There is a unique opportunity here for Cardinal George, the Archdiocese of Chicago, and the Roman Catholic Church to embark on a journey of peacemaking and forgiveness. One does not have to agree with or condone one's actions as a mandate for forgiveness. Perhaps Cardinal George could lend some valuable wisdom to the six individuals trying to resist war. I cannot help but think of Jesus's instructions to his disciples on the nature of forgiveness and the striking parallels it has to the events of Easter Sunday:
"If your brother or sister sins against you, go and tell them their fault, between you and them alone. If they listen to you, you have gained a brother or sister. But if they do not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If they refuse to listen to them, tell it to the Church; and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let them be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two or three of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother or sister sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven." (Matthew 18:15-22)
Are these "Holy Name 6," as these six individuals have come to be known, the ones who have sinned and in need of a brother or sister coming to them in reconciliation? Or do these six see themselves as coming to the Church, to tell the Church of its failure to be the peacemakers Jesus calls us to? Drawing from the exegesis of Stanley Hauerwas and his assertion that the Church is to be a community of both peacemakers and forgiveness, we see "[t]hat the Church is such a community of truthful peace depends on its being a community of the forgiven", there are pieces of truth from both perspectives.
Lead us, Cardinal George, in being a community of peacemakers, unequivocally calling for an end to the war in Iraq and engage in a process of reconciliation that seeks not to continue tearing apart a Church wounded and divided by Easter Sunday's events, but to restore us to community of God's forgiven that practices forgiveness.
27 March 2008
26 March 2008
Teach Us How to Pray
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..."
Strong words Jesus spoke when his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offers some poignant insight into these ingrained words we utter at Christian services on a daily basis: "'Forgive us our trespasses' is in some ways the hardest bit of the Lord's Prayer to pray, because it tells us straight away that to pray is also to be willing to change."
Let us consider the common usage of the word trespass in our lexicon. For most of us, images of trespassing do not conjure up all the various grievances and sins we have committed or have had committed toward us. Rather, it's an image of someone being somewhere they should not be. Breaking the law by intruding into someone else's property. Jumping over a wall, climbing a fence, breaking a window - going into or through some place where one does not belong or has not been invited.
How many of us are praying for forgiveness for this country's invasion of Iraq? Do images of burnt-out buildings, blood-stained streets, over-populated and under-resourced hospitals come to mind for the U.S. trespasses into Iraq? War, in the modern age (if not for all of history), has always been the story of one trespass against another. Why, then, can we sit in our churches and in our homes, praying to the Lord, Our Creator, Mother, and Father, for something we really do not believe in? Do we believe in a world without trespass? Without war? A world where change is possible? Where one can turn away from trespass and "sin no more?" If we pray these words that the teacher taught us to pray with hardened hearts and embittered ideas of our world and our God, we blaspheme the Holy Name of the divine and reduce our humanity to a stoic, fatalistic community of despair and un-redemptive suffering.
Forgive us the trespass that our country has done to the people of Iraq (and Latin America, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, etc.), as we forgive those who have trespassed against us (those who seek to terrorize us, al Qaeda, the criminals of 9/11, etc.).
We cannot pray these words, neither in the silence of our hearts nor in the sanctuaries of our communities, without recognizing the invitation to reconcile with our transgressors, make friends with our strangers, and forgive our enemies. No national identity or patriotic call for retribution replaces the supremacy of God's divine call to forgive seventy times seven.
Strong words Jesus spoke when his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offers some poignant insight into these ingrained words we utter at Christian services on a daily basis: "'Forgive us our trespasses' is in some ways the hardest bit of the Lord's Prayer to pray, because it tells us straight away that to pray is also to be willing to change."
Let us consider the common usage of the word trespass in our lexicon. For most of us, images of trespassing do not conjure up all the various grievances and sins we have committed or have had committed toward us. Rather, it's an image of someone being somewhere they should not be. Breaking the law by intruding into someone else's property. Jumping over a wall, climbing a fence, breaking a window - going into or through some place where one does not belong or has not been invited.
How many of us are praying for forgiveness for this country's invasion of Iraq? Do images of burnt-out buildings, blood-stained streets, over-populated and under-resourced hospitals come to mind for the U.S. trespasses into Iraq? War, in the modern age (if not for all of history), has always been the story of one trespass against another. Why, then, can we sit in our churches and in our homes, praying to the Lord, Our Creator, Mother, and Father, for something we really do not believe in? Do we believe in a world without trespass? Without war? A world where change is possible? Where one can turn away from trespass and "sin no more?" If we pray these words that the teacher taught us to pray with hardened hearts and embittered ideas of our world and our God, we blaspheme the Holy Name of the divine and reduce our humanity to a stoic, fatalistic community of despair and un-redemptive suffering.
Forgive us the trespass that our country has done to the people of Iraq (and Latin America, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, etc.), as we forgive those who have trespassed against us (those who seek to terrorize us, al Qaeda, the criminals of 9/11, etc.).
We cannot pray these words, neither in the silence of our hearts nor in the sanctuaries of our communities, without recognizing the invitation to reconcile with our transgressors, make friends with our strangers, and forgive our enemies. No national identity or patriotic call for retribution replaces the supremacy of God's divine call to forgive seventy times seven.
25 March 2008
Thoughts on the Holy Name 6 Action
Easter Sunday services with Cardinal Francis George were interrupted by six anti-war activists as they denounced the war in Iraq and staged a die-in with fake blood. Accounts of the action can be seen and read at:
chicago.indymedia: story 1, story 2
I think a number of different discussions can emerge from this and look forward to what follows. While I do not entirely agree with everything said in this discussion thus far, or with the entirety of Holy Name actions, when I called the Archdiocese to ask the charges to be dropped, I mentioned that. I do not have to agree with the activists tactically to agree with their message and with their nonviolence. Jesus threw out the money changers for desecrating a holy place. How do we understand money changers today in our own churches, temples, mosques and place of prayer? Are the activists the money changers who need thrown out? Is it a congregation complicit with silence? A church hierarchy failing to honor truth and justice? All questions I think worth asking. Below is a letter to the editor I submitted:
Dear Editors,
The public outcry that denounced the actions of the six peace activists who symbolically reminded a largely silent and complicit Catholic population that we are a nation at war worries me. When there is more outrage and opposition to one group’s small but courageous attempt to
speak truth to a church called to pray for our enemies and love those who persecute us, I wonder if Jesus has truly risen in our hearts, in our minds, in our communities, or in Iraq this past Easter Sunday.
Surely, there will be many different attitudes and opinions concerning the message, the action, and the location these six activists chose. Of all the opinions I would most like to hear, would be that of Iraqi Catholic Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho. But his body was found in a ditch after he was abducted during a shootout outside his church, after celebrating the Via Crucis, earlier this month. It is realities like this that we Americans are so insulated from in our calm, sanitized Easter Sunday services.
I recall the words of Fr. Dan Berrigan, SJ. He is one of those rare Catholic believers who took seriously (perhaps too seriously!) the words Jesus spoke at the Sermon on the Mount: "We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total--but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial...There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war--at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death
in its wake.”
chicago.indymedia: story 1, story 2
I think a number of different discussions can emerge from this and look forward to what follows. While I do not entirely agree with everything said in this discussion thus far, or with the entirety of Holy Name actions, when I called the Archdiocese to ask the charges to be dropped, I mentioned that. I do not have to agree with the activists tactically to agree with their message and with their nonviolence. Jesus threw out the money changers for desecrating a holy place. How do we understand money changers today in our own churches, temples, mosques and place of prayer? Are the activists the money changers who need thrown out? Is it a congregation complicit with silence? A church hierarchy failing to honor truth and justice? All questions I think worth asking. Below is a letter to the editor I submitted:
Dear Editors,
The public outcry that denounced the actions of the six peace activists who symbolically reminded a largely silent and complicit Catholic population that we are a nation at war worries me. When there is more outrage and opposition to one group’s small but courageous attempt to
speak truth to a church called to pray for our enemies and love those who persecute us, I wonder if Jesus has truly risen in our hearts, in our minds, in our communities, or in Iraq this past Easter Sunday.
Surely, there will be many different attitudes and opinions concerning the message, the action, and the location these six activists chose. Of all the opinions I would most like to hear, would be that of Iraqi Catholic Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho. But his body was found in a ditch after he was abducted during a shootout outside his church, after celebrating the Via Crucis, earlier this month. It is realities like this that we Americans are so insulated from in our calm, sanitized Easter Sunday services.
I recall the words of Fr. Dan Berrigan, SJ. He is one of those rare Catholic believers who took seriously (perhaps too seriously!) the words Jesus spoke at the Sermon on the Mount: "We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total--but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial...There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war--at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death
in its wake.”
05 March 2008
faith
Dark enters further into the recesses of my soul. Yet...
in this darkness, light beckons. But what emerges is something best left hidden. So I thought.
Creeping, Crawling - grasping in the blinding night (or is it the brightness of the sun?) - I search for an answer. Or is it that I reject the answer given and thus keeping searching?
How desperately I want this unsettled fear to leave me, for it to be replaced by the Peace of something tangible, something real. But this fear, this violence, this is my past - my history - my life. Must I really let it go? Who, then, will I be? Or...*gasp*...who will I become?
It is in the darkness I am born. The pain of light entering my life, my mind, my soul marks the beginning. A transformation. A conversion. The suffering grace of a nonviolent love. Be this the love of Jesus? It is too much. I throw it off, in pride.
It is too late. The darkness can no longer hide what the light has already revealed. Pray that this cup may pass be by. I will go thirsty the rest of my days. But what is in that cup? What does it taste like? Can I just have a glimpse of what is inside before I take a drink? Or is the chalice so deep that darkness hides what is in there too?
I drink from it. Out of fear, desperation. Out of love. Out of the peace that so eludes me and my people. Who are my people? Why do we kill each other? Light - shine out to us. Warm our wearied, war-torn faces. Let us dance, while we still have the light, in the love and laughter of the great invitation. Gratitude at so great a gift. I am not worthy. Celebrate in Thanksgiving. And when the darkness comes again...Surely, it comes, for it always comes...Let us dance into the dark night until we collapse, wrenched with fatigue from so great a day, and rest up for the oncoming fight of our lives, one more time: No easier than the last, no harder than the next. But let us do so in the love of life and gift that is God, knowing that the invitation will come again soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)