GETTING SOMETHING OUT OF ADVENT

              

We have now moved into the darkest part of the winter months. It is discouraging to see the sun rise so late into the morning and disappear so quickly before evening. One alert farmer wisely coined: if we did not have the feast of Christmas, we would have to invent it! We break the long winter darkness with festive gatherings. Mid-winter festivities are a sign of social health.

 

This is such a busy time with all sorts of gatherings and meals. There is very little energy left over to participate in the wonderful spirit of Advent. Now, for any sincere Christian we are challenged to hang on to some meaning in these four weeks before Christmas. The music of Advent will only survive and give us nourishment if we pay attention. Christmas shopping could drown out the music of Advent.

 

The first thing I must do is ask myself: Does Advent offer anything to my life. What is there to gain from paying attention to Advent?

 

There is very little to do (i.e., activity) during Advent. This is all about paying attention to the great and wonderful works that God is doing among us. Advent is a  gift of time to pay attention to the great struggles between God and the Covenant peoples of Israel. The people learnt through incredible sufferings, (they were deported and abused as slaves by the conquering Empire), that God would not abandon them. God proved to be faithful. The first step is to pay attention to God’s faithfulness to our ancestors.

 

The second part of our paying attention is to participate in the coming of the very Son of God among us. There was an actual birth among poor people who were experiencing displacement. God has become flesh. Paying attention means deepening our relationship with the God-man Jesus. We must work to get to know Jesus so that we can know what God is like. 

 

The third part of Advent is to pay attention to what God is doing among us today. What direction is God giving us through the flooding of the Fraser River in British Columbia? What does God want to recognize among the huge number of drug overdoses in Canada during the past five years? Is God moving us to share our time and energy with our elder co-workers who have slipped into various degrees of dementia? God is ever at work among us. We want to pay attention.

 

What I need to do during these four weeks is block off some special time to take the Sunday readings for Advent, pray and work them over. I need to give special time to just paying attention to the movements of God. There is no need to re-invent the wheel here. The Sunday liturgies offer such a rich fare for my spiritual life. 

 

In all the business of this holiday season there is a nourishing gift awaiting: just be, just be present, to our faithful God.

BC FLOODS MAKE US QUESTION

         

During this past week we have seen horrific pictures of the flooding caused by unbelievable amount of rainfall in the Fraser Valley in BC. The entire town of Merrit (population 7000) has been evacuated. I can picture in my mind of the next few days when these people will return to their homes and their farms to survey the damage. I feel for the people who will have to go down into their basements and start carrying out all the soaked and ruined things they had in their basement. 

 

In the midst of all this disaster and suffering countless people have stepped up with generosity, opening their homes to these displaced people, preparing meals for these people and help rescue farm animals. This flooding has brought out some of the best in the people of BC. 

 

But this year of climate disasters challenges us to ask some very hard questions about our cultural values. What contribution has human behaviour contributed to these huge forest fires, the heat the heat dome and this unprecedented rainfall that became such damaging flooding? 

 

Thoughtful people come the conclusion that these disasters have been enhanced by human behavior. We have heated up the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, clear cut the forests and not respected the natural flow of the waters. No one should be surprised that the rich agricultural areas around the town of Abbotsford was a large lake one hundred years ago. What once was a lake became rich farm land. We have built barriers to protect the new land from flooding but it still is a lake! These torrential rains last Sunday and Monday did what was natural: the lake reformed!

 

How much damage has our practice of clear-cut logging done to our forests? After the forest fires raged this past summer, we must ask how the soil had lost its ability to absorb and retain water? 

 

There are many other heavy-duty questions that must be asked and reflected upon but this short column also wants us to get in touch with what our Christian faith brings to this reflection. 

 

First, all of creation is an extension of the great love that God has for us. There is nothing that exists that is not a sharing of the great love and compassion that exists within the very life of the Trinity. I am not sure where mosquitos fit into this scheme of things but I know they are some reflection of the goodness which is God. 

 

If creation is good and humanity is part of the web of creation, our responsibility is not to use anything in creation selfishly (use and then throw away) but to live and work with all parts of creation in harmony. For the past two centuries Western human beings have used creation as their personal possession; not showing any accountability to the rest of creation for any damage done to the atmosphere, the soils and the waterways. We have lived disconnected and irresponsible toward creation. 

 

Now, what are the flood waters in BC telling us about our interconnectedness with all parts of creation?

 

Our Christian faith calls us to care for our common home. Our prayer can bring us into the very heart of God and God’s great love for all creation. This can give us courage to ask the hard questions and then to take appropriate actions to live more simply and not do any damage to creation.

 

Our faith can give us the energy and power to work towards sustainability. First, we must begin by loving all parts of creation as God loves all parts of creation.

 

 

 

 

 

A DAY FOR THE WORLD’S POOR

                    

Pope Francis has asked the church to make this coming Sunday as a “World Day for the Poor.”

 

What is going on here?

 

There is great wisdom in asking the people of the Church to give special attention to a particular saint or a particular cause, such as praying for world peace. Instead of assuming that the people are paying attention you create a special day to focus their attention on the poor.

 

We are so busy trying to make a living, trying to keep things going at home and in our civic community that we have little attention for others. In daily conversation,  you may announce that you have a new apt on your computer and immediately the person next to you will speak about their computer. Immediately, they have centered the conversation on themselves. We are not even aware of how wrapped up within ourselves we are. 

 

The people of the Church are no different. We are so focused in on our own issues that we fail to recognize the poor who are so close to us.

 

Too often we have made the serious mistake of “doing” for others what we judge they could not do for themselves. For example, we have set up  food banks (this year marks forty years since the first food bank opened up in Edmonton).  But is there help for people to get on their own feet so that they do not need to use the services of the food bank? Do they need training to get into the employment market? Do they need help in management skills so that they can look at you as the trainer and say, ‘But I can do this myself’? 

 

If you are a ‘news junkie’ you will be flooded with items that keep you informed of the difficulties that climate change is making on many of the poor of world. 

 

What Pope Francis is nudging the people of the Church to do is to listen, observe and open their hearts to the poor of this world. Open your heart to the millions of displaced people scattered throughout the world. Listen to the girls and boys who cannot attend school because their families do not have the resources to send them to school. Listen to the families that have no access to any medical services because of their poverty.

 

But Pope Francis does not want us to just stop at the observation platform. He also moves us to receive from the poor. In the richness of the Catholic sacramental spirituality this opens us to see the poor as the sacrament of Christ. The poor are moments that we can encounter Christ. The poor can become moments to receive the love and mercy of Christ. The poor can be the very place where we touch Christ.

 

We take very seriously the teachings of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: Whatever we do for the poor we do to Christ. 

 

May this Sunday be a day of enlightenment. May the people of the Church, everywhere, open their hearts to find Christ in the poor.

 

 

 

 

RECLAIMING CREATION IN OUR FAITH

          

 

This Sunday (October 31) the world will meet in Glasglow, Scotland, (COP26),  to work out a framework to sustain the future for all of creation. The leadership of this conference is under the United Nations. Twenty-five thousand people are expected to take part in this most international of meetings.

 

The world stands at a point on our road where we can work together (all humanity) to sustain creation or we can just go ahead doing what we do now and continue to heat up the atmosphere. Thoughtful people know that if we do not make some drastic changes in our ways of production and consumption we will head over the cliff to ecological collapse. Thoughtful people know that if we do not make drastic changes we are on the path of self-destruction.

 

All Christian people have a great opportunity to rediscover the great wealth and strength that our faith story brings us. We have been so preoccupied with personal salvation for the past five hundred years that we do not know that the first part of God’s revelation is the story of creation. The first place that God’s goodness is revealed is in and through nature. 

 

This is not a time for us to reinvent the wheel. This is a season for all Christians to rediscover the first part of our faith which we have not paid attention to for the past five centuries. 

 

Pope Francis gave official impetus to this rediscovery in 2015 with the publication of the encyclical (official church policy), Laudato si. He called upon all people to rediscover our “common home” and to care for the survival and well-being of all creatures. The teachings of this encyclical brings together our great concern for the well-being of all human beings and our concern for the well-being of all parts of creation. This is a powerful roadmap to move all Christians, and all people of good will, to a life of compassion and concern for every single human being and every single part of creation.

 

This is why the meeting in Scotland (Oct. 31-Nov. 12) is such a step forward for the world. This is an opportunity for all nations, corporations, faith communities, the media and all households to work together to make possible the sustainability of our common home.

 

Never before has humanity stood on the steps leading to our survival as a world. The only way forward is through cooperation and adaption to a carbon free world. It is possible for humanity to cooperate toward our own survival. 

 

What can our faith bring to this international dialogue?

 

First, we can rediscover and claim the great value of creation. We need to fall in love with all parts of creation just as God has created all parts of creation in love and compassion. No one will ever try to nourish and sustain creation unless they have a great love for creation. We can rediscover what God has brought forth through the creation of every tree, squirrel, bird and human being. Nothing in creation is neutral in its value and place in our common home. 

 

Secondly, we can claim the power that our Christian faith gives us to preserve through all the changes and the resistance that will be brought up as the world moves toward a carbon-free future. There are great fights and misunderstandings that will happen through this shift in our culture but our faith can give us strength and power to work through all the difficult times.

 

This is a great time to be a believer. We are living the Exodus (freedom of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt) in a new way but God is with us on this journey.

 

 

WE PRAY IN SOLIDARITY

                   

 

I remember the talk on the prayer topic where the precentor shared the focus of her father. “My Dad worked at the same lathe, the same speciality machine that created drive shafts for these big speciality motors. This was highly specialized work. But in all the thirty-six years that he worked at this same machine he always had a picture of his six kids taped right in front of him. He told us he did this so ‘he would never forget what he was there.’”

 

What we hold in front of us identifies who we are. 

 

Now, when I pray I want to hold in my mind the picture of the poor and suffering of this world. This is not difficult for I meet many people in difficult circumstances whether it be in the hospital, in their struggles with family members involved in the court system or in the diminishment of old age. 

 

I want to hold these pictures in my mind so that I never forget why I am involved in praying. This is not about my concerns and my issues. It is first and foremost standing with Jesus in his great love and concern for his fellow human being. Right from the beginning of his ministry, the ordinary people could see that this wandering teacher had great compassion for the poor of their region. They knew he was authentic. They wanted to follow him in his service to God and fellow human being. Jesus was very much in solidarity with God and with the forgotten and discarded people of this world.

 

Living and praying in solidarity is an attitude that people must deliberately cultivate. Most often in conversation they begin to talk about themselves, what they are doing and how they are getting along with others. The focus is so much of everyday conversation is on themselves.

 

When we pray in solidarity we want to picture in our mind our elderly aunt who lives in the care -home. Her two sons live in the USA and only come back once a year.  She is alone. You, her only close niece, is the only person that ever visits her in the care-home. When you pray, bring her close to your prayer. See her smile. It is the only way that she connects with you. 

 

As an act of solidarity in your prayer, bring the Syrian mother who had to live in a refugee tent, twelve by fourteen feet, with her four adult children (all over the age of twenty). This stay in the refugee camp in Lebanon went on for seventeen months. Pray in your heart stnading beside that refugee mother, (and equally her four adult children) in their struggles in those very long months. There is blessing in this situation because Canada accepted her family as a refugee and they now live in Edmonton. Pray with the struggles of that Mother and her family.

 

Praying in solidarity brings a rootedness to our prayer. It keeps us focused on the heart and concerns of God. It brings us to become a listening people. Living in solidarity always expands our heart. 

 

Nurturing  an attitude of solidary always keeps us aware of who we actually are. 

LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE MEDIA

   

We are living in a time when there is great distrust of any institution. People distrust what the government says, what medicine says, what any branch of Christianity says and so forth. The center for  truth-making has gravitated more and more toward the individual. 

 

Part of the shift to centering all within the individual is due to the size of society in which we live.  Everything has become so big that we cannot rely that the institutions are working for the anything more than themselves. When societal structures are  too big, we need to become wisely critical of their motivation and purpose.

 

The media in modern life is huge. It is very powerful in how it can shape the narrative of any story of issue that we as a society has to deal with. Hence, we want to train all high school students (start early) to be very critical of anything that they hear and see through the media; the large multinationals and the social media that friends use.

 

No matter what we see or hear on the media today, we must stand back and question: “Is this true? Does this news item present things in context or is one side of the question exaggerated? Who is going to benefit from broadcasting this particular item? 

 

There are individuals that we deal with who are too quick to spout off some interesting tid-bits that they heard on today’s news. Oftentimes their facts are minimal about the item they are talking about. Cautiously we need to offer, “Maybe it not quite like that?” or “Maybe that is not true?” In today’s world you want to be cautious about unexamined facts that are thrown up around the coffee cups. 

 

Always examine the media through clear lens. Do not accept that the media is working in your best interest. First of all, the media are not a service to the community. This is a business. People have invested big bucks in this enterprise. The name of the game to gather advertisers’ who are paying the bills for this operation. If today’s media investors could make more profit selling pet food, you know where their investment will go. The first concern of any news broadcaster is to gain and retain viewers. The media is business!

 

It is more difficult to live I today’s world. We cannot assume that the media does not have a vested interest in what they are presenting. They are political just like the government people that they so often report on. 

 

The beautiful part of our Christianity is that we started with a teacher (i.e., Jesus) who was very critical of the dominant narrative of this day. He certainly did not accept what they powers-that-be were trying to tell the general population; i.e., the working classes and the peasants. If you are critical today of those who hold power in today’s society, know that you have a good background for inspiration.

 

When all is said and done, we need to have a love-hate relationship with the media. Question critically. Do not accept anything unquestioned.  Always identify who has the power in this broadcast and who are the losers. A critical viewer is the one who has control over the media and is not controlled by the media and their business interests.

 

 

THE ILLS OF SOCIETY ARE ALSO THE ILLS OF CHURCH

 

We heard from France that the study that the Bishops of France commissioned concluded that there were over 200 thousand cases of sexual abuse within the Church during the past seventy years in France. The greatest numbers of abuse cases happened between 1950 -1970.

 

Unfortunately, the leadership of the French Church were involved in covering up these abuse cases until about thirty years ago. There has been serious fall-out and a breakdown of trust in leadership toward the Church (and toward the larger society). 

 

We must never treat any case of sexual abuse lightly. We have thirty years of the reports of sexual abuse and exploitation in sports, athletic training, the media world, schools, the medical world, business and family life. 

 

Now after thirty years of revelations and charges being laid against the abusers, we need to have some context. This is not an issue that arises in any one social group. Sexual abuse is part of the dark side of being human. People (very often male) did use and exploit the vulnerable for their own pleasure and power.  

 

But this was always kept a secret. People knew and often suspected that something untoward was happening toward some children but they did not have the tools to deal with the abuse nor did they have the social and legal structures to prosecute the offenders. We have always had in our everyday language, “he’s a dirty old man.” Obviously, this was founded on some unseemly behaviours.

 

Families kept secrets. There is always the fear within a family/community that revelation could split the  family apart. The consequences of revelation were very serious. These fears (and all the cover-ups that went with it) were opeating in the Church and all of social institutions. The leadership of the Church were not acting any differently than the leaders of other institutions: families, schools, medical and government.

 

What this reflection is leading to is to see that the crimes/difficulties of society are also the crimes/difficulties with the Church itself. We do not bring into the Church perfectly redeemed human beings who have not sinned or do not have some terrible sexual temptations. What happens in our families also happens in our Church. In no way does this excuse or lighten the seriousness of the sexual abuse crimes. 

 

This scenario cannot happen in real life. It is given to help us understand the prevalence of sexual abuse among children.  But if we could ask any gathering (Church, family, work place), “Would all the people who have been abused sexually as a child please stand up,” (Such honesty and revelation is not possible), we would be shocked at the numbers of people who would stand up. I have no figures to prove this but just from listening the peoples’ stories you safely conclude that sexual abuse has been quite common in the growing years.

 

The Church is being faithful to its own calling when it is transparent about the weaknesses of its own members. The past thirty years have seen so many measures and procedures put in place to prevent abuse but also to make reporting and accountability possible. We will never eliminate child abuse completely but we are taking a very responsible approach to dealing with any situations of child abuse. 

 

The past thirty years have been very painful. But this has been a time of purification for the Church. It has been a time to rebuild trust and recognize our past failures of silence (just as our families were equally silent), but that was so wrong.  Our failures are our point of conversion to greater protection to vulnerable persons, to more honest accountability and a trust to listen to the truth-telling of the victims.