COVID TIMES; TAKE STOCK

                                  

 

 

We have almost completed nine months of isolation and distancing due to the Covid virus. This has been a long and difficult time for everyone. Each one must stand back and take stock over what we have lost during these nine months, and what we have to look forward to in the next seven months (about the time it will take to do about half of the vaccinations in this country). 

 

When we take stock of what we have lost, it will spur us on to treasure and value what we have lost. Eighty years ago the generation that grew up during the great depression (1930-39) knew how important it was to work hard and build up security for their family’s future. The suffering of deprivation made them very determined to preserve the values of security for others (their own family).

 

Great good could arise out of the sufferings of this pandemic.

 

We have been deprived of our social contacts, family members, friends and the necessary and meaningful gatherings that we need to navigate life. We are ever so conscious that our grandparents are not hugging their grandchildren, our elderly and lonely parents have only one or two designated visitors, and we struggle that our family Christmas celebration may be limited to only five people. Our bodies and spirits cry out for daily social contact.

 

In all of our Canadian society we are painfully aware of the inadequate care that we are providing to our seniors in the long-term care homes. We have  structured our care with the minimum of care workers. The inadequacy has now come home to roast and it is not pleasant. 

 

The pandemic has brought to the fore the inequality between the various racial groups, the disparity between the lower wage earners and the newcomers to Canada and the long-time citizens. Daily we ae confronted with the shortcomings of our Canadian society.

 

Canadians who walk a spiritual life and are part of a faith community lament the absence of praying together, supporting each other and being nourished by spiritual worship in their own faith communities. This pain, this absence, is felt by all spiritual people, of all the religions practiced in Canada.

 

Now, what are we going to do with this pain, these gaping holes in our lives? 

 

This time of crisis is very much a time of opportunity. As Christian believers we must ask what God is leading us to embrace.

 

Hopefully we will turn to a life filled with more solidarity with one another. Human beings only thrive when they are connected and supportive of one another.  Hopefully we will work harder at building community, at all levels: family.  This rugged individualism is leaving us very lonely and unsupported. 

 

May our future be filled with a stronger desire and spiritual plan to build stronger bridges with our fellow believers, the neighbors who live right around us and all the new comers that are trying to make Canada their new home. 

 

 

 

 

I WILL DO IT MY WAY

 

 

 

One of the most profound lesson I learnt about our Christian faith happened some years ago when an insistent mother demanded to have her baby baptized. There was no connection with the Church and strong resistance to any teaching of our faith. 

 

I pointed out to her as gentle as I could that what she was asking was not baptism. She looked at me so firmly and stated her non-negotiable position, “I’ll make it what I want!”

 

This is the way most people actually live out their religious faith, or live out the poverty of their religious faith, by making themselves the standard. What I do is good enough! 

 

In the dregs of the Catholic experience there is much untruth and unpleasant memories. I use the word ‘dregs’ to indicate that we need to be aware of what is festering in our Catholic psyche. Probably this young mother was coming from a background where there was so much fear that if you did not find a priest to pour the water on your baby and something negative would happen, you would be a terrible parent for the rest of your life. Your ‘unbaptized’ baby was no good before God. Never doubt the hold that superstition can have on peoples’ lives. 

 

If you are like this young mother you are convinced that you are right and no one can challenge you with the truth!

 

Religion has its bad side. People will hang on for generations to their fears that this baby will be condemned to a limbo because God is so terrible. 

 

Not everyone lives in a healthy functioning church. When you are a living part of a faith community you will be challenged and have to readjust some of your thinking about God, Church, sin, redemption and eternal life. When you are part of a healthy church you will be questioned and challenged on some of your interpretations. This is a healthy part of spiritual and human growth.

 

Built into this “ I will make it what I want” is the resistance to conversion to the Gospel way of life. Jesus challenges us to turn toward God’s plan for humanity. He calls us to make a radical change in our lives and follow the Good News of the Gospel. Each believer must undergo conversion on their adult journey. 

 

But how can you hear the call for conversion if you are already leading a satisfactory religious life?

 

It is not only individuals who resist conversion. The entire Church can get locked in to mindset that resists the call by the prophets among us to change our way of being Church, to change our unjust business practices and the ways that we exclude the poor from the benefits of our society. 

A healthy Church is a faith community that is responding to the call of Jesus to change our lives. It demands a real turning towards the sharing life in Christ. It demands that we get on board with the life-project that Jesus brings us, that is to grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ in our own space and time

 

 

 

 

TURNING THE CHURCH TOWARD THE POOR

            

 

Pay attention to who your leaders are. A leader always sets the tone of the group whether it be country, school or workplace. Now tone is something that is difficult to define in words but you sure can feel it in practice. 

 

Our school boards have learnt this lesson long ago. They work hard to bring a functioning leader who works towards clear goals in the education process, is able to work with many different personalities and has a real love for the students and their parents. The personality and working habits of the principal colors everything in a particular school.

 

Our church has been blessed with Pope Francis. Thousands of ordinary Catholics and many non-participants are so happy with this very approachable person. But there are many others (more silent about their opposition) who are rather uncomfortable with the direction that he appears to be taking us.

 

Actually, he is challenging the entire membership of the Church to become a ‘poor church for the poor.’ Whereas people in the past may have expected the pope to shore up the doctrine and the discipline of the Church, Pope Francis is leading the way for the believers everywhere to turn toward the poor in their own country and in the world and walking with the poor of this world. 

 

Within the life of the Church, we must always be concerned that the correct doctrine is being preached and prayed by the people at the local level. But that is only half of the story. The Pope must be concerned about the correct practice of Christianity. In other words, our correct doctrines must take flesh in the daily lives of believers. 

 

This is why he has asked that this Sunday (November 15, 2020) be designated as the Sunday of the poor of this world. He wants people worldwide to pay attention to the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. He wants believers to pay attention to who are the poor among their population. Most often, the poor are invisible to the working citizens of a particular country. 

 

This Sunday provides an opportunity to reflect on the teachings of Jesus toward the poor of his time and place. What did he bring to those who were suffering or excluded from sharing fully in the society? How did he lift the life and value of the poor up?

 

Two centuries from now people will say that Pope Francis was on the right side of history. He is trying to move the Church to where it needs to be: among the poor and the suffering, among the people that society counts as of lesser value. This must not be a Church that triumphs in its airtight doctrines, but rather a messy Church that loves and cares about the people who get pushed aside and forgotten. 

 

This Sunday can become such a beneficial time  to enter more deeply into the call of Jesus to love the poor with the very heart of God. Take great joy that your heart is being challenged by Pope Francis’ direction to go out towards the poor of this world.

 

  

WALKING THROUGH THE HARD TIMES

          

People are under stress. Two million Canadians are unemployed. Families are suffering because their elderly parents are locked up in nursing homes. They lament that their elderly mother may be sequestered safe from the virus but she will die of loneliness. We have been locked up for too many months. These are difficult times.

 

Our faith will not give us the magic medication that will make the frustration and loneliness go away. God is not the controller of the puppet show that can make good things happen to us. 

 

We are being challenged to turn toward our faith history and seek God in this bleak season of loneliness. We are seeking purpose in all of this. 

 

We did not learn about the faithfulness and the power of God when times were good and prosperous. Our religion arises out of suffering and deep pain. Our Hebrew ancestors were slaves in Egypt. They suffered under the production quotas of Pharaoh (the powers in control of the society and the wealth of the society). There was much pain in all of this. Also, add to this suffering the efforts of the Pharaoh to control the Hebrew population. Male babies were to be killed!

 

God comes to Moses and sends him: Set my people free!

 

We have the confrontation of Moses and the Pharaoh. The slaves are freed and they escape, dryshod, through the parted waters of the Red Sea. But their years in the desert were years of trouble, rebellion and complaining, 

 

This is where our memories can give us guidance through these tough times. As we once again tell the story (i.e., the memory) of Moses and the freed slaves we must place ourselves among them. They cried out to God for help and assistance. They sought courage through the dark days where hope seem so absent. Now we are in the desert. We are crying out to God for help and assistance to get us through these dark times. 

 

Our God is not distant to our sufferings and pain. He literally was one of us when we recall the suffering and aguish that happened in the garden the night before he died and the feeling of abandonment that he experienced on the cross. Not only is the Son of God fully immersed in the struggles of human life, but he cries out for help in these terrible times of suffering.

 

We want to encourage our people to bring to God in prayer their loneliness, their confusion and their frustrations. Be unafraid to bring before God your hesitation and feelings of being down through the months of unemployment. Ask for divine help when the business that you have been trying to build up in the last few years has had to close its doors. 

 

Countless believers have shared their experiences of the tough times in life. “I would never have got through this if it was not for my faith.” In this season of isolation and lockdown (which will probably last a full year) ask God for the strength and courage you need. Ask for personal and family resilience to get you through these confusing and tough times.

 

A CHURCH THAT STRUGGLES TO LISTEN

              

 

In our daily interactions with others it is obvious that the people who talk a lot are always talking about themselves. We all have a few relatives who receive polite attention while they chatter about all and everything. When we leave the room there is nothing worthwhile to remember! Chatters never check in to register whether what they said was of any value. 

 

As strange as it might seem, the more talking (quantity), the less actual communication (quality) that actually happens. We can be connected to hundreds of people on our phone or texting, but that does not mean that we have actually listened to a single one of them. And they in turn, have probably not listened to us!

 

We have this wonderful teacher in grade five who reminds his students often: ‘So long as you are talking you are not listening!’

 

In our parish communities we need a lot more listening to the hearts and the struggles of each other. When we listen to their stories we will be changed. 

 

There is much suffering and struggles in the lives of people that we interact with.  They need to be listened to, embraced and they need a supporting ear to walk with them in this difficult period.

 

In our parish communities we need to listen to the men and women who are unemployed or living on the brink of having to shut down their business that they worked so hard to build up in the past ten years. We might be powerless to help them today, but we can make the space to hear their frustrations and boredom while the days and weeks flow into months of unemployment.

 

They might be very reluctant to share about the divisions within their own family but listen to the grandmothers and grandfathers who cry and pray over the two sons who will not talk to each other …. and they only live six city blocks apart. Here these grandparents are coming to the final years of their life and this family is living in failure mode. Listen to the tears of these parents.

 

Listen to the divorced who feel so distant to the church and who are trying to redefine their lives in regard to their own family and their circle of friends and acquaintances. The marriage may end but the relationship never ends. Can we listen to the struggles and pain of the divorced?

 

Often our young adults are floundering like a swimmer who is in trouble in the water. What is there to guide them on to that is solid? meaningful and life-giving? What will give this young life definite meaning and purpose? In a society where everything appears up for grabs, what truths will anchor my life? We may be financially rich, but oh, so confused and insecure. Who will listen to our uncertainties?

 

In our day to day actions as church we need a lot less chatter and a lot more listening. The listening must be patient, intense and brave. There will be moments when we have to deal with things we would rather not hear. But in all this listening to the stories and the pain of others, we will be changed. 

 

Some of the greatest communication happens with a lot less words but with sincere listening. 

 

 

PREPARE FOR THE GREAT LONELINESS

        

 

When I look toward the future, I look to the population under the age of fifty-five, I want to caution them to prepare for the great loneliness in the last twenty years of their lives.

 

We have become so individualistic in out culture (the entire North American culture) but our individualism, the weakness of our commitment and connection to the larger community, has unpleasant consequences. We may come to old age with the financial resources to look after ourselves until the day we die but there may be hardly anyone who will care how well we are doing in our declining years. 

 

If we are not involved and committed to the well-being of the community in which we live at the age of forty, we will most probably carry that same lifestyle with us into our eighties. Just a few months ago, one older parent shared that their forty-year old son and his family belong to nothing except to a sports club in Calgary. Then he stepped back from the sentence: “But they pay a subscription fee for that service.”

 

As a human being, if we do not belong to the larger community beyond ourselves, no one will belong to us. If people say in the nursing home, “No one comes to see me or to even care for me,” we will sadly add, “But you were not there for anyone when you were in your forties and fifties.” Loneliness, as the ghost of our past absence to community, will come back to haunt us in the one room in which we live in the nursing home.

 

Families are also so small and divided in so many ways that we can envision the situation of the adult daughter or son asking the question: Who will look after my aged Mother in Prince George and my aged Father in Winnipeg? Is loneliness what life comes to in old age?

 

Our deepest human need is to belong. This need is stronger than our need for nourishment. Our strongest community will almost always be our family. But we must not neglect all the other forms of belonging that we need to survive as a human being. We need to belong to the people who are physically around us. We need to belong to the civic community (however large or small that may be).  We need a community of friends, work associates and other communities.

 

But if we do not belong (a working commitment) to other forms of community, the consequence will follow; no one will belong to us. Hence: loneliness!

 

When we see our adult children dropping out of our faith communities (it is also very prevalent in the Moslem, Hindu and Buddhist faiths), we need to recognize that the first commitment people drop out in this individualist culture is the faith community. Do not stop there. Continue counting all the other forms of community that they are not involved in and committed to.   Do not be surprised that the connection and commitment to family may be very weak.

 

The direction of the cultural flow in North America is to arrive at the last twenty years of life, to be financially secure, but oh, so lonely!

 

 

 

  

A CREATION CENTERED SPIRITUALITY: I NEED HELP

 

    

                      

 

A turn toward a creation-centered and respect for all human life in our Christian spirituality is not something that is new. This has been the result of a century and a quarter of Catholic social teaching which has defined the position of the Christian believer to the earth and human life. 

 

Our commitment to God is not a ‘sacristy faith’ that is lived out in the safety of the church building and its structures. Catholics have a very strong sense of responsibility towards the world and we live out our faith on the highways and the byways of life. We have not always been successful in living our commitment to Christ through our lifestyle. There will always be a few individuals who refuse to deal with the storms and the upsets that happen through the history of a single individual. There are many difficult moments to contend with as we move through life. For the Christian, this must always be done in conjunction with God. 

 

For the past sixty years scientists have been warning earth’s citizens that the behavior of human beings is leading to the warming of the climate and destruction of the water and soil resources of the earth. If we humans change nothing we are heading for the collapse of the earth’s systems. The warming of the earth is happening slowly. Many people want to dismiss the danger. “There is nothing happening now, so why get excited.”

 

It has taken humanity two hundred and fifty years to move into the industrial revolution. It will take at least a hundred years to move into a life-sustaining type of life. Humans can save the planet earth. It is within our power to make all the necessary changes to our life style and our social values.

 

In 2015, when Pope Francis issued the encyclical, ‘Laudato si,” he brought the full weight of our faith convictions to saving the only home we have, our Mother Earth. He made no advances in the doctrines we believe in but he laid the challenge before all people of good will to care for the only home we have. He gave the traditional teachings of the Church much great impetus. We are challenged!

 

Spirituality and/or religious faith have incredible power to energize people to work towards social justice and a change in the life stye of our society. It can give energy to move individuals and entire communities to work towards  achieving social justice. We need to be reminded that two hundred years ago it was the people of the Church who spearheaded and brought about the end to slavery in the British Empire. 

 

The first group of people that should stand up to our responsibility to work towards a sustainable earth should be Christians. They are committed to our God who loves and cares for every part of the earth, even the smallest bacteria in the soil. If this is their God, what must the behavior of the believer be towards the earth? And a sustainable future?

 

This is where I need help. What are the prayers and spiritual practices that will connect me to the earth and to help creation thrive? What are the teachings that we must embrace to love and respect the earth?

 

What does my faith offer me to be a responsible earth citizen in 2020?