We can find happiness in all circumstances, as Russian author and philosopher Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did even in a Soviet labor camp, said University of St. Thomas Catholic Studies professor David Deavel during an Upper Room conversation on the desire for happiness, livestreamed Feb. 25.
“It’s certainly not a notion of happiness that’s dependent on outward circumstances, but it’s something we can really find if we’re dedicated to prayer and to being patient, waiting on the Lord to speak to us and to touch our hearts in such a way that we know again what we are,” said Deavel, who also is editor of the university’s Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, and attends Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul.
Dave Deavel
The discussion, available on Facebook and YouTube, was hosted by Vincenzo Randazzo, evangelization manager for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office of Marriage, Family and Life.
The Upper Room is a monthly series of informal livestreamed video discussions presenting a Catholic view of current issues. The hour-long conversations combine evangelization and catechesis while emphasizing human dignity.
Randazzo and Deavel delved into topics including the Church’s view of happiness and suffering, the role of the conscience and redefinition of the human person.
Some questions referred to a recently published book Deavel edited with Jessica Hooten Wilson titled, “Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West.”
In the collection of essays, scholars and thinkers consider the writing and thought of the 20th century Russian writer, philosopher, historian and critic of the Soviet Union and communism who spent eight years in a Soviet Gulag, or labor camp, and later lived in the U.S.
Solzhenitsyn discovered God during his suffering and heard God’s voice in his conscience, Deavel said.
Vincenzo Randazzo
“If we understand that the biggest problems are internal, that the line between good and evil runs right down the middle of the human heart, it’s our choice to follow the voice of God in conscience in our heart,” he said.
That will determine whether we have real happiness independent of external circumstances and can still discover God’s will and experience his love, Deavel added.
When asked about efforts to redefine the human person, Deavel noted that people have to recognize human nature and how God made man in his image, as male and female, to achieve happiness. Seeing ourselves as creatures means we don’t have to be ashamed of how God made us or find a new way of being, he said.
When Randazzo later asked whether Solzhenitsyn found silence in his relationship with God, Deavel explained how the writer quietly retreated from the fast pace of American life.
“He talked about our world as a constant stream of stuff coming at us and he understood that if you don’t have a shutoff valve you can be overloaded by all the stuff coming in,” he said. “You can miss that experience of spiritual depth that is possible when you’re quiet and wait on God and actually respond to God in a real way.”
Was Solzhenitsyn’s ability to find happiness during great suffering evidence of a maturing of soul? Randazzo asked.
The Russian said that freedom isn’t in the “low sense of happiness,” of experiencing good things, but in leading a heroic life, Deavel said.
It’s the habit of doing the right thing, he said. “One of the first things he said is we can just simply refuse to live by lies, not believe them, not listen to them and certainly not repeat them. … That’s the first step, living in the truth, expressing the truth and then acting on the truth.”
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