Our readings today take on great importance as we gather for our first full liturgy as a rarified community gathered by God in a special mission of the kingdom. We are a few days away from Pentecost, which ushers in the beginning of the Spirit’s presence with us. We hear about the widow’s trust in the stranger who visits her, and we are asked to trust in our goodness that comes from the Lord, whose light shines within us upon others.
We come from many places in the world to the center of the country to spend time with each other to learn, to love, to encounter, to share, to discover, to uncover, and to recover. We have left behind spouses, children, ailing parents, beloved pets, our religious congregations, and a community of friends. We return to campus to reconnect with old friends, or we come here fresh with hearts and minds open to meet new possibilities. We’ve lost friends, like Colleen Hastings, and we mourn for the members of the larger Creighton community who have passed into eternal life this past year. We arrive here open to growth, with grand hopes and aspirations, and perhaps some fears and resistances. We are here. We are here for mission back home, and we are here for each other now.
Our mission is vital in the world today for it is in bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ into the lives of future people we will meet. It is in acting in trust like the widow who prepares a little heaping of flour into bread that will last. It is in being like the light that not only cannot be extinguished but will light other fires. We see a church that is struggling with change and struggling to be relevant in confusing times. We know that for some Pope Francis is a welcome hero, while for others he is destroying the church by not following long-standing tradition. Some want an increase mercy and understanding to deal with complex moral situations, while others in the church want concrete law and order, clarity, and the days of old. While many in the church want the essence and Spirit of Vatican II, the highest teaching authority in the church, to finally be unleashed and implemented, some reject the Council as an aberration and work for its dissolution. Some welcome synodality as the future way of discerning God’s will for the church where the bishop and priest talk comfortably with the People of God wherever they are gathered in a world that has been redeemed, while others find comfort and identity through the wearing of cassocks and fiddleback vestments, tending to para-liturgical devotions while centering the focus of worship life at the altar in front of the tabernacle. We are in the time of Pentecost and fidelity to the Spirit and God’s mission is vital.
What do we need to do today? Whenever the Spirit is present, the Spirit is daring. We need to be bold and courageous and creative in trying to resolve the world’s issues in new ways. Our God is a creating God and we have to participate in God’s continuing creation, which entails thinking and doing things that may not be customary for us. As word, song, or image artists, we need to color beyond the lines, perhaps break a few conventions, to lead the world to a place they cannot yet envision. Art, poetry, creative ventures have to lead the way. And we do it through compassion, through the beauty of encounter, or an encounter with beauty, through the constant practice of the hard work of dialogue, which leads to the understanding that each person is suffering and has distinct needs. And we will be there for them. We will be there to offer a hand in friendship because that is what God has done for us. We find ourselves in a world that is crying out for God, even though they may not articulate it. We can hear the distress that people want their lives to have meaning and depth, and it is a world that wants to reconcile broken relationships and to live in integrity, and they don’t know how to get it. It is a world that still fears death and diminishment, and we have the gift of the Resurrection. People want to be meaningfully heard, meaningfully seen and known and loved by us, and by God, for we are the human faces through which God is working.
Yes, our mission is vital. While we are here, of course, let’s study, but let’s play, create, re-create, encounter, share, engage in real dialogue that reveals who we truly are – the artists, the poets, the composers, the dreamers, the creators. Let us dream. Let’s use this rarified time for our rejoicing and worship, through our play, simply because we are with one another, and that is very good. When we return, we will continue to prepare the bread that never ceases, to be the salt that preserves and flavors, to be the light that sets the world ablaze. We will be known for the love we bring to a needful world. For we rest upon the words of Teilhard de Chardin: The conclusion is always the same: love is the most powerful and still the most unknown energy of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment