It was fully appropriate that today, as we are mourning the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I read his famed “Harvard Address”. I do not wish to endorse or criticize any of newly reposed servant of God Alexander’s politics. I am not intelligent or well read enough to comment intelligently, but I can recognize Christian sentiments when I read them. I wish to share you something Alexander said in his Harvard address that buttresses well and fully complements the words I spoke yesterday, on Sunday.
“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Harvard Address”, delivered 8 June 1978 on the occasion of Class Day Afternoon Exercises at
Inspired words! Christian words!