Tag: Greta Thunberg

Pope Leo: Please Go to Gaza; Celebrate Mass in Khan Yunis!

Readings for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles: ACTS 12:1-11; PSALM 34: 2-9; 2 TIMOTHY 4: 6-8, 17-18; MATTHEW 16; 13-19.

Every morning as I watch Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now,” I feel sickened by the reports from Gaza. No doubt that most reading these words have similar experiences. And why not?

In Gaza as everyone knows genocidal Zionists are systematically causing the deaths of untold thousands of children and their mothers. The Zionist monsters starve, bomb, and even gun down their victims as they line up at distribution sites where food is used as bait. The brutes are causing a manmade drought intentionally aimed at depriving infants of water for the formula they cannot live without.

You know the result.

The Zionists do all that in blatant contravention not merely of all human values and international law, but of the Jewish tradition itself. Their genocidal atrocities also contradict the teachings of the one Christians identify as the greatest of the Jewish prophets and whom they worship as the incarnation of God himself.

For that reason, it’s impossible for me to understand how any of that can be squared with the teachings of Yeshua and his critical understanding of his beloved Jewish tradition. It’s impossible for me to comprehend how self-proclaimed pro-life Christians (so concerned about unborn fetuses) can stand by in silence and even applaud when tens of thousands of children along with their mothers, fathers, and grandparents are slaughtered before their very eyes.

Where’s the specifically Christian protest from Yeshua’s followers? Apart from his general calls for a ceasefire, how come the new pope isn’t showing more leadership on this question?  

Contrast their and his relative silence with the prophetic words of Episcopal bishop Mariann Edgar Budde directly confronting her president and vice president on behalf of the most vulnerable in her own country. She was vilified and dismissed by Christians and Jews as disrespectful and overly political.

However, she was only following in Yeshua’s footsteps. After all, he confronted the leaders of his day as hypocrites, whited sepulchers, snakes, and broods of vipers (MT. 23:1-39). And he in turn was only following the examples of great Jewish prophets like Amos, Isaiah, and Elijah. All of them today would be called anti-Semitic, and “self-hating Jews.”

I write such painful words because this Sunday’s “Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul” celebrates another pair of self-hating Jews. Their following of Yeshua caused them to be seen as enemies of their people and of the Roman imperial power of their day. As a result, they were imprisoned and were ultimately victims of capital punishment.

And they in turn were only following the example of Yeshua himself as I’ve already said. He suffered ostracism, imprisonment, torture, and execution for his own unstinting opposition.

But wouldn’t outspokenness be dangerous for a new pope who’s just getting his papacy off the ground? Wouldn’t it be too polarizing and politically alienating for him to speak directly to Netanyahu, Trump and Vance the way Bishop Budde did? Even more, wouldn’t it be unthinkable for him to actually go to Gaza on papal pilgrimage?

In the context I’ve just described, the readings for the day suggest that those who claim to inherit the tradition of Peter and Paul and of Yeshua’s prophetism should never fear danger, ostracism, or political alienation. They should be the first to put their lives on the line, to risk imprisonment and even death to oppose those who prove unfaithful to the holy Jewish faith. Today’s readings assure the Divine Spirit of the universe will always have their backs.

The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes Peter’s harrowing escape from prison. The second reading has Paul claiming that he was “rescued from the lion’s mouth.” That was a clear reference to the famous story of Daniel in the lion’s den.

Yes, the founders of what became Christianity were the enemies of their days’ Jewish authorities – the same “leaders” who were also the sworn enemies of the One identified in today’s selection from the Gospel of Matthew as “the Christ” – i.e., as God’s anointed one.

Of course, Yeshua’s outspokenness brought him to death row too. He passed through the torture chamber where he was nearly beaten to death and crowned with thorns – afterwards only to be hung on a cross – the form of agonizing death that the Romans reserved for enemies of their emperors every bit as cruel and lacking in moral principle as Netanyahu, Trump, and Biden.

In fact, that’s the heart of the Christian tradition – identification with the poor, the oppressed, the imprisoned, tortured, and executed. That’s the meaning of the belief that God manifested the divine essence most fully among the poorest of the poor. God’s Self was maximally revealed in a construction worker, on death row, in a victim of torture, and assassination by the state. Contemporary theologians speak of such revelation in terms of God’s “preferential option for the poor.”

But there’s the difference between Peter, Paul, and Yeshua on the one hand and Pope Leo on the other. All three of the former were impoverished nobodies. They were poor Jewish workers standing up for their comrades in the face of oppression by what Romans characterized as the wealthiest, most militarily powerful empire in the history of the world. (Sound familiar?)

Unlike Yeshua, Peter, and Paul, the newly elected Pope Leo is not a nobody. Unquestionably, he potentially possesses one of the most powerful voices of moral conscience in the world.

Imagine if he used it with Yeshua’s outspokenness on behalf of those martyred children in Gaza!

Imagine if Pope Leo displayed the courage and commitment of his alleged predecessor, Peter or that of St. Paul. Imagine if he showed the fortitude of Bishop Budde or of Greta Thunberg and her colleagues who were recently turned back from bringing food and medical aid to starving Gazans. Compared to the pope, Budde and Thunberg are nobodies too.

So, imagine if Pope Leo decided that his first papal pilgrimage would be to Gaza. Imagine if he celebrated Mass in the ruins of the refugee camp in Khan Yunis? No one could ignore it. The Zionist and American perpetrators of genocide would be completely humiliated.

There’d have to be a ceasefire during his visit. Food aid would be released.

Imagine if he stayed in Gaza till hostilities finished.

That’s why I plead: Pope Leo, in the name of your predecessor, St. Peter, in the name of Paul, and above all in the name of the great Jewish prophet Yeshua, please go to Gaza! Use your power to put a stop to the monstrous slaughter!

A Frightening Child & Prayer to Save the Environment

Readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time:  EX 17: 8-13; PS 121: 1-8; 2 TM 3: 14-4:2; HEB 4: 12; LK 18: 1-8

Were you inspired by Greta Thunberg? I couldn’t get over her courage.

Imagine: a child of 16 years suddenly thrust beneath the blinding spotlight of the world’s stage – speaking confidently with a pope and with heads of state, addressing huge crowds and the United Nations itself. All of that would frighten me. How about you?

And she called them all to task. “How dare you!” she repeated again and again to the world’s movers and shakers whose programs for addressing climate change fell far short of the goals set by climate scientists. “Don’t listen to me,” she repeated; “listen to the scientists.” In other words, align yourselves with what Mother Nature, Life Itself, and the Universe are telling us.

And, of course, you saw the effects of her audacity. Millions were mobilized across the planet.

What started as a one-girl protest before the Swedish parliament swiftly became a thing.

Youngsters everywhere, including my own grandchildren, walked out of class and imitated Greta’s defiance. My five-year-old grandson challenged us all for driving a Volvo van whose gas engine, he said, is destroying the environment. “We should be driving an electric car instead” he objected. A five-year-old!

As someone pointed out, it’s a “Children’s Crusade” against capitalism’s worship of Moloch.

And what fear it inspired in the powerful! This wisp of a girl exercising the super-powers of concentration and focus conferred by an Asperger’s condition that would have others hiding under a rock, suddenly had the movers and shakers shaking with fear. Some ganged up on her, attacked her parents, and even belittled the teenager as mentally deficient. Their cowardly desperation showed that they were more afraid of her than she of them.

All of that is relevant to today’s liturgy of the word. It’s about prayer understood as Greta- Thunberg-like alignment with Life’s processes. Regardless of what we might call it, such re-orientation can change the world and cause powerful enemies of justice to tremble even before those they see as the weakest among us.

More specifically, today’s readings trace biblical understandings of prayer from a voodoo-like practice intent on harming one’s enemies to the alignment with Life’s purposes just described. Here’s the way they run according to my own “translation.” Judge for yourself to see if I’ve got them right. You can read the originals here.  

 Long ago
 When Israel’s primitive faith
 Still pictured God
 As a Man O’ War,
 They magically imagined
 A Yahweh persuaded
 To slaughter their enemies
 By Moses’ adoption 
 Of Wiccan postures,
 Magic rocks
 And feats of
 Super-human endurance.
  
 PS 121: 1-8
  
 They were right,
 Of course,
 To intuit
 That the Creator
 Is eternally helpful
 In protecting
 The lives
 And chosen paths 
 Of his creatures
 Providing sunlight by day
 And moonlight by night.
 Divine power
 Is always disposed 
 To help
 The oppressed.
  
 2 TM 3: 14-4:2
  
 However, the mystic Paul
 Had already 
 Ventured far beyond 
 His forebears’ voodoo.
 Though he recognized
 Israel’s written tradition
 As inspired,
 He also 
 Identified Jesus 
 As its ultimate interpreter.
 For the Master,
 Life’s Author
 Was no Man O’ War
 But a loving, patient, encouraging
 Father.
  
 HEB 4: 12
  
 Deep in our hearts
 We already knew
 This to be true.
 Thank you!
  
 LK 18: 1-8
  
 The comic Jesus
 Even joked about
 Those who thought
 Of God as a cruel judge
 Susceptible
 To tiresome entreaties
 And cowering before 
 Poor widows who 
 Might cuff him 
 About the ears
 If he didn’t
 Answer their petitions.
 Better, he said
 To “pray always”
 In a quiet way
 That matches
 God’s unwavering disposal
 To secure justice
 For the oppressed.
 No Man O’ War
 No exhausting prayers 
 No Mosaic sorcerer 
 Here!

There are salutary lessons in those readings.

According to their vision, prayer does not mean persuading some Man in The Sky to change his mind to match our capricious whims. Instead, it’s the process of aligning our minds with the Universal Love that underpins all of reality and that in practice expresses itself in justice for widows, orphans, and immigrants – the traditional biblical protegees of God’s concern. Prayer is a habit of mind that doesn’t call for words or supplications, but for awareness of the places in life where love-as-justice is breaking in.

That love remains nearly invisible because of human attempts to obscure it with tropes about rugged individualism, survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog reality, and “nature red in tooth and claw.” Such worldly wisdom normalizes fear. Unlike Greta Thunberg, ordinary people adopting that normality become frightened and immobilized before terror -inspiring kings, presidents, bosses and judges.

Jesus’ parable of the widow and the judge turns that familiar dynamic on its head. It calls us to “pray always” in the sense earlier described. Then, once our minds are aligned with God’s loving purposes, we’re called to imitate the widow who insistently sought justice not from God, but from the judge “who neither feared God nor respected any human being.”

In other words, Love understood as Justice for the oppressed will drive us (as it did Greta and her Children’s Crusade) to petition, protest, demonstrate, and engage in the type of direct action that threatens such agents of injustice. Jesus’ joke about the judge’s fear that a poor widow might do him physical harm makes his point that the selfish ones who exercise power over us are more afraid of us than we of them.

So, today’s readings suggest, align with justice and then join Greta in the streets. Be as courageous as she. Become as a little child (MT 18:3). Frighten the hell out of those judges, presidents and worshippers of Moloch! Save the planet!  

Liberation Theology: Seeing Divine Intervention on Behalf of the Poor

Readings for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time: HAB 1: 2-3; 2:2-4; PS 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9; 2 TM 1: 6-8, 13-14; 1 PT 1:25; LK 17: 5-10

Last week’s homily on “Dives and Lazarus” evoked an interesting comment from one of the most faithful and thoughtful readers of this blog. The point of address was a statement in my related reflections on liberation theology, viz. that in the biblical tradition “God passes from being a neutral observer of earth’s injustices to an active participant with the poor as they struggle for justice here on earth.”

In response, the reader commented, “The disheartening truth is that I see no evidence of this ever having been the case in the literal sense. Metaphorically, yes, and in prophetic but unfulfilled texts, but I fail to see even one concrete example. The rich and the poor seem to be equal in that both will have to wait for some nebulous afterlife to receive their reward. Meanwhile, the rich, proverbially, get richer.”

The comment is providentially related to this Sunday’s readings, which address the question of unanswered prayers and the frustration of those who look for evidence of God’s presence in the world and find none. Before I get to that, however, let me respond directly to what the reader said.

To begin with, I agree with his comment in that:

  1. It is often “disheartening” to look for God’s intervention on behalf of the poor (or any of us for that matter) and to see none.
  2. No one will see or ever has seen “literal,” “concrete,” and undeniable evidence of such intervention.
  3. So, in relation to faith and speech about God, metaphor used by “seers” (i.e. prophets gifted with capacity to see what’s opaque to the rest of us) is all we have.
  4. Contrary to biblical tradition, our inherited, domesticated religious culture insists that the rich and poor are equal in God’s eyes and that we must endure obscene wealth disparities till after death.
  5. As a result, wealth disparities flourish; the rich get richer.

So, relative to such observations and according to liberation theologians, what do the seers (those who can see beyond the shadows in our “Plato’s Cave”) tell us about God’s siding with the poor? Just this:

  1. God is Love and has established a loving order with room for everyone. This loving order of Universal Intelligence represents the larger, unchanging dispensation in which we live and move and have our being. It is the world as God created it.
  2. Throughout history, human structures (familial, economic, social, political, etc.) have been set up by the rich and powerful in opposition to the divine order. This is the origin of race-consciousness, nations, borders, latifundial holdings, slavery, poverty and wars. None of these represent the world as it comes from the hand of God, where the world belongs to everyone.
  3. The spokespersons for that other world are the “prophets” who have always been among us pointing out the in-breaking of the Love that is always there (e.g. Krishna, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Marx, Gandhi, King, Greta Thunberg . . .) Uniformly, they point out the opposition between the order of Universal Intelligence and the “wisdom of the world;” they indicate where Love is manifesting Itself; they invite the rest of us to “see” and to align with Love’s order.
  4. Those who listen to the prophets are the indispensable agents of Universal Intelligence for the “salvation” of humanity from the inevitable destructive results of the world’s “wisdom.” They are everywhere for those with eyes to see.
  5. In the end, however, Love’s order will prevail regardless of human activity; it alone is Real; the rest is illusion and doomed to pass.

With that in mind, please turn your attention to today’s liturgy of the word. You can find the readings here. In the meantime, what follows are my “translations.” As you’ll see, they directly address unanswered prayers and Love’s order as decreed by Universal Intelligence. 

 HAB 1: 2-3; 2:2-4
  
 I’ve been praying
 Dear God, 
 For your Kingdom to come,
 For violence to cease
 For relief from our misery.
 Yet you seem deaf
 To my pleas.
 After all,
 Wars continue
 Violence increases
 Everyone’s at 
 Each other’s throat.
 What should I think?
  
 Only this:
 (And write it in stone!)
 My timetable,
 My order
 Is vastly different
 From yours.
 What’s invisible,
 What seems delay to you
 Is always there
 And perfectly timely for me.
 So, be patient
 Keep your commitment
 To my just order.
 My answer to prayer
 Is never late.
 It’s omnipresent.
  
 PS 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9
  
 I have heard your response,
 Dear God
 I’m thankful and happy
 For the reminder.
 Your words
 Are solid as rock.
 It’s true:
 You know far more
 Than us.
 You have never
 Let us down.
 I will therefore not ever
 Lose faith
 Against your 
 Proven fidelity.
  
 2 TM 1: 6-8, 13-14
  
 Such words of response
 Are wise.
 They are the expression
 Of a Holy Spirit,
 Within us all.
 It can set
 The world ablaze
 With love.
 It is courageous
 And disciplined,
 It expresses the
 Strength of God.
 It enables us
 To endure even prison
 And hardships
 Of all kinds.
 It is the very Spirit
 Of Jesus, the Christ.
  
 1 PT 1:25
  
 We’re happy to say that
 We share 
 Such enduring faith
 With sisters and brothers
 Past and present.
 What joy to live
 In such holy company!
  
  
 LK 17: 5-10
  
 When Jesus’ followers
 Prayed for stronger faith,
 He reminded them
 That even a little bit
 Can change
 Expectations profoundly.
 Never forget, he said,
 That you are not in charge;
 Love is.
 You are only Love’s servants.
 God is not
 Your errand boy
 Beholden to
 Culturally-shaped 
 Plans and needs.

With those readings in mind, i.e. when we allow God’s word to open our eyes and ears, when we listen to the prophets (God’s spokespersons), we see concrete manifestations of God’s presence and siding with the poor everywhere. Right now, they’re evident, I think, in:

  1. Nature Itself: Regardless of human efforts to obscure and deny the divine, its presence calls constantly to us in events so close to us and taken-for-granted that they’ve become invisible. I’m thinking about the sun, the ocean, trees, the moon, stars, wild flowers – and our own bodies whose intelligence performs unbelievable feats each moment of our lives.
  2. Liberation Theology: This rediscovery of God’s preferential option for the poor has changed and is changing the world. One cannot explain the pink tide that swept Latin America during the 1970s, ‘80s, and 90s – not Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, Venezuela – without highlighting the inspiration provided by liberation theology. Neither can one explain the rebellion of the Muslim world against western imperialism without confronting Islam’s inherent liberating drive – again on behalf of the disenfranchised, impoverished, and imperialized.
  3. Contemporary Social Movements: Think Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise Movement, Yellow Vests, Standing Rock, the Green New Deal, and prophetic figures like (once again) Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Pope Francis with his landmark climate encyclical Laudato si’ . All of these movements and figures stand on the side of the poor and are having their effect.
  4. Marianne Williamson’s Campaign: Of all the current candidates for president, Marianne Williamson most articulately and faithfully bases her “politics of love” on the five prophetic insights referenced above. The mere fact that she is actually running for president signals an actual and potential awakening of American consciousness far beyond what’s (thankfully) portended even in the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Martin Luther King once famously said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but that it bends towards justice. “Justice” in his vocabulary meant overcoming the laws and social structures crafted by the rich and powerful to keep the poor in their place. King (and Malcolm as well) was a practitioner of African-American liberation theology. As such, he was gifted with eyes to see differently — to see the Judeo-Christian tradition as revealing a God on the side of the poor.

That’s what our Sunday liturgies of the word reveal consistently. This week is no exception. It invites us to open our eyes.