SPIRITUAL SERVICE vs. SPIRITUAL PARANOIA

   Recently Cardinal George of Chicago was quoted as saying, "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square."  He attributes this dire outlook to the problems created by aggressive, anti-religious secularism.  A few years ago, the Cardinal was reported to have said to Pope Benedict XVI that the church in America is being besieged by our culture.  So without a doubt, he sees the church under attack by a dangerous enemy, namely, the everyday world in which we live.

   Let's take a look at secularism.  "Secular" means, "of the ages," or more clearly, of space/time.  The space/time world is the everyday world that God created.  It is the world of nature, people, families, communities, nations, education, work and business, religion, science and the arts.  Space/time by its nature is incomplete; the space/time world is and always will be incomplete.  Sadly, the world's incompleteness is exacerbated by sin.  The incomplete, sin-containing world is the world that Jesus came to save, to bring it forgiveness and make it complete, beginning here in space/time and reaching its fulfillment in eternity.

   An essential part of our spiritual life depends on how we view and relate to the everyday, space/time world.  Cardinal George sees it and relates to it as an enemy to be defeated; Vatican II saw it as a world to be related to in open humility and service, a world to be listened to, learned from, and taught, uplifted and corrected on its space/time journey to eternal completion.  Most certainly, sin is our enemy, but the sinful, space/time world it not our enemy.  It is ourselves.

   Certainly there are segments of our culture that militate against religion.  Here we must distinguish between attacks against religion and against faith itself.  They are not the same.  An attack against religion is not necessarily an atheistic attack.  In fact, in could be an attack by believers in defense of their faith.  Sadly, one outstanding example of this is the opposition many Catholics are expressing against the way their leaders are expressing  our religion today.  If Cardinal George's religion is built upon power-oriented control over the world (and the laity), then he will see the world's opposition to him and his religion in a self-aggrandizing, paranoid way.  I wonder if this view is behind his prediction that his successors will die in prison and as martyrs.  I fear that the truth is more likely to be that they too will die in bed, totally disregarded by disheartened Catholics who have simply walking away from those leaders' self-aggrandizing, paranoid kind of religion.

   The disheartened Catholics will have been abandoned by leaders like Cardinal George and his successors, leaders who should have helped them relate openly, humbly and prophetically to the everyday, secular world, to deeply and spiritually understand it, i.e., to read the signs of the times and see God's intentions for it, and therefore work to heal, complete and save the world in the all-loving grace of Christ.   














  

THE RIVER OF INFINITY/ETERNITY

   When God gives himself to each of us in grace, i.e., as he calls us to our life-vocation and opens us to discern what he expects of us in our everyday life, we have Infinity/Eternity flowing into space/time.  Space/time can never completely receive and understanding the fullness of Infinity/Eternity.  Being space/time creatures, we receive God's grace with all the incompleteness and limitations built into us.  Even in eternal heaven, we will forever keep wonderfully growing in our comprehension, appreciation and love of God.

   More particularly we are limited in our reception of and response to God by our personal aspects, e.g., age, gender, personality, language, culture, education, personal experiences and history, etc.  All these can enrich our experience of God and our response to him, but they can also obstruct our relationship with God, if we let them.  So, to fulfill ourselves in all the aspects of who we are, we have to keep ourselves continuously open to receiving and growing in God's grace, which includes our reading the signs of the times to see God's intentions in today's ever changing world, and responding to him ever more fully and effectively.  Our life in Christ is a Way, a continuous movement, like a river, of growing and flourishing in God's living, ever flowing, loving grace.

   What is true of us as individuals is true of us as the community of faith that we are.  Through our leaders, we are all spiritually empowered and responsible to channel God's flowing, living water of grace into the most effective means of working for the ongoing salvation of the world.  Our leaders, therefore, must keep themselves open to God's living truth, doing nothing to obstruct it.  They must channel God's living water so that it flows within us and from us (cf. Jn. 7:38) to bring ever flowering life to the world in all seasons.

   Unhappily, our leaders are failing in their responsibility.  In many areas they are stopping the truth from flowing.  They have dammed the flow of God's grace, e.g., in the areas of sexuality, women, the freedom of the laity to discern God's intentions and contribute their sense of the faith to the whole church, the work of many of our best theologians, and the forward-looking vision of American nuns.  They have also dammed up insights from today's science, philosophy and psychology--all of which can lead to our ever evolving understanding and appreciation of human nature itself.

   I believe that God is responding to our leaders' self-imposed theological and spiritual stagnation by inspiring many of the laity, theologians and nuns to speak and act prophetically and thereby open the way to new visions of the truth that God wants us to recognize and incorporate into our lives.  For our part, we must intensify our discernment of the gifts, talents, possibilities and opportunities that God is giving us.  And we must gather together with other discerning people.  Together we can test ourselves in the Spirit to ensure, as well as we can, that we are discerning correctly, so we can act in the fullest possible accord with God's truth and intentions.

   To help ourselves we can look deeply inward to see, as openly and truthfully as possible, if our intended actions are alive and flowing with truth, justice, peace, humility, and most of all, with love--all for the building up of ourselves and our society and culture, in the saving grace of Christ.  Thus we will keep God's grace flowing like a river of living water.