 by Fr. Francis Belanger, OP
Justice and peace are words sometimes used to summarize the whole area of our faith called Catholic social teaching and action. They are what the protestors decrying the brutal death of George Floyd last week in Minneapolis are chanting about. All want a harmonious society, but there can be no true peace without justice for all. As Pope St. Paul VI famously said in his message for the Day of Peace in 1972, “If you want peace, work for justice.” How do we do that? The first step is listening. While decrying violent demonstrations, Archbishop José Gomez, President of the U.S. Catholic Bishops provocatively stated, “It is true what Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, that riots are the language of the unheard. We should be doing a lot of listening right now.” Too many of our African-American brothers and sisters lament racial discrimination, including on the part of law enforcement, for it to be ignored. It is a crie de coeur. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,” the Psalmist tells us. (Ps. 34:19) May his disciples likewise listen to those who cry out. The next step is love. The goal is not merely the absence of external discrimination, but rather a true unity among peoples. Love means exulting in the other. Thomas Merton veritably sang about people of color in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, speaking about: “the grace of election that made them God’s chosen, the grace that elevated them above the meaningless and trivial things of life, even in the midst of terrible and unjust suffering.” More than speaking blandly about an abstract and elusive equality, can I sing about the beauty and giftedness of African-American people, in the way that I am drawn to admire cultures and people more familiar to me? Then comes action — a challenge. How does one improve the situation? I recall the advice of a black friend in a conversation about race: We need to eat at one another’s homes. True equality comes with true friendship, and that means sharing lives. On a larger level, there needs to be, to borrow the phrase used in South Africa after the fall of apartheid, a spirit of truth and reconciliation. May there be an openness to listening to historic and current stories of racism — not for the purpose of accusation, but with the hope of mutual understanding and justice. “All Christians, their pastors included, are called to show concern for the building of a better world,” as Pope Francis said The Joy of the Gospel. (#183) For Dominicans, the answer starts and ends with preaching. Our communities are our first preaching, and these can each be a witness to love amidst the diversity of human background, God-willing with ever more ethnic and racial inclusion. Then proclamation can show how the message of racial equality springs beautifully from the Gospel and Church teaching, Preaching that omits justice issues is stunted. Rather, “let justice roll down like waters,” (Amos 5:24) and may Christ, the Prince of Peace, reign in our hearts and in our troubled land. Rev. Francis Belanger, O.P. Fr. Francis is Promoter of Catholic Social Teaching for the Dominican Province of St. Joseph and religious assistant to the Joy of the Just Dominican Laity chapter at SS. Philip and James  by Sr. Caterina de Siena During the Covid-19 pandemic many grandparents have taken up the “call-to-arms” to aide with the care of their homebound grandchildren while their parents continued to work. Such is my case and there are so many lessons that I have learned by seeing things through the eyes of my grandchildren. Children’s lives are uncomplicated – we adults are the ones that complicate lives. We have all been prohibited from enjoying amenities like parks, zoos, aquariums, etc. The children took these limitations all in stride. Daily, we would visit the same spots in the neighborhood; walking the same trails; chalking the same sidewalks; and seeing the same pond with turtles every day. Not once did they complain of being bored or said, “been here; seen that”. I think my grandchildren have personally raised the water level in the local pond by throwing rocks into the water to see the splashes. They would do this multiple times a day and each time the thrill was like it was the first. The lawn maintenance crews did not escape the eyes of the children. The mowers, blowers, and weed whackers fascinated boy and girl alike. The children took great delight in watching construction workers using Bobcats and dump trucks to haul dirt and stone. The children were a source of delight for the construction workers who took opportunities to return the waves of the children as we greeted them on our early morning walks. The day ended with the construction workers tooting their horns as they rolled past the house at the close of the day. I saw hardworking men take the time to become little children again and they were admired by two young people whose names they will never know. After a two month exile from peer playing, my granddaughter got to play with four other children who ran and played tag in the neighborhood circle. She ran hard and played to her heart’s content. As we sat down for dinner, her cheeks were rosy and she spoke of the fun she had playing. At one point she was pensively looking outside and I asked her what she was thinking. She said, “I just want to go back and play.” Then it hit me. How much has been denied our children – the basic joy in life – to play with their peers. For several months, I had been spending one or two days a week watching my grandchildren. I would play with them as much as someone 55+ years their senior could. It wasn’t until my granddaughter said that she just wanted to play that I realized how gracious she has been to allow me to play with her all this time. I am not her peer and although we had great fun together, she needed to run with the herd…frolic with her friends…and be exhausted from kicking a ball with her peers. You know, the kind of play that only children can enter into. We have all suffered a bit during this pandemic, but I think the children are the silent sufferers in this one. Their carefree world has been turned upside down and they have been denied the right to “just play” with other children. Waving to friends from across the street in order to observe “social distancing” or passing the park equipment that they have been accustomed to playing on which now looks like a graveyard. None of these are normal. Necessary, but not normal and certainly not fun. One of the insights that I have gained from the “stay-at-home” mandate is to keep life simple. Take the time to wave to a stranger and smile; enjoy the birds singing to you each day; and see things through the eyes of children. God gives us gifts each day, so make sure to look for them and appreciate the Giver. Hug your children and grandchildren and spend time with them. You are their first playmate and they lovingly invite you into their world of carefree fun. Life is not that complicated; try not to make it so. https://newsroom.uhc.com/health/2019-06-17-playing-benefits.html (photo credit)  By Sr. Mary Magdalene
While in COVID-19 quarantine, my husband and I watched the movie A Hidden Life. If you are not familiar, it is based on the true story of an Austrian farmer and devout Catholic man who was conscripted to serve in the Nazi military but refused to take the required oath to the Fuhrer. He seeks the advice of Church leaders and other faithful, begs his wife’s understanding, and endures both the buffets of his community and torture by the Nazis for doing so. In one particular scene, a faithful friend, pondering the Nazi influence in Austria, asks him, “Is this the death of the Light?” Though I typically have a terrible memory for the particulars of movies, this line struck me to the point that I chose to take a pen to tablet and write it down. How many times, I wonder, in the midst of suffering or isolation, might we flounder in the darkness and wonder if the Light remains? While great theologians have attempted to answer this question of suffering, the irony of Our Lord’s cross (and our own) remains a great mystery for many of us. How is it that this instrument of torture became the enduring symbol of our salvation? And how is it possible that our own crosses, the real burdens, fears, and obstacles of our lives, can be a source of grace and growth in holiness? The short answer is that without uniting our own sufferings to the Lord’s, we fall short of making any real sense out of their power in our lives. While wrestling with this question of “the Light,” I ran head-long into a quote by the French poet and dramatist Paul Claudel. Claudel, himself a devout Roman Catholic said, “Jesus did not come to explain away suffering, or to remove it. He came to fill it with His Presence.” And so these two lines collide in my mind. The first, a question, “Is this the death of the Light?” and the second, a statement of hope, “[Jesus] came to fill [suffering] with His Presence.” Self-imposed as it sometimes may be, I think of suffering as a form of darkness in my life. But this quote by Claudel seems to indicate that Jesus, the true Light, comes to fill that suffering [darkness] with the light of His Presence! In the very dailiness of our experience, perhaps especially in times personally or communally challenging, the Lord wants to bring a comforting light. The fact that our present public health crisis, and the subsequent removal of the faithful from the Sacraments, happened to fall during our Lenten journey is not lost on me. It feels much like our own kind of 40 days in the desert, tested and tried, searching and seeking for its meaning in our own lives and in our world. Some may be able to say that they have readily found this to be a time of renewal or closeness to God and have an increasing awareness of their hunger for the Sacraments. I have not. I have, in fact, found myself distracted by both the necessities and the diversions, sensing little detectable closeness in my own 40-day trudging. Though not a crisis in faith, I have pondered the task of how to struggle well. That is, how to grapple with my present experience in such a way that it offers Light even when my own eyes may seem dimmed. So, what of the reality that many of us are having difficulty feeling the presence of God - this desolation of heart, mind, and sense? Many saints over the centuries could speak to this struggle in very particular and intimate ways. One of our contemporary saints, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, is perhaps the most well-known to us. Mother Teresa, we glean from her writings, suffered for years with an apparent darkness and struggled to feel the Lord’s presence in her life. She remained faithful - trusting, pining, thirsting for God’s consolation, sure of His Creator-omnipotence, His omnipresence, despite His apparent absence to her human senses. Our own Dominican tertiary, Saint Catherine of Siena, also experienced periods of desolation, often feeling totally abandoned by God. It was at these times that she moved outside of her solitude and poured herself out among the people: the poor, the sick, and the destitute. In her Dialogue (a series of conversations between God and a soul), Catherine tells of the withdrawal of consolation by God Himself for the benefit of an imperfect soul. She seems to indicate that many of us may find ourselves loving God imperfectly. That is, loving Him selfishly and for reasons related to what God can do for them or how He can make them feel (for consolations, for instance). This, rather than loving God for God’s own sake, does the soul little good in the overall journey toward the great perfection of love of God and love of neighbor. Will that loss of consolation, itself a sensing of the goodness of God, cause the imperfect or selfish soul to quickly lose ardor for God and neighbor? In Catherine’s words: “[grow] weak by degrees”? Again, in her Dialogue, the Lord tells Catherine: … I withdraw from their minds My consolation and allow them to fall into battles and perplexities. This I do so that, coming to perfect self-knowledge, they may know that of themselves they are nothing and have no grace, and accordingly in time of battle fly to Me, as their Benefactor, seeking Me alone, with true humility, for which purpose I treat them thus, withdrawing from them consolation indeed, but not grace. As I re-read the words taken down by St. Catherine, I can appreciate “the soul’s” need to grow in humility, to know and understand its right relationship with God, its smallness; to recognize that all good that comes to the soul is initiated by God, even the very consolation for which it hungers. And though it is stripped of consolation, it is never abandoned by grace. I recently listened to a recorded retreat done by a Dominican friar in which he contrasted the difference between physical or bodily maturing and spiritual maturing. He noted that when an infant is born it is totally and completely dependent on his mother to attend to all his bodily and emotional needs, but as the infant grows and matures he steps out into a bit more independence. He learns to dress and feed himself. As he grows more, he matures enough to separate himself a bit from his parents and live independent of them, creating his own new space and experience. Spiritual maturity, on the other hand, does not yield more and more independence of the child from the parent (creator Father) but rather a growing need and dependence - not a separation, but a growing intimate closeness. And [Jesus] said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3 NIV). The Lord allows the struggle to learn and know our small-ness, but does not leave or abandon us to our own strength. Grace is still at work, even when our sense of spiritual consolation, the warmth of the Light that we so desire, seems overcast. The Light reveals the pitfalls, obstacles, chains and wounds - and for a time, our eyes get fixed on that which is illuminated and fail to see the Light, Himself. But soon, when the heart comes to know well those chains and wounds, and the soul in humility embraces its smallness and utter dependence, it turns its eyes to the Light itself and becomes filled. Though our eyes may become dim as we find our minds and hearts frenetic with both the noise and the silence of our days, the Light remains. Grace remains. The Light, which is Christ Himself, fills our suffering with His Presence. He calls us to become as little children, to know humility and our utter dependence on God’s goodness. In this way, He can enter into our suffering, binding it to His own; the Light remains, and its warmth can once again be detected. |
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