Ron Rolheiser, OMI: SNAKE-BITTEN … JANUARY 21, 2019

The renowned theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar gives an example of this. Beauty, he submits, is not some little “extra” that we can value or denigrate according to personal taste and temperament, like some luxury that we say we cannot afford. Like truth and goodness, it’s one of the properties of God and thus demands to be taken seriously as goodness and truth. If we neglect or denigrate beauty, he says, we will soon enough begin to neglect other areas of our lives.  Here are his words:

“Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking then along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name, as if she were an ornament of a bourgeois past, whether he admits it or not, can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”

Here’s a simpler expression of that. There’s a delightful little African tale that highlights the interconnectedness of everything and illustrates how, if we separate a thing from its sisters, we soon pay a price. The tale goes this way:

Once upon a time, when animals still talked, the mice on a farm called a summit of all the other animals. They were worried, they lamented, because they had seen the mistress of the house buy a mousetrap. They were now in danger. But the other animals scoffed at their anxiety. The cow said that she had nothing to worry about. A tiny little contraption couldn’t harm her. She could crush it with her foot. The pig reacted in a similar way. What did he have to worry about in the face of a tiny trap? The chicken also announced that it had no fear of this gadget. “It’s your concern. No worry for me!”  it told the mice.

But all things are interconnected and that soon became evident. The mistress set the mousetrap and, on the very first night, heard it snap. Getting out of her bed to look what it had caught and she saw that it had trapped a snake by its tail. In trying to free the snake she was bitten and the poison soon had her feeling sick and running a fever. She went to the doctor who gave her medicines to combat the poison and advised her: “What you need now to get better is chicken broth.” (You can guess where the rest of this is going.) They slaughtered the chicken, but her fever lingered. Relatives and neighbors came to visit. More food was needed. They slaughtered the pig. Eventually the poison killed her. A huge funeral ensued. A lot of food was needed. The slaughtered the cow.

The moral of the story is clear. Everything is interconnected and our failure to see that leaves us in peril. Blindness to our interdependence, willful or not, is dangerous. We are inextricably tied to each other and to everything in the world.  We can protest to the contrary but reality will hold its ground. And so, we cannot truly value one thing while we disdain something else. We cannot really love one person while we hate someone else. And we cannot give ourselves an exemption in one moral area and hope to be morally healthy as a whole. Everything is of one piece. There are no exceptions. When we ignore that truth we are eventually be snake-bitten by it.

I emphasize this because today, virtually everywhere, a dangerous tribalism is setting in. Everywhere, not unlike the animals in that African tale, we see families, communities, churches, and whole countries focusing more or less exclusively on their own needs without concern for other families, communities, churches, and countries. Other people’s problems, we believe, are not our concern. From the narrowness in our churches, to identity politics, to whole nations setting their own needs first, we hear echoes of the cow, pig, and chicken saying: “Not my concern! I’ll take care of myself. You take care of yourself!” This will come back to snake-bite us.

We will eventually pay the price for our blindness and non-concern and we will pay that price politically, socially, and economically. But we will even pay a higher price personally.  What that snake-bite will do is captured in Von Balthasar’s warning: Whoever ignores or denigrates beauty will, he asserts, eventually be unable to pray or to love. That’s true too in all cases when we ignore our interconnectedness with others. By ignoring the needs of others we eventually corrupt our own wholeness so that we are no longer be able to treat ourselves with respect and empathy and, when that happens, we lose respect and empathy for life itself – and for God – because whenever reality isn’t respected it bites back with a  mysterious vengeance.

For more writings by Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, see his website here: https://ronrolheiser.com/en/#.XJ5Cp5hKg2w

Dr. Marcellino D'Ambrosio: The Prodigal Son and The Lamb of the Passover

The parable of the Prodigal or wasteful Son is more about the loving Father.  God is not a raging tyrant who must be appeased through the suffering of his Son.  Rather it’s the extravagant love of Jesus, son of the extravagant Father, that makes atonement for our sins – the sacrifice of a spotless Passover Lamb.

For our sakes, God made him who did not know sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Some Christians reading these words over the last few centuries have gotten the wrong idea.  They’ve put this Scripture together with Jesus’ cry from the cross “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”  Plus they’ve added to the mix the Apostle’s Creed assertion that Jesus “descended into hell.”  The result is a huge misunderstanding.

THE ATONEMENT MISUNDERSTOOD

It goes something like this.  The sin of the human race called down the punishment not only of physical death and suffering but also spiritual death, total separation from God which is what hell is all about.  Jesus bore this punishment in our place.  This means that he took our sins upon himself to the point that he actually became sinful and abhorrent to the Father.  He was thus truly abandoned by God on the cross and spent three days in hell, with the rest of the damned.

SIN OFFERING & REPARATION

Let’s unravel this wrongheaded idea.  Elsewhere I’ve discussed the true significance of “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”   In this post, we need to clear up the other two misunderstandings.  First, there is 2 Cor 5:21.  In Hebrew, the same word means both “sin” and “sin offering,” What Paul is really saying is not that Jesus became sinful, but that he became a sin offering.

This kind of sacrifice was understood as compensation or restitution to God to make up for offending him through sin.  Honor and glory that God deserved had been withheld from Him; in the sin offering, perfect, costly animals, the most valuable possessions of the typical Israelite, were paid back to God in reparation and atonement.

PASSOVER LAMB OF GOD

The Passover Lamb had to be perfect, without blemish, and his bones could not be broken (that’s why Jesus legs were not broken on the cross like the legs of the two thieves, John 19: 32-37).  Jesus did not become sinful; he was the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world by canceling them out through a sacrifice of overwhelming value.  His self-offering was an extravagant gift.  It consisted of all the love, humility, and obedience that centuries of human beings owed to God but had unjustly withheld from him.

PRODIGAL SON, LOVING FATHER

The Father is not a blood-thirsty tyrant whose wrath is appeased by the suffering of Jesus.  He is the loving Father in the story of the Prodigal Son who respects his son’s freedom too much to force him to stay, or to send a posse after him once his sins led him to the brink of despair.

The Prodigal Son walked away in arrogance.  He would himself have to travel the road back in humility.

Adam, Eve and all of us walked away in pride.  We, their sons and daughters, would have to walk back in humility.  Trouble was, we couldn’t, so deeply had we been wounded by sin.  So God became man and walked the road for us, though it turned out to be the way of the cross.

Perfect humility.  Perfect love.  Perfect suffering.  Relentless and undeterred by every conceivable stumbling block and snare that hell could put in its way.  That is what redeemed us and paid the debt of our sins.

HE DESCENDED INTO HELL

But what about the phrase in the Apostle’s Creed “he descended into hell?”  The word used for hell means not the inferno of the damned (Gehenna), but the abode of the dead known as Sheol, Hades, or Limbo.  The meaning of this is simple– he really experienced the separation of his soul from his body.  It was no drill.  He really died.  For us.  For me.  It was love to the bitter end.

So Jesus is the conquering hero, not a passive scapegoat.  His free gift of unconquerable love is what makes atonement for our sins.  And the Father rushes out to meet him in love, clothing him (and us) with the resurrection.

The passion, then, is all about love.  For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son who would lay down his life for not only his friends, but even for his enemies.

This article on the atonement, the prodigal son, the loving Father, and the Passover lamb is a reflection on the readings for the 4th Sunday of Lent, cycle C (Joshua 5:9-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15: 11-32)

On the Solemnity of the Annunciation: A Courageous Young Girl Says No to Gay Pride in Schools of Canada

Last month, we launched a new petition to push back against a trend wherein a growing number of school boards across Canada are ordering every school in their district to fly th
e homosexual "pride" flag for the month of June.

That includes elementary schools in some districts.

Campaign Life Coalition was subsequently contacted by the mother of a Christian student who described how her daughter was negatively affected by her school’s homosexual flag activism last summer.

Her daughter, who we'll call Jessica, was in Grade 8 at the time at a public elementary school in the Greater Toronto Area that was required by the school board to fly the gay flag for the entire month of June.

Jessica felt frightened and stressed at being forced to participate in a mandatory gay pride flag-raising ceremony which contradicted her Christian beliefs.

Over 1,000 students and teachers were forced to participate.

The mother sent Campaign Life Coalition a testimony written by Jessica, describing how the homosexual flag raising ceremony was conducted as an indoctrination session, and how it traumatized her.

From Jessica, the Grade 8 student:

“I was surprised when I heard there was going to be a school-wide ceremony for the raising of the (gay) pride flag. I thought for sure that they’d at least be a bit flexible with attendance for those who didn’t want to go because of religious concerns or other concerns. I was wrong.”

“I asked the teacher who was supervising my class at the time if we HAD to go and she said it was ‘mandatory.’ She didn’t even allow me to explain my reasoning about why I didn’t want to go.”

“We were brought down to the assembly at the front of the school as a class. I was feeling uneasy as I wasn’t sure what the assembly would involve or what I might be asked to do."

"I also didn’t like that being there made me feel like I was supporting something that violates my faith.”

“There were a couple of speakers before the raising of the flag. When the time came for the (gay) pride flag to be raised, we were told to stand for this.”

“I panicked a little bit. I knew that standing meant that I was supporting this, or at least, hiding from what I really believe.”

“But sitting meant that I would be singled out. I was afraid that people would think I was a homophobe."

"Although I don’t celebrate homosexuality, I wouldn’t by any means treat someone who is a homosexual differently. People can live their lives however they want."

"But I couldn’t explain this to everyone at my school, so there were bound to be people who would think negatively about me for not standing.”

“As well as this, one of my close friends was the main speaker at this part of the assembly and a main member of the LGBTQ+ club at our school. I was afraid that her opinion of me would be changed and that she may feel personally insulted that I wouldn’t stand during her part of the assembly.”

“I decided that it wasn’t worth violating my faith for people’s opinions of me. I didn’t stand. But everyone else did. Some of my friends were like, ‘What are you doing?’ It was hard.”

“At the end of the assembly, the school played a song that had openly disrespectful lyrics insulting the Bible and Christianity. It was scary.”

“I hope I am never in another situation like that again. But I am doubtful.”

Just imagine this student's courage.

Would you have been able to stand by your convictions and remain seated like Jessica did, if you were in her shoes?

At just 14 years of age, Jessica has inspired me. I commend her and her parents for Jessica's willingness to suffer ridicule, bullying and persecution for her faith.

But, can you believe that this young girl was made to be a spectacle by her school in the first place?

By the way, the anti-Christian, Bible-hating song that the school played was Same Love by Mackelmore, which is a controversial ode to homosexual "marriage".

Read the lyrics here to learn what the school thought was appropriate to force every child and teacher in the school to listen to.

How can anyone deny that this was ideological indoctrination by the state, behind parents’ backs?

We have to stop this brainwashing in its tracks.

Our petition which has now reached almost 6,000 signatures, calls for public school trustees to ban flying the gay pride flag, and to institute a policy wherein only the Canadian flag can be flown on school property.

As parents brace for the coming homosexual flag battles that will happen across Canada in June, let’s start pushing back now, while we still have time to affect policy, by asking Trustees to respect the diversity of beliefs in their community.

Let’s ensure no more students are placed in frightening and humiliating situations like Jessica had to suffer.

Islamic Groups Target Nigerian Christians

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/cwn/2019/march/2-islamic-groups-target-nigerian-christians-300-killed-while-72-others-supernaturally-saved-from-firing-squad

The news out of Nigeria is getting progressively worse as it is being reported that more than 300 people were killed in at least seven predominantly Christian villages across Nigeria in February and March this year, according to multiple sources that monitor persecution of Christians.

"Since February 10, there have been at least 270 people killed in Kaduna State alone," International Christian Concern confirms. "It has been reported that at least 70 Christians have been killed during a 10-week span at the beginning of 2019 across the other Middle Belt states."

In one early morning attack on the village of Karamai on Feb. 14, sources said 41 people died after 300 gunmen swarmed the village shouting "Allahu Akbar!" as they fired their weapons and ransacked people's homes, according to Barnabas Fund. It was reported almost all of those killed were women and children along with a few senior residents who were unable to run away. 

Ron Rolheiser, OMI: LESSONS THROUGH FAILURE

Fr. Ron Rolheiser is a well-published author and columnist. Born in Saskatchewan, Canada in 1947 to a large family he entered the novitiate of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and professed his First Vows in September 1966. Ordained to the priesthood in 1972, Ron continued his education, receiving a B.A. (University of Ottawa, 1969), B.Th. (Newman Theological College, 1973), M.A. (University of San Francisco, 1974), M.R.Sc. (University of Louvain, 1982) and Ph.D/STD (University of Louvain, 1983). During and after his own studies, he taught theology and philosophy at Newman Theological College, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
In 1982, while living and studying in Belgium, Fr. Ron began to write a regular feature column in the Canadian newspaper, The Western Catholic Reporter. The column "In Exile" offered reflections on various theological, church and secular issues. His column has been published weekly in The Catholic Register of the Archdiocese of Toronto. His most recent books include "The Passion and the Cross", Cincinnati, Ohio, Franciscan Media, 2015; "Sacred Fire – A Vision for A Deeper Human and Christian Maturity", N.Y., Image Books, 2014; "Prayer: Our Deepest Longing",  Franciscan Media, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2013; "Our One Great Act of Fidelity: Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist", Doubleday, NY, 2011. 
The content of this post is dated March 12, 2019 and can be found on his website at https://ronrolheiser.com 

What’s to be learned through failure, through being humbled by our own faults? Generally that’s the only way we grow. In being humbled by our own inadequacies we learn those lessons in life that we are deaf to when we are strutting in confidence and pride. There are secrets, says John Updike, which are hidden from health.  This lesson is everywhere in scripture and permeates every spirituality in every religion worthy of the name.  

Raymond E. Brown, offers an illustration of this from scripture:  Reflecting on how at one point in its history, God’s chosen people, Israel, betrayed its faith and was consequently humiliated and thrown into a crisis about God’s love and concern for them, Brown points out that, long range, this seeming disaster ended up being a positive experience:  “Israel learned more about God in the ashes of the Temple destroyed by the Babylonians than in the elegant period of the Temple under Solomon.”

What does he mean by that? Just prior to being conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, Israel had just experienced what, to all outside appearances, looked like the high point of her history (politically, socially, and religiously).  She was in possession of the promised land, had subdued all her enemies, had a great king ruling over her, and had a magnificent temple in Jerusalem as a place to worship and a center to hold all the people together.  However, inside that apparent strength, perhaps because of it, she had become complacent about her faith and increasing lax in being faithful to it. That complacency and laxity led to her downfall. In 587 BCE, she was overrun by a foreign nation who, after taking the land, deported most of the people to Babylon, killed the king, and knocked the temple down to its last stone.  Israel spent the next nearly half-century in exile, without a temple, struggling to reconcile this with her belief that God loved her.    

However, in terms of the bigger picture, this turned out to be a positive. The pain of being exiled and the doubts of faith that were triggered by the destruction of her temple were ultimately offset by what she learned through this humiliation and crisis, namely, that God is faithful even when we aren’t, that our failures open our eyes to us our own complacency and blindness, and that what looks like success is often its opposite, just as what looks like failure is often its opposite.  As Richard Rohr might phrase it, in our failures we have a chance to “fall upward”.

There’s no better image available, I believe, by which to understand what the church is now undergoing through the humiliation thrust on it through the clerical sexual abuse crisis within Roman Catholicism and within other churches as well. To recast Raymond Brown’s insight: The church can learn more about God in the ashes of the clerical sexual abuse crisis than it did during its elegant periods of grand cathedrals, burgeoning church growth, and unquestioned acquiescence to ecclesial authority. It can also learn more about itself, its blindness to its own faults, and its need for some structural change and personal conversion.  Hopefully, like the Babylonian exile for Israel, this too will be for the churches something that’s positive in the end.

Moreover, what’s true institutionally for the church (and, not doubt, for other organizations) is also true for each of us in our personal lives. The humiliations that beset us because of our inadequacies, complacencies, failures, betrayals, and blindness to our own faults can be occasions to “fall upward”, to learn in the ashes what we didn’t learn in the winner’s circle.

Almost without exception, our major successes in life, our grander achievements, and the boost in status and adulation that come with that generally don’t deepen us in any way.  To paraphrase James Hillman, success usually doesn’t bring a shred of depth into our lives. Conversely, if we reflect with courage and honesty on all the things that have brought depth and character into our lives we will have to admit that, in virtually every case, it would be something that has an element of shame to it – a feeling of inadequacy about our own body, some humiliating element in our upbringing, some shameful moral failure in our life, or something in our character about which we feel some shame. These are the things that have given us depth.

Humiliation makes for depth; it drives us into the deeper parts of our soul. Unfortunately, however, that doesn’t always make for a positive result. The pain of humiliation makes us deep; but it can make us deep in two ways: in understanding and empathy but also in a bitterness of soul that would have us get even with the world.

But the positive point is this: Like Israel on the shores of Babylon, when our temple is damaged or destroyed, in the ashes of that exile we will have a chance to see some deeper things to which we are normally blind.