Saturday March 18 (2:00PM)
Joseph E. Davis, UVA - Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
Sr. Maria Gonzalo, Our Lady of the Angels Monastery
Have you ever been afflicted by a lack of focus, feelings of loneliness, debilitating anxieties, or inexplicable bouts of sadness, anger or despair in the midst of great personal achievements? Can advances in neurological medicine and pharmaceutical therapies heal our broken hearts, fix our troubled minds, and lead us to even greater personal triumphs? Many hope so, turning to neuro-chemical treatments that soothe our brains without bringing clarity to our difficulties and the social conditions within which we live. But is this type of happiness and lack of meaning what we truly seek? Or are there other unexplored alternatives that reveal who we are along with the realities of our everyday sufferings? Join us for a novel interrogation of these questions that exposes the limits of contemporary interpretations and the time-tested Cistercian perspective of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), who offers a salvific "compound that no pharmacist can produce."
This program is cosponsored with the Lumen Christi Institute and made possible through the support of grant #62372 from the John Templeton Foundation, “In Lumine: Promoting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide."