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About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (April 16, 1987)
Supplement to The Georgia Bulletin, April l<>, 1987 □ Faith Toda A supplement to Cotholic newspaper published by NATIONAL CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 1312 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005. with grant assistance from " The Catholic Church ra EXTENSION Society ***Tf~M 35 East Wadier Dr., Chicago, Illinois 60601 All contents copyright© 1967 by NC News Service. By Father Eugene LaVerdiere, SSS NC News Service very Christian is called to be a reconciler. Jesus himself was a reconciler. His whole life was aimed at reconciling human beings to one another and to God. His mission continues today in the life of the church. It affects all of us, not just passively as people who need to be reconciled, but actively as men and women who need to reach out to others with Christ’s gift of reconciliation. In modern times, our role as Christian reconcilers often drops far into the background. We think of ourselves as patients in need of healing and reconciliation. We forget that we are also agents of reconciliation. We think of the priest as the church’s special minister of recon ciliation. But we forget that every baptized person has a role in bringing Christ’s reconciliation and peace to all peoples. □ □ □ I would like to illustrate Christ’s reconciling mission with a favorite story. The setting for the story is Israel. The time is around 1972, a few years after the Six-Day War. The story involves Christians, Jews and Moslems. We were working on an ar chaeological site called Tel Keisan, which is situated in a large fertile plain in the northern part of Israel between Haifa and Acre. Most of our group was French, but a few were Americans, all working side by side on a small excavation con ducted by the French Biblical and Archaeological School, a school of the Dominican order in Jerusalem. There was nothing unusual in all this except that our group also included a few Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank, and we were excavating in an area which had been part of Israel for 25 years. After a few weeks on the site, the French and the Americans were invited for a meal at the home of the mayor of Acre. The problem was that the Palestinians, who had worked for many years for the French school, were our friends. They were also Moslems. Our invitation came from an Israeli. He and his family were Jewish. It did not occur to him to invite our Palestinian friends. Called to reconcile (wherever you are) Every Christian is called to be an agent of Christ's recon ciliation and peace, actively reaching out to others with these gifts, writes Father Eugene LaVerdiere. How? He relates an extraordinary story of reconciliation that occurred during an archaeological dig in Israel. But, he adds, it illustrates "what Christians are asked to do at work, at home, even in a crowd ed parking lot coming out of church." We wanted to accept the invita tion, but how could we go without them? We persuaded our Jewish host to invite the Arabs with us, and we persuaded the Arabs to accept the invitation. They came and all went well. Fears run deep, but little by lit tle they discovered one another as persons. They began to remember people and events from “the old days” before the hostilities began, when Jews and Arabs, Christians and Moslems, lived as neighbors in peace. They remembered how wonderful it was to be friends. As the evening progressed, the conversation between them grew livelier and livelier. Had those of us who were Christians left, our absence probably would not have been noticed for a good while. We had not planned it that way, but that evening we had fulfilled our role as Christian reconcilers. We had made a little contribution to Christ’s work of peace. □ □ □ This rather extraordinary event is a good example of what Chris tians are asked to do at work, at home, even in a crowded parking lot coming out of church on Sun day morning. To do it, we need first to be aware of our role in Christ’s reconciling mission and to have the common sense to recognize when we can make a contribution. To acquire that awareness we might reflect on John 20:19-23, where Jesus appears to the whole community of disciples after the resurrection and greets them with a generous offer of peace: “Peace be with you.” Such is the characteristic greeting of the risen Lord to his disciples. He then asked his disciples — the whole Christian community — to overcome their fear of persecu tion. He was asking them to go forth as he had done and be reconcilers. His peace greeting would be their own. If they did not fulfill their responsibility as reconcilers, how would the human community be reconciled in Christ? The same applies to us, the liv ing church. Every Christian is call ed to be a reconciler. (Father LaVerdiere is editor of Emmanuel.)
