Several
years ago news came out about the discovery of human remains at the bottom of a
deep rock shaft in Spain.
Some thirty
skeletons were found, with clear indications of murder.
The remains
have been dated as being some 400,000 years old.
In his book,
HOMO DEUS, Yuval Hararai notes that: “From the Stone Age to the age of steam,
and from the Arctic to the Sahara, every person on earth knew that at any
moment their neighbours might invade their territory, defeat their army,
slaughter their people and occupy their land.”
Perhaps
those thirty human beings, whose remains were found in Spain, died in such an
invasive battle, or perhaps they simply belonged to the wrong tribe or clan or
worshipped some deity not accepted by their killers.
While
certainly in the 20th century we experienced wars on a massive
scale, of the type Hararai speaks of, within those wars the greatest acts of
hatred-murder were committed by the Nazis in the death camps, and only since
the Second World War have we discovered irrefutable evidence of other mass
murders such as throughout the gulag and even more recently have we been
confronted with 9/11 and every terrorist act since then.
Bl. John
Henry Cardinal Newman once noted that: “Prejudice, after all, is superior to
facts, and lives in a world of its own.”
In the 4th
chapter of Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel, we are confronted with the
first recorded instances of self-pity, jealously, rage, fratricide, murder in
Sacred Scripture.
Since God
alone sees the truth within every human heart, thus the Sacred text points
clearly to Cain’s heart being deeply infected with self-centered-self-pity,
jealous rejection of his brother Abel.
Thus within
Cain an infection spreads from the heart to the mind to angry, hate-filled
murder.
Cain’s
sarcastic lie, when challenged by God after the murder, about having no idea
where his brother is and rejecting his responsibility as the elder brother to
lovingly, protectively care for his sibling, is summarily dealt with by God who
informs Can that Abel’s blood cries out from the very earth.
“This is how we know who the children of God are
and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is
not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. For
this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And
why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were
righteous.” [1Jn.3:10-12]
Recent
elections, notably in the United States, but elsewhere in the world, have been
marked by profound anger, divisions, violent protests and we are witnessing
around the world, in democratic countries in particular, increased anger and
extremism and acts of hatred against those deemed for a plethora of reasons to
be, if not outright enemies, at least a threat because their economic status,
colour, political position, gender, sexual orientation, religion are rejected
because they are not ‘ours’!
Hate is the
most insidious of diseases of the heart and like all fatal infections has two
definitive aspects: 1] ultimately it kills the host and 2] is in a sense an
air-borne disease spread by word of mouth.
ISIS is
nothing less than an epidemic of hate, but alt-right and alt-leftist
Christians, Jews, peoples of any religion, likewise are spreaders of this same
pandemic which is sickening the whole human family, weakening democracies, and
may well lead to a third, and given modern weapons of mass destruction,
unwinnable world war, except perhaps by the very machines, nuclear, chemical
and biological weapons which will destroy us.
Words have
intrinsic and extrinsic power.
Genesis
repeats throughout each stage of creation, including the creation of the human
person: “God said....”.
Each spoken
‘word’ results in the ‘and there was’.
The Holy Gospel, according to St. John,
reminds us that in the very beginning was ‘the Word’.
The
interior dialogue which stirs darkness in the human heart itself reveals the
power of words.
Eventually
the words spoken interiorly, churning within the ever-destructive poison of
prejudice, rejection, hatred, become the emotions of anger, even murderous
rage.
It matters
not a whit to the innocent victims of the murderous hate to which extremist
group, or the lone-wolf, hate-filled murder[s] belongs: for they are dead, just
like those found in that pit in Spain or in the mountainous debris of 9/11.
However, it
does matter much to those who survive a hate-filled attack, such as occurs all
too frequently, sometimes by Islamic extremists, such as in Europe, or by
rightist/leftist extremists such as occurred in the lone-wolf terrorist attack
in Quebec City where Muslim men at prayer were murdered and wounded.
The
interior dialogue of people who hate begins with words of self-hatred,
self-rejection.
Sometimes
this so poisons the heart that the person takes their own life, for the poison
has so permeated their minds, souls, they can no longer stand the darkness and
pain.
Other times
the impact of the interior poisoning morphs into an extended dialogue of
blaming, such as Can did of Abel, and the process begins of refusing to see
other as one like myself, a human being, and constructing a list of reasons as
to why they cannot possibly be one like myself, an acting person, and therefore
must be a thing, an object.
Like the
boiling cauldron of Shakespeare’s witches anger heats to the point of
hate-filled rage and we have a 9/11, a Charlie-Hebdo, a Quebec City massacre.
Words have
power.
Words are
active, never passive.
Words can
shred another’s dignity, hurt and shame them, reject them.
More
powerful are words which affirm, welcome, accept, love, forgive, reveal mercy
and compassion.
There was a
story repeated often years ago after a pastoral visit by St. John Paul II to a
country suffering under a military dictatorship which, admittedly I have not
been able to verify, yet is, true or not, illustrative: The Pope was
celebrating Holy Mass before tens of thousands of people in a stadium when into
the crowd came soldiers, agents of the dictatorship, who began assaulting
people and panic started.
The Holy
Father stopped the Mass and repeated over and over in an ever-firmer voice:
“Love is stronger! Love is stronger!”, until the bishops and priests, then the
assembled choir joined him in repeating “Love is stronger!” Little by little
those powerful three words moved through the crowd until it was the spoken word
of everyone and the soldiers slinked away.
In
Auschwitz in 1941 the Nazis choose a group of men for execution by starvation
when one of the men, rather young, pleaded for his life for he was a husband
and father. Before the Nazis could react, a priest stepped forward and offered
himself, his life, in exchange.
Miraculously
his offer was accepted.
That priest
is known throughout the world as St. Maxmilian Kolbe and the young man did
survive that day and the longs days after until he was among the liberated
survivors.
Love IS
stronger.
Each of us
can, must, choose which words we speak to ourselves, and if we find we are
speaking dark and hurtful words to ourselves then before the infection becomes
fatal we must use our words with someone we trust – spouse, friend,
priest, doctor – who can help us change the interior dialogue.
Each of us
can, must, choose which words we speak to others, starting with those closest to
us and extending outward to our neighbours and to strangers. If an
understandable thing such as shyness makes it difficult for us to speak with
strangers we can always use the non-verbal words of our eyes, so powerfully
expressive and our smiles. Smiles, though in a sense wordless, nonetheless
speak volumes of recognition that the one passing by upon whom I smile is a
person like myself.
Constitutive
of our humanity is the reality we are endowed with emotions/passions, which in
and of themselves are neutral.
It is the
choice we make in response to their movement within us which differentiates
between a choice for good or evil, virtue or vice.
Thus, an
act of terrorism may well trigger intense emotions of anger, rejection towards
the person[s] who commit the act.
If we allow
those emotions to remain unchecked we may well become a hater of not only the
terrorist but holus-bolus of the very group, culture, religion they belong to.
That is to
choose evil, indeed to become a type of emotional terrorist ourselves.
If we
choose not to allow the emotion to master us, but embracing the pain and
sorrow over lives lost, persons wounded, communities in upheaval, and choose to
embrace, to live out the teachings of Christ then we are acting virtuously,
righteously.
We all know
some, like ISIS, but also Christian and Jewish extremists, seek to justify
their hatred and violence by appealing to their interpretation of sacred texts.
This is
obscene, disingenuous, insults God, and indeed rather than receive some
illusory blessing here or in the hereafter, when such murderous-haters do
appear before the awesome judgement seat of God, as He asked of Cain, so shall
be asked of them: “Where is your brother?”
While it
should be equally self-evident for adherents of all religions, it is
constitutive of Christianity, that we the baptized are not simply expected, but
commanded by God, in the words of the Incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ, to
love and not to hate.
“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with
a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.” [Mt.5:22] “But I tell you,
love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be
children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and
the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” [5:44-45]
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