SAT, FEB 18, 2023
11:30 AM ET | FLOOR 1

Someone With Me

A conversation on this year's Encounter theme with Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., and Msgr. Erik Varden, O.C.S.O., Bishop of Trondheim, Norway

The 2023 Encounter, explores how—amidst growing uncertainty about how to face life, and especially the mystery of evil—many of us yearn to be seen and affirmed by someone in flesh and blood who defeats our loneliness. We long to be accompanied in life by a father or a friend who is certain of its meaning, and to discover our identity within this relationship. Bishop Erik Varden has reflected deeply on the most profound dimensions of our humanity in the course of his journey, as he describes in his book The Shattering of Loneliness. Here is an excerpt from his introduction:

"I was close to 16 and I was developing an interest in Mahler. Having splashed my savings on a CD player, I bought a Bernstein recording of his Second Symphony, the Resurrection. The Christian significance of the theme was known to me but left me cold. Although I had been baptized, I had never affirmed belief. If anything, I was hostile. Christianity appeared to me a wishful flight away from the inner drama I was trying to negotiate, which was full of ambivalence, far distant from the studied certainties of preachers. Mahler, to me, was about harmonics and instrumentation. Nevertheless, as I listened to the symphony, I could not remain aloof. I had not expected to be so moved ... Before disbelief had time to configure, it was hushed by voices singing of a hope that must, in secret, have gestated in my depths, for I recognized it as mine:

Have faith, heart, have faith: nothing will be lost to you.
What you have longed for is yours, yes, yours; yours is what
you have loved and fought for. Have faith: you were not
born in vain. You have not lived or suffered in vain.

At these words, something burst. The repeated insistence, 'not in vain, not in vain', was irresistible. It was not just that I wanted to believe it. I knew it was true. It sounds trite, but at that moment, my consciousness changed. With a certainty born neither of overwrought emotion nor of cool analysis, I knew I carried something within me that reached beyond the limits of me. I was aware of not being alone. There was no special warmth, no ecstatic inner movement. There were no tears. But I could no more doubt the truth of what I had found than I could doubt that I existed. The sense of it has never left me. That this should be so amazes me still."

Bishop Varden will explore this year's Encounter theme in conversation with Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Papal Nuncio to the U.S. They will help the audience appreciate the meaning and relevance of being in a relationship with “someone who knows me and, inexplicably, cares for me.”