breathe into us all that brings out the best in
us.They build us up with praise and encouragement but speak the truth to us with love. We
can always become better than we are at the moment. They see in us the spark of the divine,
that spark created in God’s image, “a little lower than God, crowned with glory and honor,
wonderfully, beautifully made” (Ps 8:5).
St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d 2nd c.) writes that “the glory of God is man and woman fully
alive, but the glory of man and woman is the contemplation of God.”
The goal of men and women is not transcendence but divinization. The Eastern Fathers
never ceased proclaiming this truth: ‘God condescended to become man and live among us
that we might ascend and become as God.’ We have been created to be divinized, to be raised
up to the divine level even here in this life. The Psalmist uses the phrase, “crowned with glory
and honor.” And, didn’t Jesus exalt men and women when he said, “And I, if I be lifted up,
will draw all things to myself” (Jn 12L32)? Yes, those who inspire us see in us the spark of
the divine.
Presidential Inaugural Addresses
This week our nation will witness the inauguration of our forty-fifth President. The
Oath of Office will be followed by an inaugural address to the nation. The world will be all
ears. Will it inspire us? Will it build up our nation after a year of bitterness in politics?
In 1865, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address. At a time when
victory over the secessionists in the Civil War was within days, and slavery was near an end,
Lincoln did not gloat nor did he speak of happiness or of triumphalism. Instead, he asked the
nation to bind up its wounds. Though Lincoln’s tone was one of sadness, it inspired the
nation “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to
see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to
care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Here was the close of a secular homily that inspired a nation in deep pain.
John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address
In 1961, the nation listened to a masterpiece of rhetorical style and grace, content and
impact in 1355 words. Inspiration crowned the entire piece. In his inaugural address, John F.
Kennedy rarely spoke a sentence that failed to uplift the human spirit.
Kennedy’s address has been so critically acclaimed that it has been studied and
memorized by succeeding generations. It has become a model for all future addresses because
it was simple—102 words consisting of only one syllable; succinct—it took less than fifteen
minutes to deliver and without teleprompters; it included a universal picture that invited
participation by Americans, neighbors, allies, and foes … “to those old allies, to those new
states” . . . “to those people in the huts and villages of half the globe” . . . “to our sister
republics” . . . “to that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations,” . . . “to those
nations would make themselves our adversary.”
The address was the work of meticulous craftsmanship and mastery over the English
language with its “majesty, grandeur, and nobility contained in its extraordinary imaginative
and musical mixtures of sounds.” President Kennedy juxtaposed two opposites—“Ask not
what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country;” “we observe not a
victory of party but a celebration of freedom.” The address contained poetic elements—“to
friend and foe alike;” “we shall pay any price, bear any burden . . . .”
As he did at the beginning of his address, President Kennedy invoked divine aid at the
close of his address: “With good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge
of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but
knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”