Every human being, knowingly or unknowingly, from the moment
of our creation are pilgrims of the Absolute, we originate with Him and we are
headed to return to Him.
This pilgrimage is fundamentally possible because the Divine
Pilgrim Himself has dwelt among us and, in the Eucharist primarily, but also in
various other ways, remains with us as He Himself declares, promises: …I am with you always, even to the end of
the age. [cf. Mt. 28.20]
I begin this meditation the evening of Ash Wednesday when
the Church begins anew the annual pilgrimage with Jesus from His spiritual
battle in the desert through His resolute journey, pilgrimage, to Calvary.
Now it is already evening of Monday of the first week of
Holy Lent.
The meditation was set aside while attending to the needs of
others, spending much time in prayer because of the extremely dangerous
confrontation, taking place yes in Ukraine, but fundamentally between Russia
and Western Democracies.
When Christ was incarnate and came to dwell among us Israel
was an occupied country, the Roman Empire was engaged in many battles on its
extended borders.
Hunger, violence, unemployment, oppression was rampant
throughout the then ‘known’ world, and scholars these days have discovered much
about other civilizations at the time throughout Asia, the Americas, Africa
when human beings were struggling mightily to raise their families, protect the
clan or tribe or region from others.
This is the human condition, this is the unfolding of human
history, this is the challenge each day for human beings: to be born, grow and
mature, discover self and other, to wonder about the universe, to wonder the
who am I, why am I, to whence am I headed.
Left to ourselves….
But He who creates us to love us, lavishing among others of
His gifts His love-gift of free will, understands us and how need of Him.
More through His incarnation He journeys, as we must from
the womb to the tomb, on the path we follow, thus this pilgrimage we travel is
more than just known to Him: He has marked the way for us with His Light, yes,
more, with His blood.
While in this verse [1:10] St. John speaks in past tense, in
reality we can embrace every word of Sacred Scripture as present tense,
certainly as regards Jesus, both because of His promise: …I am with you always, even to the end of the age. [Mt.20.28] and
the intimate reality of His being with us in Holy Mass, within us in every Holy
Communion, and so: He was in the world,
and the world was made through Him…[v.10]
Because we are blessed with five senses we are sensory
beings, human beings blessed as well with imagination and memory, the capacity
for creativity in art and science, forming of cultures and body politics,
economics; we are builders of cities and farmers of the land; builders of ever more
complex and beautiful modes of transportation, even to an international space
station – which itself is not only testament to our creativity as builders but
to our ability, if we choose, to cooperate across languages, cultures,
religions and even non-religion.
Our failures when it comes to Ukraine or Syria, to AIDS and
poverty, hunger and homelessness, racism and violence are not because we lack
the God-given talent to use love’s imagination to live in true solidarity,
rather it is because as in the days when Jesus walked the earth, so in our
day:….and the world did not know Him. He
came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. [Vs.10-11]
For more than a millennia Christendom, which since the
fourth century has morphed into the ersatz ‘western civilization’ has been the
dominant power base of economics, media, military might, a dominance which is
if not waning is certainly as tattered and weakened at the edges as when the
so-called barbarians began to nibble at the edges of the Roman empire.
If our desire to see a renewal of Christianity – and among
other things Lent is a time for renewal, for rediscovery of our baptismal
vocation and heritage – is to assure a resurgence of Western power, then we are
not only on a fool’s journey, we have learnt nothing from history, and
certainly nothing from the Gospel.
But as many as
received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who
believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, not of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God. [Vs. 12-13]
One of the crucial actions Holy Mother the Church invites us
all to participate in during the Easter Vigil is the renewal of our Baptismal
Promises because Holy Baptism is the
basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit…and the
door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed
from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are
incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: Baptism is the
sacrament of regeneration through water in the word. [Catechism of the
Catholic Church # 1213]
That is precisely what St. John is telling us about.
Certainly we must raise our voices for the hungry, the
naked, the homeless, for an end to all forms of discrimination and hatred,
strive to form political, economic systems which ensure global peace, a
sustainable environment so our and future generations have food, medicine,
freedom from fear of other human beings, but all our efforts will ultimately be
as naught if we the baptized fail to be faithful to Jesus, to the Gospel.
Jesus came among us, is with us, because our loving Father
heard/hears the cries of His children dwelling in a world still in so much
darkness.
Millions are the voices raised to deny the presence of the
Church in society.
Most tragically many are the voices of former Christians,
for they tend to be the most angry and aggressive enemies of the faith, and in
their anger they reject the presence of Jesus in the world through the reality
of light-bearing, compassion-bearing, love-bearing, truth-speaking presence of
Christians.
If we care about the suffering of our brothers and sisters
in Syria and Ukraine, as but two examples some distance away, likewise if we
care about the suffering of our brothers and sisters dumpster diving in the
alley, or out of sight in some dark place of hopelessness, then we must this
Lent receive Jesus anew.
The alternative is to choose darkness and chaos beyond
anything we can imagine.