Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 5—January 13, 1977
What Does God Want Us
To Do For The World?
BY FATHER ALFRED MCBRIDE, O.PRAEM.
When Columbus entered the throne room
of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to ask
them to finance explorer ships to probe the
Atlantic waters, he saw a banner on the
wall over the throne which said, “ne plus
ultra,” nothing more beyond. Spain believed
she was the westernmost part of the
civilized world. No other land lay beyond
Spain. But after Columbus discovered
America, the royal couple removed the
“ne” from the motto. Now it read “plus
ultra,” more beyond.
When Franklin Roosevelt died in Warm
Springs, Ga., in 1945, he was posing for a
portrait and thinking about a speech he
was planning to give. A fragment of that
speech remains to this day. It reads, “The
only limit to our realization of tomorrow is
our doubts of today.”
Dare we to hope for a future? Is there
“more beyond”? Columbus did and he
discovered America. Roosevelt did and he
was able to surmount the affliction of
polio to become president and to cope
with the disaster of the Great Depression
and bring America prosperity.
Dare we hope for a future against the
problems of evil? Yes. The greatest
guarantee of a future has been given to us
by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
For our purposes here, it is especially
important to focus on the death of Jesus.
It was a conquest of evil. But the prior
question is about evil and sin. If Jesus
conquered sin, what is the sin He
conquered?
In recent years the term sin has mostly
been applied to “harming and abusing
persons.” When people speak of sin today,
they have a tendency only to interpret it
in terms of the human side. Ask someone
what sin might mean, and they may well
say, “Not getting along with people.” Yet
sin is also a matter of “not getting along
with God as well.” Sin has a human side,
but it also has a divine side. In fact sin is
more so that.
The Bible teaches that sin is a loss of
relationship with God, which is manifested
in a loss of relationship with persons. Note
that when Jesus came to earth He did not
come to rail against the establishment
(though He did indeed do that at times, as
in His debates with the Pharisees and the
cleansing of the temple.) But that was not
His main purpose. Nor did He dedicate
Himself to improving middle-class values
(though His wisdom sayings helped that
along). It was not His main aim to improve
ecclesiastical politicians or help the middle
class to adjust better to each other. Even
in the case of the healings, Jesus’ first goal
was to heal the soul of the person. Take
the story of the paralytic. Jesus begins by-
forgiving the man’s sins. Clearly the man
was disappointed. He wanted to walk and
run and jump like other people, and Jesus
instead forgives his sins. Of course, Jesus
does go on to heal the paralysis, but He
has made His point. He has come to save
sinners, to bring people back to a flowing
and loving relationship with God.
Getting along with God is the condition
for getting along with people. Love God
and you have the insight to love people.
Stay in God’s friendship and there is little
likelihood that you will destroy your
relationships with people. Overcome the evil
that keeps you from the love of Christ and
you will eliminate the evil that keeps you
from the love of persons.
The Adam and Eve story demonstrates
the insight. Adam and Eve represent
humanity in union with God. They walk
with the Lord in the garden in the cool of
the evening. There is no sin, they love each
other, for they are at one with the Lord.
But after the sin, that is, the break with
God, murder (Cain and Abel) rape,
exploitation, over-arching ambition (time of
Noah, Tower of Babel) fill the world. The
loss of peace, love and friendship between
persons is traced by the Bible to the loss
of peace, love and friendship between
people and God. That is the original sin
and the one that abides today. It is the
supreme evil that underlines all other evils.
Can it be overcome? Dare we hope for a
future against evil? Yes. The death of Jesus
along with His whole life style of sacrificial
love made it possible. He showed that
union with the Father caused the
elimination of personal selfishness and
enabled one to love people creatively rather
than harm persons. We must unite with the
death of Christ, by our own lives of
sacrificial love. In so acting we enter into
peaceful friendship with the Father and
learn how to unleash a love that washes
evil out of the world’s system.
f — >
Christianity Filled With Hope And Joy
< ___ >
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
“There are in the end three things that
last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest
of these is love” (I Cor. 13, 13). We hear a
great deal about faith and love as the
indispensable virtues of Christian life; poor
hope gets caught in the middle and receives
relatively little attention. Yet it is one of
the big- three, the logical sequel to faith
and important motive for loving. If we are
a community of faith and love, we are
also, a community of hope. Often religion
is caricatured as a dark, gloomy affair,
casting a pal! over everything human, even
everything created. Just the opposite is
true. Christianity is essentially hopeful,
joyful, optimistic, healthily humanistic.
The Bible is, from beginning to end, a
record of God’s love for His creation. It
contains what is called significantly
Salvation History — not Damnation but
Salvation. The first experience His people
had of Him was that of a saving God. The
Exodus from Egypt left an indelible
impression on them and formed the factual
basis of their hope for the future, a hope
which nothing could extinguish. This hope
colored their whole existence, and while at
times it took on a tarnished, nationalistic
hue, it reaches out to embrace all
humanity. Thus it was that the authors of
the Yahwist creation story (Gn. 2,4b -
3,24) presented God as promising all
mankind ultimate victory over the forces of
evil (Gn. 3,15).
The whole thrust of biblical history is
future-oriented. It moves constantly forward
to the prophetic “Day of the Lord,” that
point in time when God would intervene in
history to save humanity in a transcendent
Exodus. This was the object of the
messianic hope of Israel, a hope kept alive
by the prophets whom God raised up in
times of crisis — and there were many such
times.
When this history reached its climax, it
did so with the vindication of centuries of
unquenchable hope and an undreamed of
fulfillment of the promises. God did
intervene in human history, not
extrinsically, but intimately, directly, by
sending His Son to take a human nature
and enter the mainstream of humanity. The
interpretation of this event is in the
Gospels, which means literally Good News.
It has come to us in four forms, the
Gospels, all of which convey to us the
meaning, the message of the Christ-event —
a message of renewed hope, unbounded joy.
For instance, at the beginning of his Gospel
Luke sounds the note of joy which will
ring throughout his presentation. (See Lk.
2,10).
Joy and hope go hand in hand. If the
Christ-event was the fulfillment of past
hopes, it was also the basis of
incomparably greater hopes. For Jesus came
precisely as Savior, to liberate humanity
from its ills. Everything He said and did
bespoke His loving concern for suffering
mankind and His power to heal. He fed
the hungry, gave sight to the blind, hearing
to the deaf, mobility to the crippled, peace
to the disturbed, even life to the dead. All
this was an essential part of His
fundamental mission: to win for humanity
victory over the forces of evil. Physical and
psychic ills were the symptoms of the real
disease, the real enemy: sin. It is this that
makes people feel so horribly hopeless, even
though many are reluctant to admit it.
For too many of our contemporaries, sin
is fiction. It has nothing to do with the
nitty-gritty of human existence, and when
Christian hope is presented in terms of
Christ’s having saved us from sin, they
yawn or smile or get angry. The very idea
strikes them as having a sort of
“pie-in-the-sky” ring to it. Yet nothing
could be more down to earth, just as no
one could have been more down to earth
than the incarnate Son of God. Paul lists
some sins: “ . . . lewd conduct, impurity,
licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities,
bickering, jealousy, outbursts of rage, selfish
rivalries, dissensions, factions, envy,
drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Gal. 5,
19-21). Do such things contribute nothing
to human misery and despair? It was from
them, and others, that Jesus came to save
us. He came to teach us to hope and live
for “love, joy, peace, patient endurance,
kindness, generosity, faith, mildness and
chasity” (Gal. 5,22). A human existence
characterized by such qualities is eminently
worthy of hope and effort and, thanks to
the victory of Christ, within our power to
achieve.
Ultimately, the greatest single cause of
human despair is the inexorable enemy,
death. But even this He has conquered for
us by His resurrection, the pledge of our
own complete victory and the sure, factual
basis of our hope. We are a hope-filled
community, Easter people. Read St. Paul’s
reassuring “hope passage” in his letter to
the Romans, chapter 5, verses 2, 6, 8-1,0.
BY DAVID MCGILL
A good trivia question, which few people
besides A1 Capp could answer, would be
“How do you spell the last name of that
‘Li’l Abner’ comic strip character named
Joe who always had a black storm cloud
over his head?” All I can remember is that
it started with a “B” and had six or seven
strangely scrambled letters that couldn’t be
pronounced without the loss of a great deal
of saliva, if at all.
This character “Joe B.” always
symbolized impending doom, for wherever
he went, there followed bad luck, disaster,
and hard times. Nowadays, it’s easy to feel
like we’re all Joe B’s. This is because even
if we don’t have at least one serious
personal problem to contend with, then a
glance at the daily paper will reveal enough
bad news about the world to make us feel
like we have a cloud over our heads — a
cloud of no hope hovering above, ready to
drench us at any time with more bad
news.
Some of these problems are beyond our
control — such as earthquakes, hurricanes,
and weather-caused famines. Others, however
(and the vast majority), are man-made:
abortions totaling into the millions in the
United States alone, violence and filth on
TV and in the movies, widespread
pornography, corruption among public
officials, and both organized and
unorganized crime of all kinds: gambling,
prostitution, loansharking, computer crime,
hijacking, narcotics, and labor racketeering,
to name just a few.
There are many responses that people
make to this bad news . . . Some despair,
and live in depression. Others become
cynical, and live miserably, carping at the
state of the world at every opportunity.
Some decide to join the crowd, reasoning
that “if you can’t lick ‘em, join 'em.” Still
others isolate themselves and ignore the
problems totally.
And we ask: Dare we hope for the
future? The answer for Christians is: Of
course we do. None of the above responses
are what Christ wants for us. The message
'of Jesus was and is one of hope, not of
doom. And the Christian life is one of joy,
peace, purpose, and especially one of
victory, in spite of the problems abounding
in the world.
So, having decided to hope for the
future, what does God want us to do for
the world? Just as Christ overcame death,
He expects us to continually do our best
toward overcoming the evil around us. The
role which we have in this huge but
surmountable task is to continue to pray,
to stay well-informed, and to act effectively
wherever we are and in whatever way we
can to make Jesus and His teachings better
known. In this way, the planet will become
more like He who once physically resided
here (and who is still present through His
ever-kinetic Spirit).
We’ve all heard a “good news and bad
news” joke. For example: “I’ve got some
good news and some bad news. The good
news is that Jesus is coming again. The bad
news is that He’s mighty angry!”
In contrast to bad news, the word
“Gospel” literally means “good news.” The
news in the New Testament is of three
types: good news,'better news/best news.
The good news is that Jesus came to this
Earth to bring victory over sin and death.
We have just celebrated this good news at
Christmas.
The better news is that He won this
victory by means of His death for us on
the cross: “We wish you the grace and
peace of God our Father and of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who in order to rescue us
from this present wicked world sacrificed
Himself for our sins, in accordance with
the will of God our Father. . .” (Gal.
1,3,4).
The best news is that of the resurrection,
the fulfillment: “ . . . if Christ has not been
raised, you are still in vour sins.” (I Cor.
15,17)
For these reasons, my wife Carolyn and
I have decided not to be discouraged about
the future prospects for our three children
in this troubled world. The good news of
Christ, together with the strength we gain
from the sacraments, will dissipate our
individual Joe B. storm clouds.
THE ADAM AND EVE STORY
represents humanity in union with
God. Father Alfred McBride writes,
“They walk with the Lord in the
garden in the cool of the evening.
There is no sin, they love each
other, for they are at one with the
Lord.” But after the sin, there is
exploitation, rape, and murder as in
the case of Cain and Abel depicted
in this woodcut by Paul Gustave
Dore. (NC Photo)
DAVID MCGILL writes of how
easy it is to carry a cloud of
hopelessness over our heads. “If we
don’t have at least one serious
personal problem to contend with,
then a glance at the daily paper
will reveal enough bad news about
the world to make us feel like we
have a cloud over our heads - a
cloud of no hope.” (NC Photo by
Paul Tucker)
r——— : >
Know
Your Faith
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1977 by N. C. News Service)
»