HUMAN DIGNITY AT STAKE?

I hear gun salges are up since last Friday! A colleague mentioned in his homily Sunday the need for gun control, and had to deal with some angry people as a result. The last person I want to see with a gun is an angry person. An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind, said Gandhi long ago. The strong current of individualism in our society has too many people thinking only of themselves. The common good appears to be as abstract and unreal to voters as it is to the candidates who get elected. Will the principle of the dignity of the human person go the same way?

Although a few Catholic bishops here and there asked for prayers Sunday for the victims and families of the tragedy in Sandy Hook, I haven't seen anything significant from our leadership as a whole about the need for better gun control. The same bishops where swift to issue letters and statements before the November elections to candidates running for office. They have been pretty silent after the last four massacres, as if human dignity and the fifth commandment of the Decalogue were of little importance to them. Their silence on our ongoing two immoral wars in the Middle East is stunningly dis-edifying.

Is the principle of human dignity in jeopardy? It looks as if it's being honored more in the breach than in the observance. As Christians, we see the human person as made in the image and likeness of God, the source and creator of all life. We see it as something we didn't earn. It's inherent and flows from our relationship with God. Our dignity is grounded in human freedom, our moral responsibility to do good and avoid evil.

As Americans, we are all equal. We are independent individuals with rights and responsibilities that are subject to legal limits. The role of the state is active but limited with regard to our freedom. It must protect our rights, promote the common good and insure public order. It cannot interfere with our faith.

That preventable tragedies, like last Friday's, occur now every few months is a clear and present danger to human dignity in our country. For Christians, we must again look seriously and in an informed manner at the transcendent and social nature of the individual. We need to ask what are the challenges in our society today that pose the greatest threat to human dignity. We need to stop and think about the news stories out of Connecticut, and ask our senators and representatives in Washington DC to take effective steps to stop the growing epidemic of shootings.

PASTOR EMERITUS

RELAX AND REJOICE

To whom shall we go, Dr. Phil or Jesus? Advent/December is a tough time for a lot of people. While the church tells us to be joyful because the Lord is coming, our smart phones remind us repeatedly to hurry up and shop before it's too late! Will it be peace and joy or will we drown in emotional and mental chaos? Someone called it the season to be schizophrenic. This Sunday is called the 'Sunday to Rejoice,' not because we've done our shopping and are ready to party but because the reason for the season has knocked us out of our slumber.

Many of us were raised to believe that Catholicism was about keeping the rules. John the Baptist's followers ask him in this Sunday's gospel for moral instruction. In every age people have gone to ask their religious gurus for moral guidance. Many of the world's religions offer moral answers to the fundamental question of how to live well as human beings. Every religion and culture has its moral teachers: Confucius, the Buddha, Moses, Mohammad, and today, John the Baptist - one of the best.

Many people would count Jesus among the world's greatest moral teachers. Jesus was, indeed, the best of them. But he was far more than that. Christianity is not principally about following a set of rules, obeying laws and moral preaching. Unfortunately that's what it has been reduced to, perceived by many to be, and even rejected because of. That debased version of Christianity amounts to nothing more than a religion of fear. Christianity is about who we shall become rather than what we shall do.

Jesus Christ came to establish a certain kind of relationship between us and God. This relationship is not based on keeping laws. We are not standing in the dock before God the judge. It is a relationship created for us by God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Good News of the gospel is the invitation from God to enter into Jesus' own relationship with God. It's a relationship that's based on God's love for us and not on our keeping of rules and directives. That's a relief! That's the Good News the church is so joyful about on this Sunday.

We have been loved into life by God, been saved by the gift of God's love as expressed in Christ's death and resurrection. It's out of our consciousness of that love that we live moral lives. When the rich man asked Jesus what he should do, he was told something that surpassed the law of Moses: 'Follow Me!" Christians are followers of Christ. That's who we are. With the divine life inside us, we learn to behave as Jesus did. That's our moral life. What we do is based on the foundational gift of who we are. Being tight with Christ we can say with St. Augustine, 'Love, and do what you will.'

Christianity is fundamentally different from other religions. It's hallmark is the gift of God's love, the divine spark within us which calls us to relax and to 'Cry out with joy and gladness: for among you is the great and holy one of Israel' - Isaiah 12:2 (Sunday's Responsorial Psalm). There should be nothing spiritually schizophrenic about an authentic Christian.

PASTOR EMERITUS

GOD IS INCARNATING

We attended church in Ireland as a family where one of the priests always began his sermons with the words, 'Dearly Beloved of Our Lord.' John the Baptist belonged to a different preaching school. He didn't fool around piously in the pulpit, but called his congregants a 'brood of vipers' - Luke 3:7. Shape up or be shipwrecked was his message.

Religious people in John's day were familiar with rituals of baptism and cleansing. John headed a group which appears to have been large and well known. At the heart of his message was the need for repentance, a word that indicated a change of heart - a new way of looking at life's values, openness to experiencing life in a different way. John shows up in this Sunday's gospel 'proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.' The closest analogy in the gospels to forgiveness of sins is forgiveness of debts - cf. Matt 6:12, 18:21ff, Luke 11:4.

How does this Sunday's gospel play in our world today as we get ready for Christmas? John's message of repentance and forgiveness of debts is an analogy of Christ's message of forgiveness of sins. I like to see Christmas as celebrating the mystery of God's unconditional love. God created out of love. His unconditional love was there before any creature could love God back. The very unconditionality of God's love escapes most believers. Jesus' love was unconditional. I believe we are in so much trouble in the world - and in the church - because we have failed to grasp this. Maybe our failure to accept unconditional love is at the root of the 'sins of the world.'

There have been from the beginning two traditions in the church about why Christ became human. One says Christ came as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. The other says he would have come even if there were no sins to take away, but his death on the cross gives clearer expression of a loving God. The former is the one most familiar to us. The latter, initiated in the early church by the Greek fathers and continued by medieval theologians like the Franciscans Duns Scotus and St. Bonaventure, has been gaining new ground since the early part of the 20th century. The tradition continues today through the fresh new voice of Ilia Delio, a Franciscan theologian and scientist, in her challenging and enriching book, Christ in Evolution.

Looked at in light of a God who loves us unconditionally, our Advent preparation for Christmas will have the character of struggling to accept God's unconditional love and its enormous consequences. In the words of New Zealand-born Jesuit theologian, Anthony Campbell, 'we cannot look at others without realizing the mystery of God's unconditional love for them too. There is no escape from social justice and respect for human dignity and integrity' - God First Loved Us (Preface). Surely the 'life in abundance' that Jesus said he came that we might possess becomes ours when this mystery takes hold of our hearts.

Are we ready to look with a contemplative eye at the coming of Christ as the conscious emerging of unconditional love and its consequences in our lives?

PASTOR EMERITUS