USN SUNDAY REFLECTION

 
God so loved the world that he sent his only-begotten Son so that those who believe in him might not perish, but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him.   

 John 3, 12-21 
The distinguished Dominican scholar and theologian, Edward Schillebeecks, who made a name for himself during the Second Vatican Council, tells the following story against himself:  “When I first went to the seminary as a teenager, I was impressed at the fact that we used rise in the small hours of the morning and go to the chapel to chant the Divine Office at 2.00 a.m.  In my enthusiasm, I wrote home to tell my parents of how I felt:  ‘How wonderful it feels to be praising God when all the world around me is asleep, and I and my fellow seminarians are giving praise and glory to God.’” 

His father wrote in reply:  “I’m glad to hear that you are enjoying your new monastic life.  However, I should remind you that when you were a baby (Edward was one of thirteen children), your mother and I were often up at 2.00 a.m., walking the hallway, trying to pacify one or other of you kids.  We, too, were giving glory to God, though we were not exactly singing the psalms.” 
Christian tradition has been inclined to suggest that the best place to find God is in a quiet retreat or in the seclusion of a monastery.  Edward’s wise father says:  “God is to be found just as much in the everydayness of life, even though we may not realize it at the time.” 

The criteria that Jesus set out for finding our way to the fullness of life with God are what we used to call “the spiritual and corporal works of mercy”  -  living the Gospel in practical action, in very ordinary ways that are woven into the tapestry of our living and are born of grateful necessity.  God is there in a parent assisting with homework, in tables being cleared and dishes washed and wiped, in hungry mouths being fed, in comfort and encouragement offered, in business conducted honestly and ethically.  The “monastery” and what we refer to as reflective and retreat time are essential, but not as an escape from a godless world but as a time and place to refocus and to remind ourselves that God is very much alive and active in the world around us, in the activities in which we engage, in the people we encounter, in the thoughts we think and in the feelings we feel.  These are all the bits and pieces that make up the world that God loves so intensely. 

When we look at the mayhem, the violence, the terrorism and the barbarity being pursued in many parts of our world, we might be tempted to think that God must hate the world, and that the best thing we can do is run away to the seclusion of a monastery or some similar place where, undisturbed, we can concentrate on finding God. 

Yet the good news of today’s readings is that God loves the world and freely gave it the most precious gift possible in the person of Jesus.  Remember, this is a God who was well familiar with the evil visited upon the world of the Old Testament by the likes of Cain, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Pharaoh of Egypt, the butchering Assyrians, the lustful King David who sent Uriah to his death in order to steal Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba.  Yet all this was part of a world which Jesus is adamant God loves. 
What, then, was it about Jesus that led him to insist that God loves this world with a love that is so intense?  I want to suggest that Jesus was possessed of a hope, developed over time from his relationship with God, that refused to give up on us; a hope that humanity, at its best, has the ability to transform the world by loving it into life.  Contemporary Latin American theologians refer to this as la esperanza transformadora  -  ‘transforming hope’.  In an article entitled A Feathered Thing: On the resiliency of hope, (to which I have referred previously), Vincentian, Robert Maloney, himself quoting Augustine, writes:  
“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to work to change them.” Anger, Hope’s first daughter, reacts spontaneously in the face of evil, refusing to accept unjust social and economic structures that deprive the poor of life: unjust laws, power-based economic relationships, inequitable treaties, artificial boundaries, oppressive or corrupt governments and numerous other subtle obstacles to harmonious societal relationships. Then Hope’s second daughter, Courage, standing at Anger’s side and singing out persistently, searches for ways “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield,” as Tennyson put it.
In last Sunday’s reading about Jesus overturning the tables in the temple, we saw both Anger and Courage at work.  Today’s gospel reading puts the focus squarely on Hope herself. 
As sparks of the Divine, created in God’s image, we are being nudged to examine ourselves on the extent to which we mirror in our living the hope that God and Jesus hold out for the world of which we are part. 

In the article referenced above, Robert Maloney gives several examples of hope in operation.  This is one of them:
About eight years ago, my niece lost her 2-year-old baby, Maeve. Hundreds of people came to the wake. After Maeve’s coffin was closed, someone overheard her brothers and sisters talking. Her littlest brother said, “Is she
playing inside that box?” His older sister replied, “No; Mama says she’s playing in heaven.”
Maeve never learned to walk, nor did she ever speak. The handicap with which she was born impeded her growth from the start and then abruptly stole her life away. But she lived and died evoking love and radiating it back. Her father said at her funeral, “Every time you saw her, you wanted to kiss her.”
When we witness death, we often ask why; all the more so with a child. Why was Maeve born with disabilities? Why did she die long before those who loved her and nourished her? Sometimes in anger we blame God and ask, How can a good God let a child like Maeve die? Questions like this are perennial. Thomas Gray lamented:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.  Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air.                                            (Elegy Written In A Country Church-Yard)
We have no ready answers to such complaints, only a persistent hope that points us beyond our grief. A feathered thing perches in our souls, singing out.
Hope moves us to ask not just why Maeve died, but why she was born in the first place. Had she not been born, would her mother and father and brothers and sisters have ever loved as they learned to love during the two years of Maeve’s life? Would they ever have learned to give as they gave and to pray as they prayed? If heaven is union with those whom we love, then was Maeve’s presence in her family its foretaste? Maeve reminded us that the communion of saints is a communion of human imperfection; one of its building blocks is what we make of our own weakness and the weakness of those who surround us. A grieving woman, who had just lost a child, once wrote: “Some may wonder why, after my experience, I still make the painful effort to believe. I can only respond that, despite my doubts, having seen the breathtaking perfection of my daughter’s peaceful face, I find it impossible to believe that God was not there.”
As disciples of Jesus and believers in God, is it not up to us to reflect some of their boundless love to the part of the world that we know and which, despite its flaws, God loves so intensely?