From the hermitage
By sister alies therese
“Abba Pambo asked Abba Anthony (The Father of Hermits 4thC), ‘What ought I to do?’ Abba Anthony replied, ‘Have no confidence in your own virtuousness. Do not worry about a thing once it has been done. Control your tongue and your belly.’”

Actually, the hermits were trying to get some clarification as to whether they were being ‘good hermits’ or not, so Abba Anthony’s friend Abba Nisteros the Great replied: ‘Not all works are alike. For Scripture says that Abraham was hospitable, and God was with him; Elijah loved solitary prayer and God was with him; and David was humble, and God was with him. Therefore, whatever you see your soul desire according to God, do that thing, and you will keep your heart safe.’” (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Ward, SLG).
Conceivably these folks might have been married, asking how to make a perfect marriage or maybe priests or a bishop asking how to do perfect works. We all want to know, from someone with perhaps more experience than our own, how to do the works of the Gospel perfectly.
Equally, they might just have been trying their hearers with the notion that they can indeed become perfect on their own if they just knew how to do it! Not possible. Many opportunities to be compassionate and hospitable come our way with or without ‘titles’ or ‘important’ jobs. Gratitude, for example, is a work of compassion we can all share in. The Scriptures mention so many and no one person can do them all!
Compassion is not a virtue, but a way of life. Hospitality calls us to receive others as Christ. You are probably familiar with Exodus 20:15ff where the Scriptures give us an outline of a compassionate life. Who do we see there as most compassionate? Well, God. ‘… and if they cry out to Me, I will surely hear their cry.’ (21) Perhaps it is also just another way of saying that our Christian way of life is: Love of God, Love of neighbor? That includes those with whom you disagree!
A compassionate life has been shown in many and varied ways in our Christian Catholic life. We can look to founders of religious orders that focused on education of the poor, healing the sick, or living a life of prayer. We look to first-responders, nurses, doctors, those who put their lives on the line. We only have to look to Ephesians 4ff to get some ideas about how these might be lived in the community. Paul in prison, (after mentioning all sorts of horrid things we do) says this: ‘in place of these, be kind to one another, compassionate and mutually forgiving, just as God has forgiven you in Christ.’ (32)
Our days have been difficult. Political squabbles have caused families to cease speaking to one another and anger has flourished. Election outcomes have distanced many. Christians still persecuted; do we pray for their persecutors?
We might focus on the compassion of Jesus, hanging from the Cross, midst great anguish, focuses on the thief next to Him: ‘a single good word made the thief pure and holy, despite all his previous crimes, and brought him into Paradise.’ (Luke 23:42) [Philokalia #90, page 319]
How can we learn one single, good ‘word’ for someone who comes to us; that may all they need to hear? In this time of pandemic, in this month remembering those who have died/served, in this time of Thanksgiving, in this time of Christ the King, in this beginning of Advent we have many ‘words’ to learn. Can we draw forth from God in humility what we need and then share that with whomever the Lord brings onto our path?
Another place in our devotional life is the 6th and 8th Stations, – Veronica, who in her compassion for Jesus gently wipes His face. The women weep over their children. Are the children in cages, the 550+ still separated from their parents, those who live on Death Row at Parchman (or anywhere in our prisons) are their faces being wiped in gentleness and compassion? The COVID patients still dying and the many who suffer while recovering. Who speaks a word of compassion into their ears encouraging them to stick it out? Who brings a word of compassion to their families? Who speaks a word of compassion to you when you feel abandoned, lost or that God is far away? Remember, ‘the treasury of compassion is inexhaustible’ (Faustina, Chaplet, Closing Prayer).
Amma Syncletica puts it plainly: ‘Whatever people say by the grace of the Spirit, therefore, that is useful, springs from love (compassion) and end in it. Salvation, then, is exactly this – the two-fold love of God and of our neighbor.’ (Life, Bongie, 1996)
Blessings.

(Sister alies therese is a vowed Catholic solitary who lives an eremitical life. Her days are formed around prayer, art and writing. She lives and writes in Mississippi.)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington
The sixth Fruit of the Spirit, called “goodness” in a majority of the Bible translations commonly used by Protestants, is rendered as “generosity” in two of the most popular versions favored by Catholics: the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), and the New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (NRSVCE). According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1695), the Holy Spirit prompts us to do good works, “to act so as to bear the fruit of the Spirit by charity in action.” Simply put, the easiest way for people to see Christ in our lives is through our generosity.
Generosity has everything to do with giving, whether it’s your time, talents, or treasure. Donations must always be made out of love, and not to call attention to yourself. And to anyone who might be tempted to boast about how much he has contributed, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen applies this cautionary remark: “never measure your generosity by what you give, but rather by what you have left.”

When we give alms, it must be for the right reason; it must be for the benefit of the recipient, not the giver. There’s really no charity involved in making a donation of something you no longer want, especially if the purpose of the gift is to gain a tax benefit or to free up space in a closet in order to stockpile new possessions. As someone once said, real charity doesn’t care whether the gift is tax deductible or not.
When we donate our time, we make an offering of ourselves. Self-giving by its very nature is a sacrificial act because we’re denying ourselves to attend to the needs of others. Archbishop Sheen says the poor widow who gave two mites “emptied herself to fill the emptiness of others.” There’s just something innately beautiful about a sacrifice.
When we offer up ourselves in love we become more like Christ, who freely gave Himself up for us. Our Lord literally divested Himself of everything He had: His clothing (“He was stripped of His garments”); His mother (He gave her to John and, by extension, to us saying, “Behold, your Mother”); His life itself when He suffered and died on the Cross; and even His very Spirit (“Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.”)
Christ surrendered everything, so we should all deny ourselves in at least some fashion. Bishop Robert Barron has written and spoken often about how generosity enlarges the human soul, transforming it from the pusilla anima (the little or petty, that is, pusillanimous soul) into one that is generous and compassionate, the magna anima (the great soul), from which our word “magnanimous” is derived.
If liberality is characteristic of the magnanimous soul who cheerfully presents himself as an offering, then miserliness and selfishness shift the focus from giving to receiving, thereby reversing the direction from outward to inward. The selfish, self-centered, ego-driven person is ultimately concerned only with self-aggrandizement. His gods are possessions, power, pleasure and prestige. He constantly has to feed his ego by acquiring and possessing. He becomes so caught up in the material world that matters of the spirit get shoved aside.
American artist Paul Cadmus (1904-99) in a painting titled “Avarice,” one of a series depicting the Seven Deadly Sins, aptly illustrates the pitfalls and consequences of a life devoted solely to material gain. The old man portrayed in this work, a stooped skeletal figure bearing the burden of his possessions on his shoulder, struggles to hold onto a single golden object that appears to be slipping away from him. The expression on his face tells the whole story: the goods of this world can’t fulfill the deepest longings of the human heart. Why cling so tightly to wealth? Why refuse to share with the poor when, as the saying goes, “you can’t take it with you?” A life that has no concern for the welfare of others and has no room for faith and matters of the spirit will never come to know abundant life.
For those struggling with their faith and seeking to escape the ego trap, acts of charity can be a remedy. When someone asked the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins for advice on how he could learn to believe, Hopkins responded simply, “give alms.” By providing for the needs of our neighbor we can gain a better understanding of God’s love for us.
Experience teaches us that an authentic act of generosity blesses the giver even more than the recipient. Why do we derive more pleasure from giving than from receiving? Perhaps it’s because what’s perceived as a reduction in physical or monetary assets becomes, through the charitable act, an increase in spiritual goods. The more we give away, the more we gain.
The vast expanse of our world, in all its beauty and goodness, testifies to the boundless generosity of God. Everything we have has been bestowed on us from our loving God. Everything! And so, we give generously because we have received so many showers of blessings. We should never hoard these heavenly favors or use them solely for our own purposes but rather to glorify Him and serve Him by sharing our resources with those who need them more than we do. In the words of St. Ambrose, the rich man who gives to the poor does not bestow alms; rather, he pays a debt. That’s the Christian perspective on giving. What a beautiful concept!

(Melvin Arrington is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages for the University of Mississippi and a member of St. John Oxford.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
One size doesn’t fit everyone. This isn’t just true for clothing, it’s also true for spirituality. Our challenges in life change as we age. Spirituality hasn’t always been fully sensitive to this. True, we’ve always had tailored instruction and activities for children, young people, and for people who are raising children, carrying a job, and paying a mortgage, but we’ve never developed a spirituality for what happens when those years are over.

Why is one needed? Jesus seemingly didn’t have one. He didn’t have one set of teachings for the young, another for those in mid-life, and still another for the elderly. He just taught. The Sermon on the Mount, the parables, and his invitation to take up his cross are intended in the same way for everyone, irrespective of age. But we hear those teaching at very different times in our lives; and it’s one thing to hear the Sermon the Mount when you’re seven years old, another when you’re twenty-seven, and quite another when you’re eighty-seven. Jesus’ teachings don’t change, but we do, and they offer very specific challenges at different times of our lives.
Christian spirituality has generally kept this in mind, with one exception. Except for Jesus and an occasional mystic, it has failed to develop an explicit spirituality for our later years, for how we are meant to be generative in our senior years and how we are to die in a life-giving way. But there’s a good reason for this lacuna. Simply put, it wasn’t needed because up until this last century most people never lived into old age. For example, in Palestine, in Jesus’ time, the average life expectancy was thirty to thirty-five years. A century ago in the United States, it was still less than fifty years. When most people in the world died before they reached the age of fifty, there was no real need for a spirituality of aging.
There is such a spirituality inside the Gospels. Even though he died at thirty-three, Jesus left us a paradigm of how to age and die. But that paradigm, while healthily infusing and undergirding Christian spirituality in general, was never developed more specifically into a spirituality of aging (with the exception of some of the great Christian mystics).
After Jesus, the Desert fathers and mothers folded the question of how to age and die into the overall framework of their spirituality. For them, spirituality was a quest to “see the face of God” and that, as Jesus makes clear, requires one thing, purity of heart. So for them, no matter your age, the challenge was the same, trying to achieve purity of heart. Then in the age of the persecutions and the early Christian martyrs, the idea developed that the ideal way to age and die was through martyrdom. Later, when Christians were no longer physically martyred, the idea took hold that you could take on a voluntary type of martyrdom by living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They believed that living these, like the quest for purity of heart, taught you all you needed to know, no matter your age. Eventually this was expanded to mean that anyone who faithfully responded to the duties in his or her life, irrespective of age, would learn everything necessary to come to sanctity through that fidelity. As a famous aphorism put it: Stay inside your cell and it will teach you all you need to know. Understood properly, there’s a spirituality of aging and dying inside these notions, but until recently there was little need to draw that out more explicitly.
Happily, today the situation is changing and we’re developing, more and more, some explicit spiritualities of aging and dying. Perhaps this reflects an aging population, but there’s now a burgeoning body of literature, both religious and secular, that’s taking up the question of aging and dying. These authors, too numerous to mention, include many names already familiar to us: Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr, Kathleen Dowling Singh, David Brooks, Cardinal Bernardin, Michael Paul Gallagher, Joan Chittister, Parker Palmer, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Paul Kalanithi, Erica Jong, Kathie Roiphe and Wilkie and Noreeen Au, among others. Coming from a variety of perspectives, each of these offer insights into what God and nature intend for us in our later years.
In essence, here’s the issue: today, we’re living longer and healthier late into life. It’s common today to retire sometime in our early sixties after having raised our children, superannuated from our jobs, and paid our mortgages. So what’s next, given that we probably have twenty or thirty more years of health and energy left? What are these years for? What are we called to now, beyond loving our grandkids?
Abraham and Sarah, in their old age, were invited to set out for a new land and conceive a child long after this was biologically impossible for them. That’s our call too. What “Isaac” are we called to give birth to in our later years? We need guidance.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Spirit and truth
By Father Aaron Williams
The liturgical celebration of Good Friday is one with a very interesting history. I remember being told when I was younger that the simplicity of the Good Friday service was a window into how the Mass looked on any day in the ancient church. But, a careful study of history shows a much more interesting story.

As far back as St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, we have records which show that the ancient church used to not celebrate any liturgy on Good Friday at all. Instead, a single liturgy was offered beginning at sundown on Holy Saturday and lasting until dawn, and within this one celebration was marked both the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ (interestingly enough denoted by a shift in vestment color during the service from violet to white). I will address the matter of the Holy Saturday Mass in a future column, but suffice it to say that there was no Good Friday service early in the church because the entire mystery was celebrated in a single service on Saturday night.
By the end of the fifth century, you see a movement to begin offering a service on Good Friday, but with an emphasis on this service not being a Mass. Instead, it was designed as a service of scripture readings and psalms which concluded with the adoration of a cross. Eventually by around the seventh century, it became common for a particle of the Sacred Host from the night before to be reserved and received by the Priest alone at the Good Friday service. The particle would be received with unconsecrated wine to further underscore that what was happening was not a Mass.
The medieval church gave this service the title “Mass of the Pre-Sanctified,” which was a borrowed title from the Eastern Church which celebrates all through Lent the “Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts,” which is essentially a Mass without a consecration where the priest receives communion from the reserved Sacrament.
The structure of this service was as follows. The priest entered wearing a black mourning chasuble. Interestingly enough, the deacons also wore chasubles for this service, but with a deacon stole. The priest and ministers prostrated themselves in silence and then, after saying a prayer, were seated for the reading of lessons. At the time of the Gospel, the deacon would remove his chasuble and read the Passion narrative from St. John wearing only a stole. When this was finished, the priest would change into black cope and go to the altar where he offered the solemn intercessions — similar to the intercessions in today’s Good Friday liturgy where each intercession is preceded by a period of kneeling for silent prayer. When this is completed, he changed back into chasuble and the cross is brought forward and adored. Afterwards, the priest and deacon went to the Sepulchre — the altar of repose from the previous night — and with solemn festival, the ministers brought the Sacrament back into the church to be placed on the altar. Incense was used and bells were rung as a prelude to the Resurrection. The priest incensed the Sacrament and the altar while kneeling. Then, plain wine was poured into his chalice and he received the Host with the plain wine. Afterwards all departed.
This service remained essentially unchanged until 1955 when the reforms of Pope Pius XII were instituted. At this point, a rubric was given that enough hosts were to be consecrated the night before so that the faithful may receive communion on Good Friday as well. The name of the service was changed to “The Solemn Liturgical Action of the Preparation Day” — a reference to the Jewish term for Friday as a preparation for the Sabbath. The structure of the service remained similar, but the procession with incense was omitted and the deacons wore black dalmatics. The Passion Reading was also shortened to remove the Last Supper, and the burial of Christ.
The Roman Missal of 1970 left the liturgy of Good Friday essentially untouched from its 1955 form. The only changes were aesthetic: the ministers wear red instead of black vestments, and the liturgy is now called “The Solemn Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion.”
What we can learn from this history is that the church, for centuries, has been intentional about making the Good Friday service simple and lacking any sort of ornamentation or “bells and whistles.” The rubrics in the Missal denote that the use of instruments is forbidden on Good Friday, and that all singing is to be done a cappella. The use of simple songs with refrains are much preferred to more difficult works or ‘solo-pieces.’ The liturgy should be intentionally stark — to underscore the emptiness the church feels at the death of Christ, reminding us of the separation we had from God due to original sin.
Parishes should try to avoid any sort of emotionalism. A lot of places today like to turn Good Friday into a praise and worship concert with light effects and loud music, but this doesn’t do justice to the church’s vision for Good Friday. We are meant to feel the difference between what happens on Good Friday and what normally happens at Mass. Here, simplicity is key. The more elaborate ideas can be left for Easter.

(Father Aaron Williams is the administrator at St. Joseph Parish in Greenville)

THINGS OLD AND NEW
By Ruth Powers
Right now there is a debate going on in some quarters in the church regarding whether or not there is such a thing as a vocation to the single life, in addition to the unquestioned vocations to ordained, married, or vowed religious life. Part of the reason for the debate is that, unlike the other vocations, there is a great diversity of reasons why people are single, therefore it is difficult to make statements about what “being single” means.

We are all single for some part of our lives. We marry or enter priesthood or religious life after some period of living as a single person. We may become single again due to divorce or the death of a spouse. We may actively choose not to marry for a wide variety of reasons. Better theological minds than mine are grappling with this question, and I will leave it to them. However, I would like to propose a shift in the way we look at vocation for single people that makes it plain that it is not a second class state of life, but rather it is an opportunity to live out the vocation given to all of us at our Baptism, no matter who we are.
In Lumen Gentium, one of the primary documents of the Second Vatican Council, the fathers of the Council wrote of the universal vocation of all Christians, the call to holiness. They wrote, “Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society. In order that the faithful may reach this perfection, they must use their strength accordingly as they have received it, as a gift from Christ. They must follow in His footsteps and conform themselves to His image seeking the will of the Father in all things. They must devote themselves with all their being to the glory of God and the service of their neighbor. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in church history.” In other words, we are all called to be holy by following the teachings of Christ and through service to others. The single person is just as capable of living this call as is the married person, the priest, or the person who has taken religious vows.
Whether a person is single by choice or by chance does not change the fact that we are still made for love, self-gift and service. There are many ways that the single person can be true to this call. First of all, it does not require religious life to develop a relationship with God; and depending on the individual situation, the single person may have more time to develop a relationship with God because as St. Paul says, it is a time where you can give your “undivided attention to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:35) by reading, studying and prayer. Live your whole life with passion and purpose as an offering to God for the gifts you have been given rather than actively seeking something to make you happy, and you may find that happiness will sneak up on you. The single person has the time and opportunity to develop many friendships if he or she wishes to, and in these loving friendships they can help others live more faithful lives as well. As it says in Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together … but let us encourage one another.” Finally, the single person has the freedom to devote time to service, and finding an area of service that one is passionate about can often be another avenue to a happy and fulfilled life.
With this said, the church also has a responsibility to her single members, who all too often get overlooked. In Familiaris Consortio, St. John Paul II wrote that those without a family must be able to find their family within the church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 1658 also speaks to the church’s role in serving its single members: “We must also remember the great number of single persons who, because of the particular circumstances in which they live – often not of their choosing – are especially close to Jesus’ heart and therefore deserve the special affection and active solicitude of the church, especially of pastors. … Some live their situation in the spirit of the Beatitudes, serving God and neighbor in exemplary fashion. The doors of homes, the ‘domestic churches’ and of the great family which is the church must be open to all of them.” As a church which calls itself the People of God, we have the responsibility both as a group and as individuals to work to make sure that all are included and no one suffers loneliness needlessly.
Single people have an important though sometimes unrecognized role (sometimes even unrecognized even by themselves) in the Body of Christ. They have a unique opportunity to live out their baptismal call to holiness and service, and we as the church have a responsibility to include and support them.

(Ruth is the Program Coordinator for St. Mary Basilica Parish in Natchez.)

Domestic abuse is an awful and often deadly cycle. Rarely does it start with actual violence.
It starts with a more subtle form of control.
It kills the spirit and smothers the soul way before it leaves bruises and broken bones.

GUEST COLUMN
By Reba J. McMellon, M.S.,LPC
Stop – Stop and think. Sounds simple but our culture promotes an approach to love commitment that involves more falling than planning. Pump the brakes. Slow down. Hold the phone.
Hormones and commitment should be two separate things. Oftentimes people find themselves in too deep by the time they realize their relationship has warning signs of domestic abuse.
Stop and ask yourself: How is this person when he or she is angry? How do they handle not being in control? What is their relationship history?
The only way we can accurately predict behavior in the future is by patterns in the past.
Are you committing to a flawed ship? Not getting on the boat in the first place is the best way to prevent drowning.
Stop and pay attention to body language and other expressions of anger, control or selfishness.

Look – Look for signs of problems with anger management.
Does a person get defensive, shift blame or offer excuses? The number one problem with people who engage in domestic abuse is their lack of ability to take responsibility for their own actions and reactions.
There are important differences between those who make excuses and those who take responsibility.
Responsibility implies that fault is sincerely recognized and accepted; and that you take accountability for your actions.
An excuse exists to justify, blame or defend a fault … with the intent to absolve oneself of accountability. An excuse will never be followed by positive, goal-directed or solution-oriented behavior.
Lack of responsibility in the large and small areas of life is a huge warning sign.
Look for red flags. Keep your eyes open and your brain engaged.
Listen – Listen when other people tell you they see red flags. It never hurts to listen.
One of the ways domestic abuse perpetuates itself is through isolation. Listen for patterns that may set you up for domination and isolation. Particularly from family and friends.
If you have to plan conversations with family or friends when the partner is away, that’s a warning sign. If there are demands for all or nothing, listen carefully for what it is the partner is asking you to give up and how often you are expected to blindly give in.
Domestic abuse is an awful and often deadly cycle. Rarely does it start with actual violence. It starts with a more subtle form of control. It kills the spirit and smothers the soul way before it leaves bruises and broken bones.
If you come from a family where an abusive imbalance of power and control existed, you are 75% more likely to fall into the same pattern in your own committed relationships.
To be triumphant in a successful God centered relationship, study what the catechism says about theology of marriage and respect. Then study it some more.
Study narcissism so you will be able to recognize a web of deception before stepping into one.
If you are aware of someone who is trapped in a cycle of domestic violence, quietly tell them you are there when they are ready. Then love them steady.
There is nothing domestic or loving about abuse.

(Reba J. McMellon, M.S. is a licensed professional counselor with 35 years of experience. She worked in the field of child sexual abuse and adult survivors of abuse for over 25 years. She continues to work as a mental health consultant and freelance writer. Reba can be reached at rebaj@bellsouth.net)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
On Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis released a new encyclical entitled, Fratelli Tutti – On Fraternity and Social Friendship. It can appear a rather depressing read because of its searing realism, except it plays the long game of Christian hope.

Fratelli Tutti lays out reasons why there’s so much injustice, inequality and community breakdown in our world and how in faith and love these might be addressed. The intent here is not to give a synopsis of the encyclical, other than to say it’s courageous and speaks truth to power. Rather the intent is to highlight a number of special challenges within the encyclical.
First, it challenges us to see the poor and to see what our present political, economic and social systems are doing to them. Looking at our world, the encyclical submits that in many ways it is a broken world and it names some reasons for this: the globalization of self-interest, the globalization of superficiality and the abuse of social media, among other things. This has made for the survival of the fittest. And while the situation is broken for everyone, the poor are ending up suffering the most. The rich are getting richer, the powerful are getting more powerful, and the poor are growing poorer and losing what little power they had. There’s an ever-increasing inequality of wealth and power between the rich and the poor and our world is become ever more calloused vis-à-vis the situation of the poor. Inequality is now accepted as normal and as moral and indeed is often justified in the name of God and religion. The poor are becoming disposable: “Some parts of our human family, it appears, can be readily sacrificed for the sake of others. Wealth has increased, but together with inequality.” In speaking of inequality, the encyclical twice highlights that this inequality is true of women worldwide: “It is unacceptable that some have fewer rights by virtue of being women.”
The encyclical employs the parable of the Good Samaritan as its ground metaphor. It compares us today, individually and collectively, to the priest and the scribe in that parable who for religious, social and political reasons walk past the one who is poor, beaten, bleeding and in need of help. Our indifference and our religious failure, like that of the priest and the scribe in the parable, is rooted both in a personal moral blindness as well as in the social and religious ethos of our society that helps spawn that blindness.
The encyclical goes on to warn that in the face of globalization we must resist becoming nationalistic and tribal, taking care of our own and demonizing what’s foreign. It goes on to say that in a time of bitterness, hatred and animosity, we must be tender and gracious, always speaking out of love and not out of hatred: “Kindness ought to be cultivated; it is no superficial bourgeois virtue.”
The encyclical acknowledges how difficult and counter-cultural it is today to sacrifice our own agenda, comfort and freedom for community, but invites us to make that sacrifice: “I would like especially to mention solidarity which is a moral virtue and social attitude born of personal conversion.”
At one point, the encyclical gives a very explicit (and far-reaching) challenge. It states unequivocally (with full ecclesial weight) that Christians must oppose and reject capital punishment and take a stand against war: “Saint John Paul II stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice. There can be no stepping back from this position. Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the Church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide. All Christians and people of good will are today called to work not only for the abolition of the death penalty, legal or illegal, in all its forms, but also to work for the improvement of prison conditions.”
As for war: “We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’”
The encyclical has drawn strong criticism from some women’s groups who label it “sexist,” though this criticism is based almost exclusively on the encyclical’s title and on the fact that it never makes reference to any women authors. There’s some fairness, I submit, in the criticism regarding the choice of title. The title, while beautiful in an old classical language, is in the end masculine. That should be forgivable; except I lived long enough in Rome to know that its frequent insensitivity to inclusive language is not an inculpable oversight. But the lapse here is a mosquito bite, a small thing, which shouldn’t detract from a big thing, namely, a very prophetic encyclical which has justice and the poor at its heart.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)