Category Archives: Columnists

Busquen en la Pascua el mensaje misionero

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POR OBISPO Joseph Kopacz
Durante los 50 días del tiempo pascual la Iglesia Católica proclama en Palabra y Adoración la creación y el crecimiento de la iglesia en el primer siglo después de la crucifixión y la resurrección del Señor, entre los años 30 y 33 d.C. El sacrificio cruento de la muerte de Jesús el Nazareno fue transformado por el amor de Dios en la resurrección en el mayor movimiento desatado en la historia de la humanidad. Poniendo las tristes divisiones a un lado, la iglesia ha proclamado el Evangelio durante casi 2000 años, y en la actualidad hay cerca de dos billones de cristianos en todo el mundo, más de la mitad son católicos.
Reconocemos que muchos son cristianos sólo de nombre, pero hay innumerables millones que el Espíritu Santo ha transformado en el Cuerpo vivo de Cristo para la salvación de las almas y el bien de la humanidad.
Durante la octava de Pascua, o los ocho días siguiente al Domingo de Pascua, el Señor resucitado se le apareció a sus angustiados apóstoles y discípulos con el fin de sanarlos, reconciliarlos con Dios y a los unos con los otros con el fin de prepararlos para su peregrinación de  fe, esperanza y amor en su nombre.
El libro de los Hechos de los Apóstoles, sobre todo, es una narración de San Lucas sobre el crecimiento constante de la iglesia primitiva, desde sus humildes inicios en Jerusalén a la escena mundial en Roma, destinada a seguir el mandato del Señor de enseñar a todas las naciones hasta los confines de la tierra.
San Pedro, San Pablo y los otros 11 discípulos, con el apoyo fiel de muchos de los primeros discípulos, sentaron las bases para la primera iglesia evidente en las muchas comunidades que surgieron alrededor del mundo mediterráneo. En solidaridad con su Señor en la cruz, la sangre y el agua continuaron derramándose. Los judíos y los gentiles tuvieron su segundo nacimiento en las aguas fluyentes del bautismo y la sangre de los mártires se convirtió en la fuente de la vitalidad de la iglesia primitiva.
En las primeras etapas de los Hechos de los Apóstoles escuchamos hablar del agua con el bautismo de miles de personas el Domingo de Pentecostés y de la sangre, con el brutal asesinato a pedradas del diácono Esteban, el primer mártir de la iglesia. Siguió después la decapitación de Santiago, el hermano del Señor, y comenzó la persecución que se prolongó durante casi 300 años.
San Pedro es presentado en la primera mitad de los Hechos de los Apóstoles mientras que San Pablo aparece en la segunda mitad del libro. En el Capítulo 10, el Espíritu Santo pone el escenario a través de Pedro para un segundo día de Pentecostés en la casa de Cornelio al descender sobre todos los miembros de su familia con un estallido de lenguas y de alabanza. Pedro sólo podía estar de pie, y se maravilló de como Dios abrió la puerta de la fe a los primeros gentiles para que  se convirtieran en cristianos. Pedro procedió a bautizarlos, pero esa fue la parte fácil. Luego tuvo que regresar a Jerusalén con Pablo y Bernabé para convencer a los demás que los gentiles o paganos, o sea los no judíos, no tenían que convertirse en judíos primero antes de convertirse en cristianos.
Fue una lucha encarnizada pero al final Dios prevaleció y en el Concilio de Jerusalén sólo cuatro restricciones le fueron impuestas a los gentiles: “Se tienen que abstener de comer carne de animales ofrecidos en sacrificios a los ídolos, no coman sangre ni carne de animales estrangulados y eviten la inmoralidad sexual. Ustedes harán bien si evitan estas cosas.” (Hechos 15:29) Por supuesto los Diez Mandamientos siguen siendo fundamentales para nosotros, pero más de 600 leyes cambiaron cuando surgió la tradición cristiana. El mandato del Señor de enseñar a todas las naciones estaba ahora libre de obligaciones por parte de una exigente tradición judía.
Después del Capítulo 15 en los Hechos de los Apóstoles San Pablo tomó la antorcha de San Pedro y se convirtió en apóstol de los gentiles, facultado por el Concilio de Jerusalén para ser el misionero en el mundo griego y romano. Los tres viajes misioneros de Pablo están trazados en las páginas de los Hechos. Muchos le temían, recordando su feroz persecución contra los primeros cristianos antes de su conversión, y muchos lo odiaban porque él fue riguroso en su celo de desechar la Ley de Moisés a la luz de Jesucristo crucificado y resucitado de entre los muertos. En última instancia, esta animosidad lo llevó a su decapitación en Roma.
En nuestra época el Papa Francisco nos llama a ser misioneros que llevan la Buena Noticia, la alegría del Evangelio, a muchos de los que se están yendo a pique en el cieno del mundo.
Este es nuestro origen; esta es nuestra llamada constante. Cuando escuchamos y/o leemos sobre el crecimiento de la iglesia primitiva, es evidente que muchos tenían el espíritu misionero. San Pablo, en particular, fue el misionero por excelencia, que nunca se cansó de plantar la semilla de la fe, y alimentar a la planta joven a través de sus cartas y visitas pastorales. Como escribió en 1 Corintios: “Sembré la semilla en sus corazones, y Apolos la regó, pero es Dios quien la hizo crecer.” (1Cor 3:6)
Cuando reflexiono sobre mi nueva vida como el 11ª obispo de Jackson durante mis muchos viajes en todo el territorio de la diócesis en este tiempo de Pascua, bien sea para celebrar confirmaciones, graduaciones, aniversarios, etc., considero que esta es la vida y el ministerio de un obispo, puesto en marcha por los apóstoles y sus sucesores. Yo trabajo en la viña del Señor, sobre las bases establecidas por el Obispo Chanche y algunos otros a finales de 1830.
Bien sea que se trate de los sembradores originales, o las generaciones posteriores que siguieron, Dios la está haciendo crecer a través del poder del Espíritu Santo y en el nombre de Jesús, resucitado de entre los muertos.
Somos parte de una tradición de fe con raíces profundas, casi dos mil años. “Además, queridos hermanos, no olviden que para el Señor un día es como mil años, y mil años como un día”. (2 Pedro 3:8) Por lo que sólo estamos acercándonos el principio del tercer día de la era cristiana, y nuestro llamado es a plantar y construir siempre que tengamos vida y aliento. “Y estoy seguro de que Dios, que comenzó a hacer su buena obra en ustedes, la irá llevando a buen fin hasta el día en que   Cristo Jesús regrese”. (Filipenses 1:6 )

Look to Easter for missionary message

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By Bishop Joseph Kopacz
Throughout the 50 days of the Easter Season the Catholic Church proclaims in Word and Worship the inception and growth of the Church in the first century after the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord between 30 and 33 AD. The bloody sacrifice in death of Jesus the Nazorean was transformed by the loving power of God in resurrection into the greatest movement ever unleashed in human history. Sad divisions aside, the church has proclaimed the Gospel for nearly 2000 years, and presently there are around two billion Christians, more than half being Catholics, throughout the world. Granted many are Christian in name only, but there are countless millions whom the Holy Spirit has transformed into the living Body of Christ for the salvation of souls and the good of humanity.
Throughout the Easter Octave, or the eight days following Easter Sunday, the risen Lord appeared to his broken apostles and disciples in order to heal them, reconcile them to God and to one another in order to set them on their pilgrimage of faith, hope and love in His name. The Acts of the Apostles especially is a narration by Saint Luke of the persistent growth of the early Church from its humble beginnings in Jerusalem to the world stage in Rome, destined to follow the Lord’s command to teach all nations to the ends of the earth.
St. Peter and St. Paul, and the 11 other disciples, with the faithful support of many of the early disciples, laid the foundation for the early Church evident in the many communities that sprung up around the Mediterranean world. In solidarity with their Lord on the cross, the blood and the water continued to flow.
Jews and Gentiles alike experienced their second birth in the flowing waters of Baptism, and the blood of the martyrs became the spring of life for the early Church’s vitality. Early on in the Acts of the Apostles we hear of the water with the Baptism of thousands on Pentecost Sunday, and the blood, with the brutal killing by stoning of the deacon Stephen, the Church’s first martyr. The beheading of James, the brother of the Lord followed and the persecution began that went on for nearly 300 years.
St. Peter is featured in the first half of the Acts of the Apostles while St. Paul’s star rises in the second half of the book. In Chapter 10 the Holy Spirit set the stage through Peter for a second Pentecost day in the home of Cornelius by descending upon all the members of his household with an eruption of tongues and praise.
Peter could only stand by and marvel as God opened the door of faith to the first Gentiles to become Christians. Peter proceeded to baptize them, but that was the easy part. Afterwards, he had to return to Jerusalem with Paul and Barnabus to convince the others that the Gentiles, or pagans, that is non-Jews, did not have to become Jews first before becoming Christian. It was a fierce struggle but in the end God prevailed, and at the Council of Jerusalem only four restrictions laid upon the Gentiles: “You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.” (Acts 15,29)
Of course the Ten Commandments remain fundamental for us but more than 600 laws were shed as the Christian tradition emerged. The command of the Lord to teach all nations was now unencumbered by an exacting Jewish tradition.
After Chapter 15 in the Acts of the Apostles St. Paul took up the torch from Peter and became the Apostle to the Gentiles, further empowered by the Jerusalem Council to be the missionary to the Greek and Roman worlds. Paul’s three missionary journeys are traced upon the pages of the Acts.
Many feared him, remembering his fierce persecution of the early Christians prior to his conversion, and many hated him because he was unrelenting in his zeal to set aside the Law of Moses in the light of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Ultimately, this animosity led to his beheading in Rome.
In our era Pope Francis is calling us to be missionaries who bring the Good News, the joy of the Gospel, to many who are foundering in the world’s mire. This is our origin; this is our constant calling. As we hear about and/or read about the growth of the early church it is readily apparent that many had the missionary spirit. Saint Paul in particular was the missionary par excellence, who never tired of planting the seed of faith, and nurturing the young plant through his letters and pastoral visits. As he wrote in 1Corinthians: “I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.” (1Cor 3, 6)
As I reflect upon my new life as the 11th Bishop of Jackson during my many journeys throughout the diocese during the Easter season, whether it be for confirmations, graduations, anniversaries, etc., I appreciate that this is the life and ministry of a bishop, set in motion by the apostles and their successors.
I labor in the vineyard of the Lord, building upon the foundation laid by Bishop Chanche and a few others in the late 1830’s. Whether it was the original planters, or the later generations who followed, God is making it grow through the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus, raised from the dead.
We are part of a tradition of faith with deep roots, nearly two thousand years young. “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (2Peter 3,8) So we are just approaching the beginning of the third day of the Christian era, and our call is to plant and build as long as we have life and breath. “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns”. (Philippians 1,6)

Christianity challenges evolutionary ethic

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IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Evolution, Charles Darwin famously stated, works through the survival of the fittest. Christianity, on the other hand, is committed to the survival of the weakest. But how do we square our Christian ideal of making a preferential option for the weak with evolution?
Nature is evolutionary and, inside of that, we can perceive a wisdom that clearly manifests intelligence, intent, spirit and design. And perhaps nowhere is this more evident than how in the process of evolution we see nature becoming ever-more unified, complex, and conscious.
However, how God’s intelligence and intent are reflected inside of that is not always evident because nature can be so cruel and brutal. In order to survive, every element in nature has to be cannibalistic and eat other parts of nature. Only the fittest get to survive. There’s a harsh cruelty in that. In highlighting how cruel and unfair nature can be, commentators often cite the example of the second pelican born to white pelicans. Here’s how cruel and unfair is its situation:
Female white pelicans normally lay two eggs, but they lay them several days apart so that the first chick hatches several days before the second chick. This gives the first chick a head-start and by the time the second chick hatches, the first chick is bigger and stronger. It then acts aggressively towards the second chick, grabbing its food and pushing it out of the nest.
There, ignored by its mother, the second chick normal dies of starvation, despite its efforts to find its way back into the nest. Only one in ten second chicks survives. And here’s nature’s cruel logic in this: That second chick is hatched by nature as an insurance-policy, in case the first chick is weak or dies.
Barring that, it is doomed to die, ostracized, hungry, blindly grasping for food and its mother’s attention as it starves to death. But this cruelty works as an evolutionary strategy. White pelicans have survived for thirty million years, but at the cost of millions of its own species dying cruelly.
A certain intelligence is certainly evident in this, but where is the compassion? Did a compassionate God really design this? The intelligence in nature’s strategy of the survival of the fittest is clear. Each species, unless unnaturally interfered with from the outside, is forever producing healthier, more robust, more adaptable members. Such, it seems, is nature’s wisdom and design – up to a point.
Certain scientists such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suggest that physical evolution has reached its apex, its highest degree of unity, complexity and consciousness, inside the central nervous system and brain of the human person and that evolution has now taken a leap (just as it did when consciousness leapt out of raw biology and as it did when self-consciousness leapt out of simple consciousness) so that now meaningful evolution is no longer about gaining further physical strength and adaptability. Rather meaningful evolution is now concerned with the social and the spiritual, that is, with social and spiritual strength.
And in a Christian understanding of things, this means that meaningful evolution is now about human beings using their self-consciousness to turn back and help nature to protect and nurture its second pelicans. Meaningful evolution now is no longer about having the strong grow stronger, but about having the weak, that part of nature that nature herself, to this point, has not been able to nurture, grow strong.
Why? What’s nature’s interest in the weak? Why shouldn’t nature be happy to have the weak weeded out? Does God have an interest in the weak that nature does not?
No, nature too is very interested in the survival of the weak and is calling upon the help of human beings to bring this about. Nature is interested in the survival of the weak because vulnerability and weakness bring something to nature that is absent when it is only concerned with the survival of the fittest and with producing ever-stronger, more robust and more adaptable species and individuals. What the weak add to nature are character and compassion, which are the central ingredients needed to bring about unity, complexity, and consciousness at the social and spiritual level.
When God created human beings at the beginning of time, God charged them with the responsibility of “dominion,” of ruling over nature. What’s contained in that mandate is not an order or permission to dominate over nature and use nature in whatever fashion we desire. The mandate is rather that of “watching over,” of tending the garden, of being wise stewards, and of helping nature do things that, in its unconscious state, it cannot do, namely, protect and nurture the weak, the second pelicans.
The second-century theologian, Irenaeus, once famously said: The glory of God is the human being fully alive! In our own time, Gustavo Gutierrez, generally credited with being the father of Liberation Theology, recast that dictum to say: The glory of God is the poor person fully alive!” And that is as well the ultimate glory of nature.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Easter calls for real, personal conversion

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Complete the Circle
By George Evans
The only problem with Easter for the Christian is getting over the exuberance and returning to ordinary daily life. There are only so many times you can say “Alleluia, HE IS RISEN, Alleluia” before it loses its impact. Fortunately the Holy Spirit is coming and Pentecost will re-energize us once again. The liturgical year marches on with its compelling peaks and valleys, its consolations and its challenges. It’s our job to roll with it, to drink deeply of its nuances and to repeatedly meet its central figure over and over ever more deeply.
As our country, and the Western world in general, continues its precipitous slide (perhaps rush) into deeper materialism, unbridled capitalism and rampant greed to the exclusion of the common good we question where to turn for relief and fulfillment.
Where do we turn in the face of poverty, disease, violence, loneliness. What do we do about wars and threatened wars, reductions in all the safety nets for the poor from social security to food stamps, expanding human trafficking and fear of death. Where do we turn in the face of one tragedy after another, deaths and suffering everywhere even among the young, slights based on egotism and selfishness from all sorts of people close and far.
We know because we are Christians and mainly Catholics reading this, that Jesus has “saved” us by his death and resurrection. But we don’t see that this makes a real difference in the way people think or act. It may  be that we don’t accept what Jesus has done and thereby we don’t allow it to flourish so that it makes a difference  in the way we act, the things and causes we support, the love and mercy we exhibit and the very way we live our lives.
What do our leaders tell us? Pope Francis is a great place to start. Over and over since becoming pope, he has urged us to remake this world of which we so often complain. Very simply he tells us the only way to start is by renewal of our personal encounter with Christ. If we have never had this existential experience, appeal to the Holy Spirit to lead us. He will not fail. The Joy of the Gospel tells us very early in paragraph 3 that “The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step toward Jesus, we come to realize that He is already there with open arms.” What does that mean for us?
When Jesus embraces us we cannot remain the same. We are created by God and the embrace by his Son brings us into the orbit of his love and mercy. This cannot fail to transform us. This is the heart of conversion. This is what Jesus did for us by his death and resurrection. This is what being saved really means. We are not the same. We live differently. We step into his shoes. As Pope Francis tells us, “True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others.” (Par. 88). In fact, Jesus calls to us from the world, where He is present “in the faces of others, in their voices, in their pleas”. (Par.91)
I believe the difference in meeting Christ and simply believing in an abstract God or Trinity is what is life changing. We step into his shoes and become followers and not just disciples who profess belief with their minds but not with their hearts and souls. We treat people like he did.
We respect their dignity and care for their needs. We accept people as they are and work forward from there. We go out to the poor and marginalized. We visit the sick and feed the hungry. We work hard to make politics better to serve the common good not special interests to the detriment of others. We instill in our spouses, children and friends what it has meant to encounter Jesus so that we may share it with them.
The world in which we live gradually becomes better if we do these things. If we are forgiving, reconciling and gentle, we create joy and goodness as Jesus did. If we are self-giving rather than self-righteous, we change relationships for the better and our world is a slightly better place. If we do it together, think of what can happen. We wouldn’t lament the loss of our children or grandchildren. They would need to look no further than what we gave them. We wouldn’t worry about Americans defecting to ISIS. We wouldn’t have wars or threats of war in eight to 10 places at the same time.
It’s exciting to think of what a personal encounter with Christ can lead to. If only we could all try it, Pope Francis’ vision could come true. It’s worth a try. Pentecost is coming. What a great time to ask the Holy Spirit to help us encounter Christ.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish.)

Team mentality drives professional learning communities

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Forming our Future
Margaret Anzelmo
Professional learning communities (PLCs) are becoming more and more commonplace in today’s schools as a means of professional development, growth and school improvement. Professional learning communities operate under a set of core values that distinguish this professional development model from more traditional ones and that coincide naturally with the values of Catholic education. The most common models for PLCs include a focus on learning for all, a collaborative culture, collective inquiry into best practice and research, action orientation, a culture of continuous improvement and a results orientation.
PLC values lie at the heart of what already occurs in Catholic schools across the nation and in our diocese every day, so the transition to becoming a professional learning community often occurs more naturally and easily for these institutions than for public ones.
Providing academic excellence for a diverse body of learners, modeling the idea of community in daily life, and educating the whole child are PLC principles already inherent in Catholic schools and are principles that are also in keeping with Pope Francis’ Jubilee Year of Mercy. What better way to be merciful than to collaborate as schools and as a diocese to meet student needs?
According to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, one of the intentions of this Year of Mercy will be to encourage Christians to meet people’s needs in tangible ways. The logo for the Year of Mercy is Jesus as the Good Shepherd with a lost soul over His shoulders. As Catholic school educators, we are called to model these exact principles daily.  The culture is naturally there, so for a Catholic school to become a PLC, the focus typically becomes more about developing PLC structures and in engaging the school community to work together in reviewing data, learning together, designing instruction and developing common assessments to meet the needs of the diverse population of learners.
In our diocese, we have taken this concept a step further. Our diocesan schools work together to write and implement curriculum, a curriculum that our teachers wrote for our students, and to share assessments and strategies. We operate as a PLC consisting of 13 schools and hundreds of educators, and our students benefit. They benefit academically due to this individualized response to their needs but also benefit emotionally in that they are able to feel supported and loved as they receive appropriate instruction and gain confidence with their successes.
Organizational characteristics, such as culture, leadership and capacity building, and operational characteristics, such as professional development, data collection and systemic trust contribute to successful implementation and transformation of schools and dioceses into professional learning communities.
Catholic school leaders should model and create a culture of collaboration and trust and set a timeline for implementing the structural components of PLCs, such as the protected time for collaboration, development of norms and professional development of each component to build the capacity of the faculty and create a merciful, spiritual, inclusive learning atmosphere for students.
The population of today’s Catholic schools has changed. Students and teachers alike need intentional, individualized learning, with the goals of improving knowledge and practice. Teachers cannot meet the needs of today’s students without the ongoing, focused support and learning provided by PLCs. Professional learning communities meet the professional development needs of today’s teachers which in turn maintains the level of academic excellence present in Catholic schools and creates an environment ready to meet the 21st century needs of our students and to demonstrate the ideals of the Jubilee Year of Mercy.
In addition, the concepts of a professional learning community meld perfectly with the theme for our diocesan schools for the 2015-2016 school year. This theme is two-fold. We are TEAMing Up for Catholic Education, with TEAM as an acronym for Teaching Everyone About Mercy.
We meet the needs of our students and our staffs academically, spiritually, emotionally and even physically, and we sometimes carry along the souls of those who otherwise would have been lost. If those sound like insurmountable tasks, it is because they would be without our faith – when we operate together as one Body in Christ, as a professional learning community that collaborates to meet the spiritual and academic needs of those whom we encounter.
As the Catholic Schools of the Diocese of Jackson, we are a professional learning community. We truly are a team and with that, we make evident the beauty, the joy, and the excellence that is Catholic education. Our students will leave us as productive, successful members of society who not only have an excellent academic foundation but also are ready to put mercy into practice due to the spiritual principles taught directly to them and modeled for them in their schools each and every day.
When we TEAM up together as the Diocese of Jackson schools and as a professional learning community, we show that Catholic education is the priority that leads to excellence for all.
(Margaret Anzelmo is the coordinator of academic excellence for the Office of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Jackson.)

Digging into many meanings of peace

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By Karla Luke
“Peace be with you,” are the first words our resurrected Lord spoke to the fearful Apostles hiding in the Upper Room on that first day of the week. Peace. Assuredly, peace must have been the last thought on their minds after all of the terrifying events they witnessed in the final days of Jesus’ human life on Earth. Their friend and brother, betrayed, denied, falsely accused, tortured and murdered was now standing before them with an offer of peace. What a contrast!
When we think of peace, we generally think the absence of conflict or war; however, in the scriptural sense, peace is much more. When we possess true peace, we enjoy wholeness, harmony and right relationship with God, others and self. Peace, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, is a gift from God to us that is to be shared with all. Jesus, our brother, the Prince of Peace, came to unite heaven and earth and to show, by His selfless and loving example, how to be in right relationship with God and others. In The Joy of the Gospel – Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis suggests that in order to achieve peace we must become a people.
People in every nation enhance the social dimension of their lives by acting as committed and responsible citizens, not as a mob swayed by the powers that be. Let us not forget that “responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in political life is a moral obligation.” Yet becoming a people demands something more. It is an ongoing process in which every new generation must take part: a slow and arduous effort calling for a desire for integration and a willingness to achieve this through the growth of a peaceful and multifaceted culture of encounter. (220 Evangelii Gaudium)
Pope Francis proposes that we can build a people of peace by being attentive to four specific areas: time, unity, reality and wholeness.
Time is greater than space – Today much emphasis is placed on immediate results. Let’s face it, we live in an instant gratification society. The power goes to the person that makes it happen the fastest! Pope Francis tells us that we must focus more on the processes that develop societies and help move people more toward full and meaningful lives under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and less on outcomes that benefit a few.
Unity prevails over conflict – Conflicts exist everywhere, in families, societies and among nations. People choose to address conflicts either by ignoring them, embracing them or facing them head on. It is the latter, recommended by Pope Francis, that has the greatest impact on building peace. In facing conflict we endeavor to go beyond the surface of the issue and establish meaningful dialogue affording dignity to all involved in hopes of coming to a deeper understanding of one another.
Realities are more important than ideas – We consistently struggle with trying to connect ideas to realities. In some ways we bury reality in unattainable objectives and fundamentalism. While it is good to have high aspirations, we must not lose sight of the present condition. While Jesus’ incarnation is the reality of the Word made flesh, it illustrates that reality is necessary to evangelization. The history of our salvation is the reality and we must continue act in that same justice and charity to bring to life the word of Matthew’s Gospel, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”
The whole is greater than the part – There exists a relationship between the whole and the part: namely, we must be attentive to the worldly condition as well as our own local condition. Working for peace and justice in own community can have an exponential effect on other communities thereby assuring everyone, even the poor, of their own rightful place in society. We seek to maintain our own God-given individuality while pursuing the common good.
So as Catholic Christians when we come to that part of the Liturgy that invites us to share the gift of peace, let us remember that we are truly expressing the desire for wholeness, harmony and right relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Peace be with you!
(Karla Luke works in the Office of Education. She is writing reflections on Pope Francis’ Joy of the Gospel all year.)

Confirmation begins next phase of journey

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Kneading Faith
By Fran Lavelle
Bishop Joseph Kopacz has begun his annual trek to celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation with young people and their families around the diocese. If you are the parent, Godparent, grandparent, auntie, uncle or close friend of one of these confirmandi, you might want to clip this article and place it in their Confirmation card along with whatever encouraging words you may wish to share. Here goes…
Dear Young People: Confirmation is not Catholic graduation. You are not, by far, finished developing, learning and growing as a Catholic Christian. You, dear one, are just beginning your journey of faith as an adult in the church. As the years pass and you grow and mature in your life, so too will your faith.
Up until confirmation you had a team of adults to help you grow in your faith including: your parents (as first catechists), your priest and other religious, your parish family and your Catholic family. Your team members did their level best to help teach you about the faith, inspire you to follow the example of Jesus, and enkindle in you a love for God. In confirmation you complete the sacraments of initiation that were first begun with your Baptism.
Let’s talk about that word “initiation” for a minute. If you plan on joining a fraternity of sorority at college you become a full member after you have gone through a period on initiation. Civic and religious organizations have initiations too. It is a way of setting aside time to learn about the very organization you intend to join.
Who was the founder? What are the requirements to remain a member in good standing? What is the purpose of the organization? Are there dues? What purpose does the organization serve? Is it philanthropic? Educational? Social? Once you have learned about the history, structure and function of the organization during initiation one can make an assessment as to whether or not the organization fits your needs.
Confirmation is in many ways the same except our period of initiation lasts from the time you are Baptized until the time you are Confirmed. All that time in between is your Catholic initiation. During your Catholic initiation you learn about our founder, Jesus Christ; learn about what it means to be a fully functioning member of the Church; and, discover the rich gift of the Sacramental life of the Church.
Along the way you experience other rites of initiation such as First Eucharist and penance. These are sacramental building blocks that help you develop as a person of faith and as a practicing Catholic.
By your consent in being confirmed, you are completing what your parents began for you in baptism. You are telling the church that you are ready to fully participate in the life of the church as an adult. Congratulations, you are now in the position to own your faith. You are primarily responsible for your continued spiritual development. Fear not, you will not have to undertake this responsibility alone. In your journey of faith there will be many people who walk with you, challenge you and encourage you to keep focused on God’s will and his ways.
And remember, just as it took years for you to complete the initiation phase of your spiritual development it will take many years to grow into your faith as an adult. Keep in mind that God will meet along the way and love you right where you are. May you always walk with confidence of his great love for you.
(Fran Lavelle is Director of the Department of Faith Formation.)

Intersection of faith, salvation and action

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Reflections on life
By Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD
“Why me?” is the oft-repeated query when dark, painful times descend upon us hapless human beings. “What have I done to deserve this?” is another familiar way of asking the same question. One can say that there are three stages of belief in God, of which the third is often the most difficult for perhaps most people.
Blaise Pascal’s wager tackles the first stage of belief in God. In summary of a lengthy philosophical dissertation, the wager states:
1. If you believe in God and God does exist, you will be rewarded with eternal life in heaven: thus an infinite gain.
2. If you do not believe in God and God does exist, you will be condemned to live in hell forever: thus an infinite loss.
3. If you believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded: thus a finite loss.
4. If you do not believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded, but you have lived your own life: thus a finite gain.
Criticisms of the wager strike me as being pedantic and cerebral instead of simple and down-to-earth. Critics object that the wager presupposes many things such as an immortal soul and a Judaeo/Christian-based notion of God that affirms the faith of believers rather than converts non-believers, since it posits one God to believe in, thereby excluding another god or gods that people may believe in. But Pascal was not militating for Christian belief, but rather for the raw belief in God that one living in the totally isolated world of an undiscovered jungle might have.
Therefore, even though Pascal speaks of God in the singular, it seems that he does not want his wager to exclude polytheists, those who believe in multiple gods. In fact, the Church includes polytheists and everyone else in its statement on the will of God that all people be saved, “Facienti quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam.”
Translated roughly in the plural, “God does not deny grace to those who do what they are capable of doing.” That means, “those who follow the light of reason.”
Thus, aborigines in the deepest jungles, who have had no contact with any people, the Bible or any knowledge beyond the stone age, will be saved – given the grace of God – if they believe and do what is in their understanding to believe and do, even if that understanding is deficient as to the true nature of God. The other way of saying it is that God does not condemn us because of invincible ignorance; that is, ignorance for which we are not responsible and cannot do anything about. The stipulation is that those aborigines are willing to accept whatever God wants.
“Whatever God wants” makes everything implicit in the generic belief in God that knows no details about God or religion. An aborigine or anyone who knows nothing about all the knowledge, science, writings and other media and marvels of the modern world may have a somewhat fuzzy idea of a Supreme Being or may find deities in the sun, moon, oceans, mountains or universe. Nonetheless, if such a person submits herself/himself to the will of the Creator, everything falls into place.
Thus, baptism, a condition sine qua non of salvation, is included in the will of the Creator embraced by the generic believer. Such baptism is known as baptism of desire. Ditto for the implicit acceptance of Jesus Christ, without whom there is no salvation. Implicit in accepting what God wants is, “If I but knew Jesus, I would embrace him and all his teachings.” The same goes for acceptance of God’s Church.
So, unconditional belief in God and the acceptance of God’s will cover all our spiritual needs, no matter how little we have heard or read about them. Still, it is not enough to believe in God, Jesus and their Holy Spirit. James 2:19 warns us, “You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble.”
It is the third part of faith that is so difficult, because it challenges us and our petty agendas, faults, sins, doubts, pains, grief, deprivations, disappointments and failures. Enter Thomas, Didymus, the one of little faith, who had to see and touch the nail prints in the hands and Jesus and the lance scar in his side. He was not unlike Peter, who denied Jesus thrice, and all the other apostles who fled before the ferocity of the Roman soldiers on Good Friday. (John managed to sneak back later.)
Together with the other apostles – and everyone else except the three steadfast Marys – Thomas was numb when confronted with the reality that Jesus had risen from the dead. It had to be a ghost, not flesh and blood! Actually, they were in a tailspin, cowering for fear of the Jews until the rending event of Pentecost.
Resurrection through Jesus – that final prerequisite of faith and salvation – will carry us through all doubt, fear, anxiety, pain, grief, depression and failure.
(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, is pastor of Our Mother of Mercy Parish in Fort Worth, Texas. He has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)

Who am I to judge?

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IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Perhaps the single, most-often quoted line from Pope Francis is his response to a question he was asked vis-à-vis the morality of a particularly-dicey issue. His infamous-famous reply: Who am I to judge?
Although this remark is often assumed to be flighty and less-than-serious; it is, in fact, on pretty safe ground. Jesus, it seems, says basically the same thing. For example, in his conversation with Nicodemus in John’s Gospel, he, in essence, says: I judge no one.
If the Gospel of John is to be believed, then Jesus judges no one. God judges no one. But that needs to be put into context. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t any moral judgments and that our actions are indifferent to moral scrutiny. There is judgment; except it doesn’t work the way it is fantasized inside the popular mind. According to what Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel, judgment works this way:
God’s light, God’s truth, and God’s spirit come into the world. We then judge ourselves according to how we live in the face of them: God’s light has come into the world, but we can choose to live in darkness.  That’s our decision, our judgment. God’s truth has been revealed, but we can choose to live in falsehood, in lies.
That’s our decision, our judgment to make. And God’s spirit has come into the world, but we can prefer to live outside that spirit, in another spirit. That too is our decision, our judgment. God judges no one. We judge ourselves. Hence we can also say that God condemns no one, though we can choose to condemn ourselves. And God punishes no one, but we can choose to punish ourselves.
Negative moral judgment is self-inflicted. Perhaps this seems abstract, but it is not. We know this existentially, we feel the brand of our own actions inside us. To use just one example:  How we judge ourselves by the Holy Spirit.
God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, is not something so abstract and slippery that it cannot be pinned down. St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Galatians, describes the Holy Spirit in terms so clear that they can only be rendered abstract and ambiguous by some self-serving rationalization.
So as to make things clear he sets up a contrast by first telling us what the Holy Spirit is not. The spirit of God, he tells us is not the spirit of self-indulgence, sexual vice, jealousy, rivalry, antagonism, bad temper, quarrels, drunkenness or factionalism. Anytime we are cultivating these qualities inside of our lives, we should not delude ourselves into thinking we are living in God’s spirit, no matter how frequent, sincere or pious is our religious practice. The Holy Spirit, he tells us, is the spirit of charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and chastity. Only when we are living inside of these virtues are we living inside God’s spirit.
So then, this is how judgment happens: God’s spirit has been revealed. We can choose to live inside the virtues of that spirit or we can choose to live instead inside their opposites. One choice leads to a life with God, the other leads away from God. And that choice is ours to make; it doesn’t come from the outside. We judge ourselves. God judges no one. God doesn’t need to.
When we view things inside this perspective it also clarifies a number of misunderstandings that cause confusion inside the minds of believers as well as inside the minds of their critics. How often, for instance, do we hear this criticism: If God is all-good, all-loving and all-merciful, how can God condemn someone to hell for all eternity? A valid question, though not a particularly reflective one.  Why? Because God judges no one; God punishes no one.
God condemns no one to hell. We do these things to ourselves: We judge ourselves, we punish ourselves and we put ourselves in various forms of hell whenever we do choose not to live in the light, the truth and inside God’s spirit. And that judgment is self-inflicted, that punishment is self-inflicted and those fires of hell are self-inflicted.
There are a number of lessons in this. First, as we have just seen, the fact that God judges no one, helps clarify our theodicy, that is, it helps deflate all those misunderstandings surrounding God’s mercy and the accusation that an all-merciful God can condemn someone to eternal hellfire. Beyond this, it is a strong challenge to us to be less judgmental in our lives, to let the wheat and the darnel sort themselves out over time, to let light itself judge darkness, to let truth itself judge falsehood and to, like Pope Francis, be less quick to offer judgments in God’s name and more prone to say: “Who am I to judge?”
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Trio of spiritual giants offer inspiration

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By Bishop Joseph Kopacz
During 2015 we are marking anniversaries of life’s beginnings and endings of three significant Christians and Americans whose legacy will endure for generations to come. These outstanding citizens in hope of the Kingdom are Sister Thea Bowman, Thomas Merton, and Abraham Lincoln. Sister Thea succumbed to cancer 25 years ago; Thomas Merton, born one hundred years ago, died unexpectedly in Bangkok, Thailand, by accidental electrocution in 1968, and Abraham Lincoln passed at the hand of an assassin’s bullet 150 years ago. The lives of all three were cut short but their words and their deeds are likely to inspire for as long as people of good will and transcendent faith search for meaning in their lives.
A series of local events have marked the 25th anniversary of Sister Thea’s death, and there are many alive today who walked and served with her in the Diocese of Jackson. Recently “Thea’s Turn” was staged at Madison St. Joseph School, and the brilliance of the presentation captured the ordinariness of the young Bertha and the saintliness and historic virtue of Thea, the passionate religious. Her little light shone brightly during this and other commemorative events held locally and in many settings throughout our region and nation. In 1987, a few years before here death, Sister Thea appeared on 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace. She inspired him and many viewers with the following.
“I think the difference between me and some people is that I’m content to do my little bit. Sometimes people think they have to do big things in order to make change. But if each one would light a candle we’d have a tremendous light.”
Many of the Christian faith, especially in the Catholic Church, but also throughout the inter-faith world and among people of no religious faith, are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who was passionately committed to a life of solitude and social justice on the world stage. Out of solitude as a monk in Gethsemane, Kentucky, he wrote prodigiously as an author (more than 70 books), a poet and a letter writer, corresponding with people in all walks of life from all corners of the globe. His way of life as a monk, combined with his prophetic world view on issues of justice and peace, and his personal letters in response to all who wrote to him, proclaimed to the world what he believed, that “We are already One.” This vision for humanity resounds in the following quotation from his works.
“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but also disastrous.”
Abraham Lincoln was the determined public servant who sought the highest office in the land at the time when the nation was on the brink of Civil War. He became, in life and in death, the symbol of its blood soaked struggle for unity as the 16th president, the first in a line of four assassinated presidents. Throughout his adult life he experienced enormous setbacks, including a failed business, the death of his son, a nervous breakdown, election defeats for the State Legislature of Illinois, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Senate, as well as nomination for the Vice Presidency. He finally achieved electoral success as the President of the United States, and the rest is history. He was passionately committed to the preservation of the Union as he proclaimed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the aftermath of that brutal battle. We recall a portion of his address.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal… It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work, which they who fought here, have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Whenever we probe more deeply into the lives of people we consider worthy of honor and emulation we discover that their lives were not without struggle, suffering and sacrifice. Let us not forget during this Easter Season to look no further than the suffering and death of the Lord on the cross, and his ultimate triumph in the resurrection. In earthly terms, Jesus the Nazarene was put to death at a much younger age than Sister Thea, Brother Thomas, and President Abraham, but his sacrificial death raises up all who lay down their lives for the salvation and advancement of humanity.
Certainly, our three great souled men and woman would be the first to acknowledge that they were “earthen vessels” holding an eternal treasure as Saint Paul writes so poetically to the Corinthians. In a colloquial manner of speaking, they had “clay feet” but their vision for humanity was eternal. They understood the mandate of Jesus to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel. “Let your light shine before all, so that others may see goodness in your acts, and give praise to your Heavenly Father.” Likewise, may the Lord inspire us during this season of Easter hope to reflect his light in our time upon the earth.