BY ERIN MADDEN
“We are all pilgrims of the Absolute,” said the Rev. Peter Cameron OP, editor-in-chief of the prayer aid, Magnificat, on Tuesday evening in the Gentile Gallery.
Around one hundred students were in attendance for the talk entitled “How to be a Pilgrim of the Absolute.”
“I started to wonder if anything really had meaning, if there was really any kind of a purpose to life,” said Cameron as he started his talk by giving a little bit of his own experiences of coming to the Absolute.
Quoting the book Pilgrim of the Absolute by Leon Bloy, Cameron said, “God has given me the feeling, the need, the instinct…of the Absolute.” He said that God cannot quench our desires for the Absolute.
“To be a pilgrim of the Absolute is that we are asked to live simply by our desires,” said Cameron.
He said that we should not doubt these desires even though we may not know how to fulfill them.
Cameron gave the example of the rich young man found in the Gospels as also being a pilgrim of the Absolute. The rich young man realized that all the possessions and pleasures he had could not fulfill the desires of his own heart, so he chose to listen to the Absolute God. Cameron said in the end that the rich young man gave all that he had and followed Christ more closely than even the Apostles.
Senior Allison Barrick said that the talk “gave really good insight into certain areas of our lives, specifically our spiritual lives, but also, even scripturally, going into the example of the young man gave me insight into the Scriptures that I never thought of before.”
Freshman Nate Pultorak was “really impressed by what Father said about the rich young man… that he’s a recurring character who undergoes a closer relationship with Christ.”
This talk was sponsored by Franciscan University Chapel Ministries and was the first in the Distinguished Speaker Series.