Writing
these lines when the news media is filled with deep concern over the threatened
terrorists attacks against the Winter Olympics slated to begin in a few days,
when barrel bombs devastate the lives of the Syrian people, when the overdose
death of a famous actor serves as a stark reminder of the plague of addiction,
these words from the just released Lenten Message of Pope Francis are
particularly timely: …moral destitution…consists in slavery
to vice and sin. How much pain is caused in families because one of their
members…..is in thrall to alcohol, drugs, gambling or pornography! How many
people no longer see meaning in life or prospects for the future, how many have
lost hope! …..causes….invariably linked to the spiritual destitution which we experience when we turn away from
God and reject His love. If we think we don’t need God who reaches out to us
through Christ, because we believe we can make it on our own, we are headed for
a fall. God alone can truly save and free us.
Margaret
MacMillian has written a powerful book: THE WAR THAT ENDED THE PEACE, which
should be required reading for all politicians, civil servants, media people
and, frankly clergy of all religions, for in this work she outlines in detail
how the First World War came to engulf us, noting in the introduction that this
happened because:….There are many
possible explanations; indeed, so many that it is difficult to choose among
them…..arms race, rigid military plans, economic rivalry, trade wars…alliance
systems….nationalism with its unsavory riders of hatred and contempt for
others; fears, of loss or revolution, of terrorists and anarchists; hopes, for change of a better
world………….clashes between believers and the anti-clericals…
Papal teachings,
such as Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, are rooted in Sacred Scripture,
Sacred Tradition, and the writings of the saints, previous popes, and church
councils and seek to address the reality of the times in which we live.
No wonder,
given that so intensely does the shadow of the two world wars, the second
rooted in the darkness and unfinished business of the first, loom over us
still, that the explosions of resentment and changes by peoples hobbled under
imperialism, the need for a secure Jewish homeland-state turned the late
forties and much of subsequent decades in the latter part of the twentieth
century into such a period of violence and upheaval – indeed we went from the
communist revolution of the First War period in Russia to Russia being part of
the Allied effort against the Axis powers, to Russia being enemy in the cold
war, to the collapse of the Soviet Empire and all this while the moral and
spiritual destitution of the sixties took root and spreads still, AIDS became
an ongoing plague, and in the internet age people drown in oceans of
information, tweeting the banal, but failing to communicate, truly, person to
person, face to face.
Again the
weight of all this has us living in an angry, lonely, desolate, confused,
frightened world, a world as Ben Carson warns headed to a global holocaust and
a world which, [world being of course shorthand for the human family], Pope
Francis is trying to invite to step back from the abyss of darkness and death
and turn towards the radiant light of Christ, He who is the Way, the Truth and
the Life. [Jn.14.6]
Throughout
these essays a number in brackets will refer to the paragraphs in THE JOY OF THE
GOSPEL, the English title of the Apostolic Exhortation, from which quotations
are taken, thus [1]: The joy of the
Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus………[3]….whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we
come to realize that He is already here, waiting for us with open arms.
That reminds
me of Jesus’ own words when He assures us that: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and
opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with Me. [Rv.3.20]
This is
truly amazing in that we have a Beloved, a Saviour, a Comforter who so respects
our freedom, even when He clearly knows we are huddled, trembling, deep inside
ourselves behind the door of shadow-darkness, He will not force Himself within,
rather He beckons, He seeks to be invited and if invited will share with us,
permeate us with His healing communion of love.
Pope Francis
notes [52] that: In our time humanity is
experiencing a turning-point in its history….we are in an age of knowledge and
information, which has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power.
The
comforting thing about God’s power is it is never anonymous but is personal,
indeed is most fully expressed in a person: Jesus Christ.
Teenagers
especially know the anonymous power of hatred, exposure, bullying which can
hurt them cruelly through abusive use of the internet.
Governments
increasingly use the power of modern technologies to not only spy on potential
enemies, identify potential threats to the security of the homeland, but, along
with search engines, chat rooms etc., scoop up enormous amounts of information
on each of us, while cyber warfare is no longer the anonymous power of nation states
but is in fact what hackers of credit cards, bank accounts war against
individual persons.
No surprise
then that in his effort to proclaim the Gospel that we might pull back from the
brink, Pope Francis stresses [59] Today
in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and
inequality in society and between peoples is reversed, it will be impossible to
eliminate violence. The poor and the poor peoples are accused of violence, yet
without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will
find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode.
Again look
at the situation in the old empires of Europe and by extension what they
imposed across the globe, the situation in Germany between the wars, the impact
of the great depression – note too that just as alcohol and other addictions
flourished in those periods, greater enriching criminals and further
impoverishing the vulnerable, so in our day the narrow minded focus on security
in the way it is being done, rather than taking a clear eyed objective look at
the root causes of anger, hatred, despair, leaves us in a world where, since
power attracts power, the powerful are, symbolically speaking, building higher
castle walls and digging deeper moats – 9/11 and individuals walking into a
Russian train station show us no wall is too high to be brought down, no moat
too deep to be got over.
If as a
society we were to insist a dollar for dollar rate, that is every dollar spent
on security must see a matching dollar spent on social justice needs at home
and another dollar on such needs in poor countries, little by little we would
chip away at the roots of terrorism, hatred and our own fears.
This is the
revolution of tenderness, the revolution of the Gospel of Love and Life.
1 comment:
Great post!
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