I have a confession to make: I am a trivia guy. I enjoy recalling random facts and sharing them with friends and family, and occasionally these facts are related to what everyone else in the group is talking about at the time. I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember, and I attribute i t to my parents encouraging me to read as a youngster. We always had a set of World Book Encyclopedias on the shelf in the living room, which I would pore over regularly. I never read through the whole set cover-to-cover, but I’d bet that I read something from each of the alphabetically labeled volumes at one time or another — even the last and thinnest volume, X-Y-Z. We need more facts that start with X. Recently, my office hosted a trivia night for our students at Notre Dame, and a fellow trivia-addicted co-worker and I were tasked with writing the questions. I set to researching saints, food, and drink, since those are some of my favorite topics. Did you know that the legendary Dom Pérignon, whom we associate with champagne, was a real 17th-century Benedictine monk? Or that St. Joseph of Arimathea is the patron saint of morticians and funeral directors because he gave his own tomb for the burial of the Lord Jesus? Or that the Clementine citrus fruit was developed by (and named after) a brother of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit who ministered at an orphanage in Algeria? Those are facts! The word “trivia” itself comes from the Latin name to describe the point where three roads would meet. Travelers from different directions would often meet at such points, and they might engage in light conversation. This led to the connotation of “trivial things” being these sorts of exchanges that carried no great meaning — snippets of facts that seem to be of less importance in the grand scheme of life. I remember as a kid, not more than 10 or 12 years old, watching a group of adults play Trivial Pursuit for the first time. They were having such fun together, and it delighted me that I knew some of the answers even at that tender age, as I had read about them in the encyclopedias and books that were my constant childhood companions. I was learning, even if it wasn’t in a systematic way. St. Isidore of Seville, who died in 636 and is counted among the Doctors of the Church, is credited with compiling the first encyclopedia, a compendium of knowledge wherein he quoted more than 200 ancient writers and thinkers and set them in an orderly fashion. His book included discussions of grammar, theology, medicine, geography, law, the physical sciences, agriculture, games, clothing and even how to tie knots and build furniture. His work was the standard textbook in monastic libraries and schools for nearly a thousand years, until the Italian Renaissance. It might seem odd to us that a bishop would spend his time compiling an encyclopedia, but to him and his contemporaries, the work was a form of evangelization. All creation is an expression of God’s abundant goodness, and the Creator delighted in His work from the beginning. As we read in Genesis, God looked upon all that He had made and declared that “it was very good” (1:31). The more we learn and discover about the created world, the more we come to know the One who created and sustains all things. The work of scientists, engineers, astrophysicists and mathematicians, as much as the reflective work of theologians and philosophers, serves to reveal the splendor of God’s creation and to situate our place in it. Many of the great scientists have been people of faith. Father Gregor Mendel, the “father of genetics,” was an Augustinian friar. Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who helped discover the theory of nuclear fission and converted to Lutheranism as an adult. Father Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest, is credited with the concept of the “big bang theory” (as in, the beginning of cosmological time and the expansion of the universe, not the popular TV show). Scientific discoveries and technological advances are not, however, without their challenges, and the Church constantly invites us to reflect on each new development in the light of the Gospel. As Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Sí, “our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience. Each age tends to have only a meager awareness of its own limitations. It is possible that we do not grasp the gravity of the challenges now before us” (No. 105). All of us have a role to play in our collective reflection upon the great challenges of our day. As Catholics, we have the grace of the sacraments to continually form and reform our hearts, to help us discern the path of charity and truth. In his High Priestly prayer at the Last Supper, Jesus promised to send “the Spirit of truth, He will guide you to all truth” (Jn 16:13). As the world around us seems to move ever faster and faster with artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and trips to the moon and back, it is never too late to turn to the Spirit of truth and ask for guidance in what we are to do. As St. Francis lay dying in the little chapel he had rebuilt at Christ’s invitation, he told his brothers, “I have done what is mine to do; may Christ teach you what is yours.” To listen to God’s call in our own hearts, and then to do it — that is no trivial matter. Ken Hallenius and his wife, Julie, are parishioners at St. Joseph Catholic Church in South Bend. The post A Non-Trivial Pursuit appeared first on Today's Catholic. ...read more read less