This beautiful reflection is from Sister Margaret Carney, OSF who is one of my favorite people. She’s also the past president of St. Bonaventure University.
“These countless COVID-19 victims were not alone. In that final hour, the veil fell away and they moved forward surrounded by ancestors of their family and of their faith. God has wiped away their tears. Can this faith also help to dry ours?”
I walk whenever I can. My daily goal is ten thousand steps. That usually amounts to close to five miles. Yesterday I decided to take a slightly different route that led me across Gates Creek and up an abandoned roadway leading to what used to be called Hogue’s Hill. I remember riding up this hill with my father in an automobile in the 1950’s. Mr. Hogue had a tree farm up on this hill and we purchased blue spruce trees from him to plant around the perimeter of our yard.
The road reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem about “The Road Not Taken.”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
If you’re Roman Catholic in the United States the assumption is that you’re pro-life which in political parlance means your anti-abortion. It’s a great wedge issue exploited by Republicans. In previous years some bishops have gone so far as to insist on denying communion to candidates like John Kerry and Democrats who are pro-choice. The recent conference call cited in this article that appeared on National Catholic Reporter’s website is one more instance of this insanity. The gospels calls us to protect the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised. Cardinal Dolan is turning a blind eye to that and instead kissing up to policies that are counter to Catholic Social Teaching. I think the church as we know it is done. No communion for anyone due to quarantine and lock down. The only gift the church has left is its prophetic voice and Dolan just pissed on that.
“The ongoing collusion between certain U.S. bishops and President Donald Trump hit its nadir point this weekend. Or at least we have to pray it did.”
The word Christian is meaningless. It has become so because of all the charlatans who have taken it as a mantle. We need a new word to describe followers of Jesus. Following Jesus is much different than worshipping him. Following implies living as he did among the outcasts and dregs of society. In the United States the word Christian implies selective and exclusive adherence to so called conservative worldview. Conservative in the United States implies connection to the Republican Party which means you denigrate the poor and marginalized. Conservative here means love of wealth, power and enfranchisement. That’s not following what Jesus taught. That’s diametrically the opposed to the gospel.
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,
Luke 4:18
What is good news to the poor? Are you part of the good news? Are you proclaiming this message?
There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude. In this time of social distancing it is easy to become lonely and there are many folks who no doubt are starved for human contact. Fortunately I am not alone in this time. I am walking four or five miles each day and frequently praying the rosary during those walks. I’ve long been a person drawn to contemplation and this is a time that can foster that. The rosary aids my contemplation and so does the silence that surrounds me on most of these walks. My life has become almost monastic. The following quote by Thomas Merton invited me to think about the gift of life and the gift of solitude and how during this time of social distancing and quarantine we are moving closer to contemplative life.
“When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.”
― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Maybe we’ll emerge from this pandemic a changed society. At least we can hope so.
I found myself walking near my favorite pond again tonight. I’m fortunate to live nearby and it’s very calm and peaceful here. There are nearby woods and trails and generally an area that invites solitude and reflection. Tonight while approaching the pond I spotted a bald eagle sitting atop one of the many tall trees that surround the pond. It’s the first bald eagle I’ve seen in the wild. I didn’t get very close before he took off and flew north to a more secluded area. I wish I would have been quicker and gotten a picture of him. Seeing the eagle reminded me of Michael Joncas’ hymn, “On Eagles Wings,” which is one of my favorites. Michael’s hymn is beautiful and is based on Psalm 91. I’ve thought of the song often in this pandemic. I hope you enjoy it.
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. [I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.
“What Christianity requires now, especially in view of developments in science, is not “no God,” as scientific naturalists propose, but a “new God,” as Teilhard provocatively announces”
— From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe by Ilia Delio, OSF
Up until now I’ve been trying to reconcile what Teilhard and Ilia have written with the old cosmology. But today the scales fell from my eyes. God is evolving and so is the universe. It makes perfect sense. The Garden of Eden never existed or not as the idyllic we have made it. I’ve known for some time that the Bible is full of wisdom stories. I’ve heard fundamentalists exclaim that the word of God is inerrant and that the Bible is to be taken literally. But after reading Leviticus one soon realizes that no one in their right mind would dream of observing some of what is written there. The dietary laws may have made perfect sense when they were written but not anymore.
The treatment of women is just plain backward and fundamentalists today perpetuate such practices because they are looking backward and trying to put new wine in old wineskins. We live in an evolving world where the role of women and men are changing. Religion and in my own case Roman Catholicism is too rigid. It must be redefined or it will become a minor sect. Priests must be allowed to marry. Women must be ordained. I am reminded frequently of Karl Rahner’s quote, “In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic or nothing at all.”
What does this new God look like? How are we called to live?
“Teilhard prophetically anticipated that human evolution would not take place without sideways forces of resistance and devolution, but he also saw that we would reach a decisive point of choosing either to evolve or to annihilate. We can destroy this world and ourselves in the process. We have the power to do so both in the form of weapons of mass destruction and the weapons of anger and hate.”
— A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence by Ilia Delio, OSF
The coronavirus maybe the agent of a new order. We can see the older order driven by fear, so called free market capitalism, xenophobia and ignorance flailing madly about trying to preserve the status quo in which the ultra-rich have benefitted. Covid-19 is deadly and only those who heed the directives to shelter in place are going to avoid its ravages. Maybe even those of us who are wearing masks, physically distancing, washing our hands religiously are still in danger.
I don’t think we are ever going back to the “way it was.” This pandemic is a prophetic moment and a warning. What happens in our community can have a global impact. We can chose to evolve or annihilate. The established order wants to maintain what was but that will never be and they are fighting tooth and nail to hold on. There is a new order emerging and who knows exactly how it will manifest. We are evolving. How will that order manifest?
“Jesus called his disciples to create a new transformed Earth, a kindom of equality and inclusivity, where all men and women could live together in justice, mercy, and peace. His consciousness of the whole evoked a genuine revolution in cosmic and social relations.”
— A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence by Ilia Delio, OSF
Contrast this spirit with what we are witnessing around us each day as those on the margins suffer most from the Covid-19 pandemic. This is just one more example of why we don’t deserve to be called a Christian nation or even a moral nation. To their credit many of our states and nation’s governors are doing their best to bridge the gap. Nonetheless folks are falling through the cracks in a nation where money is valued more than people. The paycheck protection program is one more shining example of how our leaders bail out Wall Street and stick it to Main Street. The funding is already depleted. Contrast our own national priorities with those other nations around the globe who are putting their citizens first.
Some politicians are calling for the establishment of universal basic income for all citizens. Not surprisingly some say this would incentivize the less fortunate to stay home and not seek work. These politicians have lifetime pensions which are their own universal basic income and not the $2,000 dollars a month that’s being proposed but salary and benefits in excess of $174,000 per year.
We always have lots of money to bail out Wall Street or start another war but nothing for the poor souls in our midst. These are the folks who call themselves conservative and cloak their greed in patriotism and pseudo-religious trappings.
‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
“He did not hold to original sin by a single couple and instead opted for the notion of the primacy of Christ formed by the Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus. Scotus held that God’s love could not be undermined by a defect in creation such as original sin. Rather, from all eternity, God willed a creature to grace and glory so that whether or not sin ever entered into creation, Christ would have come. God is love and Christ is first in God’s intention to love; the whole creation is structured on the incarnation.”
— A Hunger for Wholeness, A: Soul, Space, and Transcendence by Delio, Ilia, OSF https://a.co/imHKkhr
I’m enjoying another book by Ilia Delio and the quote which was about Teilhard de Chardin, succinctly explains something I heard Fr. Lou McCormick, OFM say in a homily nearly twenty years ago. I remember sitting in the chapel at Mt. Irenaeus at the time I heard it. It just made sense. The idea that God would create a universe with an intentional flaw that would require the death of his son to redeem never made any sense as an adult. Many years later I learned that the doctrine of original sin was a creation of St. Augustine. How many times have you heard well meaning religious folks tell you that you were damned if you didn’t accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior. I remember a discussion with a local pastor about that topic. I said to the guy, “What about the apostles? What about the unborn?” The chap made an exception for the unborn and infants and that’s when I knew that the doctrine was flawed.
Most of my adult life I’ve thought that the reason for the incarnation was to show us how to live. Love your neighbor. Do good to those who harm you. Take care of the poor and the rest of the gospel message should be the real focus. Reducing Jesus to merely a sacrificial atonement for sin is a disservice to his earthly ministry. The Sermon on the Mount, The Beatitudes and Matthew 25:31-46 are the most meaningful for me and always have been.
