JUNE 7, 2020: A MESSAGE

                I believe in Divine Providence.  I believe the influence, effect, and messaging of God within our world is real even when we sometimes misconstrue the meaning—something inevitable given the imperfect state in which we all, as humans, exist.  I have witnessed and felt in my soul too many times messages in the Catholic Missal aligned, almost too perfectly, with present-time events.  But the messages were not too perfect; they were just perfect.

                I have felt disillusioned this past week seeing the sudden flame and rise of anger, hurt, animosity, and desire for retribution across the spectrum of our society.  I dismiss no grievance.  I belittle no perceptions, experience, nor belief.  Knowing myself a sinner, I judge no one and wish only to empathize and to love.  I want no divisions.  I pick no sides.  I seek no design for false distinctions because I see such as often accidental continuations of the condition we rightly stand, and speak, against. 

                How do we move beyond?  Do we shame others to our side?  I’ve never seen that work.  More often, I’ve seen such efforts harden sincere spirits seeking to ameliorate past wrongs.  When an open heart is wounded, a guard is raised once more, and an opportunity is lost. 

                I do not have a social proposal.  I have no great universal answer to employ on a collective level.  I do not believe such a solution exists for God, by design, created us all to be different; but I do have a perspective. 

                I went to the Catholic Missal to read and interpret for myself the message in this week’s readings.  In the words of the Missal, I found a light and message speaking direct to our Today.

                For this week, of all time of times, the second reading of mass, preordained to be read this precise day in accordance with the Church’s three year cycle, gifts us the perfect message for our present moment:

                “Brothers and sisters, rejoice.  Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.  Greet one another with a holy kiss…The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

                Is this not the message we need for Today, our exact living Present?  We are aware to and clearly hearing the messaging in our first call to action, “Mend your ways.” 

                Are conditions not set to begin the next phases of God’s call to action?  “…Encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.”  Our rage was a justified response, but the prosecution of responsive wrong is no more right than the beginning sin.  Rather than tear down by fealty to immovable human positions—which are entirely moveable should we decide, ourselves, to change: “encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace.”  This is the phase and future we should seek, not a campaign of responsive rage—even when begun by rightful indignations.

                To “live in peace” is not reversion to an old status quo, but a deliberate commitment, which can only be made by each of us as individuals deciding to live and seek harmony with one another, even when met with challenges (as the world of this life will forever remain imperfect—for as long as it exists—as all men and women progress through life at their own rates and states of Enlightenment).  When challenges are encountered, might not the better nature of our own examples be the final piece to change another’s heart?  May not this be the purpose of our own tribulations?  Does not the power of the Holy Spirit work by and through ourselves upon the environments in which God positions us to be actors on His behalf?  

                “Live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.”  I believe we are nearer to this state than our world would lead us to believe.

                What else can we take from the message in our Missal for today? 

                We turn now to the Gospel.  Of all times, we are brought to perhaps the most referenced and powerful message in our New Testament: 

                “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

                Is the timing of this verse spoken today, in the scope of all present events, mere chance?  Or is there perhaps Divine Design to its appointed voicing for the purpose of reflection on our living present?

                Have we not all held witness to an unrighteous treatment and death?  Are we not exposed to the potential of two consequential courses: to tear our world apart, or elevate it to a Greater State?  Such State, is not one of government nor politics, but one of lived Spirit.  Will our deciding end be a response of passion, or a willing of Higher Spirit? 

                I believe there are elements of both good and darkness in our world.  I believe those of darkness play most often to passions and the immediacy of response.  Passions are easy to sense—have obvious, immediate, perhaps innate responses that only the deliberate interjection of will and reason may override—and for this, passions often predominate our driving recourses to wrongs that trigger justifiable emotive effects and actions.  Such responses, however, form a propagating cycle of self-sustainment by perceived grievance, reactive retribution, and then—like Love—that which is shown to another is returned, in time, to its Giver.  Such cycles only end when we decide upon a different course.

                How do we break the cycle? 

                We need a greater answer, one that is driven not by sensory in the immanent but by alignment to a greater, transcendent, desired state.  Such actions and answers defy the immediacy of the senses, which is wholly natural because such solutions are not seeking an answer for the immediate, but the achievement of a greater, eternal, condition.  Such answers require Spirit, acting on faith, often in deliberate defiance to the sensories of our immediate surroundings and conditions.  If the condition of this Greater State of social understanding (different than total unity, for one acknowledges an existence—and acceptance—of differences while the other demands no difference should exist) and love is ever to be achieved, we must first elevate the decision-making and spirit of our Will to an echelon for transcendent, not immanent, reward.  We must act in Faith. 

                Returning again to the Gospel, we read of the death of perhaps the most innocent being to ever walk this Earth.  Of all the spirits for which God could rightfully and justifiably prosecute vengeance against wrongful executioners and a complicit society, God decides different.  Counter to our own human perceptions of justice and rightful retribution, we receive another message entirely:

                “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” 

                If God does not desire to condemn, why do we?  Our wrath and judgment do not elevate us to a state of Gods but, instead, further lower us in spirit and state amongst the fallen.  Let us not seek retributions but, instead, become as God desires: Manifestors of our own Salvation. 

                Is this not a real and present opportunity in our living time?  If such is to be achieved, we must rise above our self-harming cycle of grievance and retribution and decide upon a different course: to act with faith, forgiveness; in goodwill, peace, hope, and love toward one another.  Our greater answer does not require aggravation of old wounds, exploitation of existing angers, nor the resuscitation of demons we may as willingly permit to die—and kill even faster through committed acts of love and fellowship. 

                Our greater answer requires a new beginning, a beginning with faith, hope, and love lived in acts—not words alone—toward all. 

                There is only one precondition for Love.  All that is required for Love is our willingness to be its Giver.  Love is an act, not an object.  Love cannot be commanded.  Love cannot be taken.  Love may only be given, and each and every one of us are owners of this choice.  Whether it is returned to us is not for us to decide, but I do believe that what we give away is returned to us in greater form—whether that is Love, or something else.  Only by the acts of our own giving will Love spread within our world. 

                Unlike the Kingdoms of Man, God blesses us all with the gift of freewill.  We are all blessed to believe and do with it as we will.  I will to Love.