Our Christian Calling in These Times
By Eileen Dooling, RSM, Executive Director
Posted on
When I originally began this reflection, I had planned to write about the Climate Study which had been released to the media. Within days of my putting pen to paper, Mr. Trump responded to North Korean threats with warnings of “fire and fury,” and we were suddenly on the brink of a nuclear war. Then came the threat of military action in Venezuela, quickly followed by the horrendous events in Charlottesville, Virginia. What’s a blogger to do? It’s all so overwhelming for me that I forget that also this week people were kind to each other, mothers gave birth, families enjoyed vacation time, students prepared for school, and most people continued to prefer love to hatred, violence and bigotry.
Thomas Merton wrote that “…Christ brought to his disciples a vocation and a task, to struggle in the world of violence to establish...peace, not only in their own hearts but in society itself.” Calling for peace in the midst of our mess may sound naïve, but it is our Christian calling. If Christ came to bring peace then it is our task to complete the work. No equivocation. No exceptions.
But it’s not easy. The interchange with North Korea created the illusion that we Americans could sleep well at night, that we would remain untouched by the horrors of war, that we would be safe. Now that is naive! And it is wrong! Are North Korean children more negotiable than our children? Is their land less rich in flora and fauna, their lives less precious than ours? How did we get to this moral low point? And it is a very low point.
But even beyond North Korea, the week has revealed the hatred and bigotry simmering below the surface in our country. The tacit avowal of the white supremacy groups by Mr. Trump presents a critical moral question for us: Who do we want to be? What is important to us as a country? How do we want to live? What do we want to pass on to our children? We cannot allow government to give the answers; it is for us the people to name who we are as a country. It is ours to choose love and hope, kindness and welcome, peace and acceptance. It is ours to decide what this country is and what we stand for, and what we want.
Christopher Pramuk at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious gathering last week, stated that the heart of Christian faith is “to live faithfully and lovingly at the very center of the contradictions of our times, without allowing ourselves to be overcome or defined by them.” The contradictions of our time are many and serious. Our task is to love faithfully and lovingly; to state clearly where we stand; to choose to engage the questions that haunt us; and to not be overtaken by the hatred and bigotry of our day.
Like the trees here at Mercy by the Sea whose deep roots anchor each other and support each other, let us continue to hold one another and all peacemakers and peace lovers through these difficult times.
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