Newspaper Page Text
July 23,1981
PAGE 5
Time Of Loss: What Can Be Done?
BY FATHER PHILIP J. MURNION
There are limits -- times in life when we
arrive at the outer reaches of our own
understanding of why things happen, that is.
Death undoubtedly confronts us with the
most important limit situation. The death of a
young person can be tragic. On the other
hand, when an older person dies after
suffering a long and painful illness, the
mystery of death may strike us quite
differently. In either case, however, death is a
mystery.
What other events and situations in life
challenge our understanding and our faith?
Well, for example, there are times when
parents cannot understand why a son or
daughter has fallen into a life of drugs. How
could this happen? What, they may ask, did
they do wrong?
Or there are times when we fail at
something that is very important to us,
perhaps suffering a loss of reputation or of
money, a loss of friends or of health, a loss of a
job or of an opportunity which fell to
someone else. At all such times there is danger
that we will believe the situation developed
because of some fault of our own, some
failing, some lack of virtue.
These are times when our dignity is
challenged, when it is easy to develop feelings
of guilt or inadequacy, when we search for the
place of God’s grace in our lives. These are
times when we realize that our lives are not
entirely under our control; we cannot always
accomplish or have what we would like.
These especially are the times when people
turn to their faith for some answers; times,
too, when the parish and its people are
especially important.
Parishes naturally feel a special
responsibility when individuals or families
face difficult situations. The church’s
ministry to sick and dying people, to the
grieving and disconsolate, has always been an
important part of parish life. A pastor who has
had little other effect on a parishioner’s life,
but who is helpful at the time of the death of a
loved one or in some other crisis in the
parishioner’s life, will long be remembered.
Parishes are discovering many new ways to
extend care to people who are suffering some
loss. Some parishes have even established
special groups that are mobilized as soon as
there is a death in the parish. The group
reaches out, without violating the privacy of
the family, to provide help with funeral
arrangements, food for the family and for
visitors during the time of the wake and
funeral, places for out-of-town relatives to
stay, care for children when this is necessary,
and any number of other forms of assistance
at the time of death.
Some parishes have formed groups for
widows and widowers so that these people can
get together and support each other as they
experience the special challenge of adjusting
to life without a spouse. A spouse left behind
after a death may suffer not only grief but
other mixed emotions - including anger and
guilt. Opportunities to talk and pray with
others going through the same experience can
be a great help.
The loss of a job is a very difficult kind of
loss and some parishes, in areas hit by heavy
unemployment, have established groups of
those who have lost their jobs. The members
of these groups are able to help each other
cope with the troubles that arise, including
the tendency to doubt themselves. They, and
others in the parish, are able to offer special
helps as a person goes through the painful
process of seeking another job.
Loss. It takes many forms and shapes in
everyday life. And it brings us face to face
with one of life’s great mysteries, the mystery
of suffering and evil. How can evil exist if God
is so loving? There is a great need to search the
depths of our faith together and to offer each
other the kind of support that helps to dispel
the darkness of doubt, guilt and resentment.
In fact, the kind of assistance parishes can
offer when people suffer a loss is one of the
means by which those people are helped to
find deeper meaning in life and to discover the
possibilities of life that are ours, regardless of
the circumstances.
t 'N
KNOW
YOUR
FAITH
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1981 By N.C. News Service)
s — )
Offering The First Fruits
Similarly, “through a man,” through Jesus,
the restoration of humanity to authentic
existence and eventual immortality became
more than an elusive dream, a wild hope. It
was now a distinct historical possibility.
“Just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will
come to life again.”
Since Paul is not writing a complete
treatise on the afterlife, he considers only the
situation at the end time, at the Second
Coming of Christ. First comes the definitive
victory of the risen Lord, the first fruits, and
then that of the whole harvest, “all those who
belong to him” (1 Cor. 15:23).
In the interval much remains to be done.
The reign of God over the forces of evil was
successfully inaugurated by Jesus’ earthly
mission of healing and reconciliation. But
while the power of evil has been broken, it
continues to fight.
People are still bom into a state of
“death,” of inauthentic human existence,
into a world where they are to a frightening
extent enslaved to a perverted value system. It
is an existence leading to a dead end. They
must be freed from this slavery, enabled to
pass from death to life, from a subhuman
existence to a truly human one, from the
entrapment of a dead end to the glorious
prospect of a highway leading to eternity. So
Discussion Points And Questions
1. Why do you think parishes are so concerned to develop ways to help
people through sickness, death, divorce and other crises?
2. What are some programs parishes have devised, according to Father
Mumion, for reaching out sympathetically to people at stress points in
their lives?
3. David Gibson focuses on what the word “adult” means. He suggests
some elements for a definition of adulthood. Discuss two of his points.
4. Spend a few moments thinking about adults you admire. What
qualities do you find most attractive in these persons? Now, compose
your own definition of the world “adult.”
5. Father John Castelot makes a comparison between the “first fruits”
offered to God in the Old Testament and the resurrection of Jesus. What is
this analogy and how does it pertain to our resurrection?
6. Think about a crisis you have experienced in your life. Then describe
the crisis and explain who helped you to weather the storm.
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
If the people of Corinth accept the fact of
Jesus’ resurrection - and they do - then they
cannot reasonably make the sweeping
statement that there is no such thing as the
resurrection of the body. It would be illogical
to do so, St. Paul argued in Chapter 15 of his
first letter to the Corinthians.
There is a point, however, beyond which
logic cannot take us. Faith must step in to
complete the picture, and faith rests not on
logical premises but on divine revelation.
Accordingly, Paul now moves the
discussion to this higher level. The
resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated fact,
but one which has profound and wonderful
implications for all of humanity.
He was raised as the “first fruits of those
who have fallen asleep.” In the Old Testament
ritural the first fruits of the harvest were
offered to God every year. Their offering
symbolized the offering of the whole harvest.
Jesus shared our humanity, our human
nature, and so when he was raised, we were
raised.
Calling upon the Genesis story, Paul recalls
that it was through a man - Adam - who
represented all of humanity that death (in the
sense of inauthentic existence and eventual
physical death) became part of our history.
IN A WASHINGTON CEMETERY, birthday cards are
attached to a grave marker for a child who died at a young age.
Parishes are seeking and finding new ways of ministering to
members who have experienced the death of a loved one. (NC
Photo by Bob Strawn)
Can You Define Adulthood?
BY DAVID GIBSON
Not long ago I was involved in a discussion
with a group of people from my parish when
someone asked: What is it that makes a.person
an adult?
At first the question seemed rather strange.
After all, those present in the room were all
adults. It should have been easy for them to
define the world “adult”— shouldn’t it?
One woman quickly ventured that
adulthood entails the capacity to chart life’s
course without worrying unduly about what
other people think; to proceed in life without
being intimidated by peer pressure.
Someone else suggested that what makes a
person an adult is the ability to make real
decisions. When one can choose - decide what
has value and what does not, or pursue goals
one regards as worthy goals - then one is an
Of Harvest
it is that “Christ must reign until God has put
all enemies under his feet, and the last enemy
to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:25-26).
Paul cites Psalm 8, which tells that God
gave humanity dominion over all creation,
thus creating people in his own image. Jesus,
in his humanity, restored that image. And
when Jesus has finally brought the creator’s
intention to perfect realization, he will hand
over to him the restored universe.
As the Father’s Son, the new Adam, the
perfect man, will “subject himself to the one
who made all things subject to him, so that
God may be all in all. ”
adult.
Still another person suggested that being
adult means recognizing one’s own
limitations, without being devastated by the
very existence of those limitations.
Our discussion of adulthood was brief. We
didn’t reach any real conclusions. We had met
to discuss something else and soon got back to
that. But the question - an intriguing one -
remains.
For sure, it is difficult to be an adult
without having to make decisions. And, a lot
of adults would agree that it isn’t mature to be
unduly influenced by peer pressure. So those
insights must form part of an ansswer to the
question.
Perhaps if our group had spent more time
discussing the question, we would have gotten
around to rephrasing it something like this:
How does an adult act? What does an adult
do?
Needless to say, what adults do gets them
involved with other people. Part of the
definition of the world “adult” would then be
discovered by looking at how adults treat
other people, how others are regarded.
Anything written on a topic like adulthood
is bound to appear arbitrary to some. But here
are a few suggestions for a partial list of the
characteristics of adults:
- Adults are able to give up some of their
time and some of their privacy for others.
Here I think of a couple who volunteered to
spend part of Christmas day serving dinner in
a Catholic Charities soup kitchen in our
diocese.
-- Adults think it is valuable to listen well --
to work at hearing what others are really
saying. Youth ministers come to mind, as do
teachers and parents who take time to listen
to young people; persons who consider it
almost a vocation to understand what young
people hope for and care about.
- Adults try to handle conflict well. They
may not always succeed perfectly, but adults
try to find out why others hold opposing
viewpoints (and sometimes happily discover
in the process that they disagree less with their
opponents than they thought).
- Adults know that they require a measure
of privacy and solitude in life, but they can
seek it without pushing others out of their
lives.
- Adults think they can still grow,
becoming fuller persons.
- Adults recognize how complex all people
are, and therefore attempt to be
understanding.
Those are some points that might be placed
on a list of the elements of adulthood.
Obviously, the list is not comprehensive.
Readers can (and I hope will) add their own
thoughts to it.
Perhaps someone will say that such a list is
too balanced in favor of religious values and
that someone else could come up with a
different list. That’s possible, for this writer
does tend to think that the message of Jesus
calls us to a life that can be quite mature, quite
adult.
So what is an adult? And how does an adult
act?
It seems as though it ought to be said that
adults try to act compassionately. They see
that others experience pain in life. They try to
hear clearly what is said by others who are
distressed. They use their memories to recall
what it is like to feel disappointed or
discouraged or overwhelmed. And they try to
use their touch - their outreach - to give
others a sense of one of life’s most important
ingredients: hope.
COMPASSION DOES NOT CREATE a perfect world but Compassion tells others that we truly care about them. (NC
it does aid in creating a world where life seems to be valuable. Photo by David S. Strickler)