Bao dung

Dù nó xúc phạm đến anh một ngày đến bảy lần… thì anh cũng phải tha cho nó (Lc 17,4)

The Authority of Compassion
The Church often wounds us deeply. People with religious authority often wound us by their words, attitudes, and demands. Precisely because our religion brings us in touch with the questions of life and death, our religious sensibilities can get hurt most easily. Ministers and priests seldom fully realize how a critical remark, a gesture of rejection, or an act of impatience can be remembered for life by those to whom it is directed.
There is such an enormous hunger for meaning in life, for comfort and consolation, for forgiveness and reconciliation, for restoration and healing, that anyone who has any authority in the Church should constantly be reminded that the best word to characterize religious authority is compassion. Let's keep looking at Jesus whose authority was expressed in compassion.

Hơn

"Thầy bảo thật anh em: bà goá nghèo này đã bỏ vào thùng nhiều hơn ai hết (Mc 12, 43)

Going to the Margins of the Church
Those who are marginal in the world are central in the Church, and that is how it is supposed to be! Thus we are called as members of the Church to keep going to the margins of our society. The homeless, the starving, parentless children, people with AIDS, our emotionally disturbed brothers and sisters - they require our first attention.
We can trust that when we reach out with all our energy to the margins of our society we will discover that petty disagreements, fruitless debates, and paralysing rivalries will recede and gradually vanish. The Church will always be renewed when our attention shifts from ourselves to those who need our care. The blessing of Jesus always comes to us through the poor. The most remarkable experience of those who work with the poor is that, in the end, the poor give more than they receive. They give food to us. (Nouwen G)

Nghèo

Ai trung tín trong việc rất nhỏ, thì cũng trung tín trong việc lớn; ai bất lương trong việc rất nhỏ, thì cũng bất lương trong việc lớn. Anh em không thể vừa làm tôi Thiên Chúa, vừa làm tôi Tiền Của được. (Lc 16,10.13)

Becoming the Church of the Poor 
When we claim our own poverty and connect our poverty with the poverty of our brothers and sisters, we become the Church of the poor, which is the Church of Jesus.
Solidarity is essential for the Church of the poor . Both pain and joy must be shared. As one body we will experience deeply one another's agonies as well as one another's ecstasies. As Paul says: "If one part is hurt, all the parts share its pain. And if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy" (1 Corinthians 12:26).
Often we might prefer not to be part of the body because it makes us feel the pain of others so intensely. Every time we love others deeply we feel their pain deeply. However, joy is hidden in the pain. When we share the pain we also will share the joy.

Who Are the Poor?
The poor are the center of the Church. But who are the poor? At first we might think of people who are not like us: people who live in slums, people who go to soup kitchens, people who sleep on the streets, people in prisons, mental hospitals, and nursing homes. But the poor can be very close. They can be in our own families, churches or workplaces. Even closer, the poor can be ourselves, who feel unloved, rejected, ignored, or abused.
It is precisely when we see and experience poverty - whether far away, close by, or in our own hearts - that we need to become the Church; that is, hold hands as brothers and sisters, confess our own brokenness and need, forgive one another, heal one another's wounds, and gather around the table of Jesus for the breaking of the bread. Thus, as the poor we recognise Jesus, who became poor for us.

Đền thờ

Các ông cứ phá huỷ Đền Thờ này đi; nội ba ngày, tôi sẽ xây dựng lại (Ga 2,19)

Meeting Christ in the Church
Loving the Church does not require romantic emotions. It requires the will to see the living Christ among his people and to love them as we want to love Christ himself. This is true not only for the "little" people - the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten - but also for the "big" people who exercise authority in the Church.
To love the Church means to be willing to meet Jesus wherever we go in the Church. This love doesn't mean agreeing with or approving of everyone's ideas or behavior. On the contrary, it can call us to confront those who hide Christ from us. But whether we confront or affirm, criticize or praise, we can only become fruitful when our words and actions come from hearts that love the Church. (Nouwen G)

Tha thứ

Giữa triều thần Thiên Chúa, ai nấy sẽ vui mừng vì một người tội lỗi ăn năn sám hối (Lc 15,10)

Forgiving the Church
When we have been wounded by the Church, our temptation is to reject it. But when we reject the Church it becomes very hard for us to keep in touch with the living Christ. 
When we say, "I love Jesus, but I hate the Church," we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the Church seldom asks us for forgiveness, at least not officially. But the Church as an often fallible human organization needs our forgiveness, while the Church as the living Christ among us continues to offer us forgiveness.
It is important to think about the Church not as "over there" but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer. (Nouwen G)


Woe to the Republic!
Over at HotAir, they're talking about what the election means. Ed Morrissey mentions last night proved 2010 was the anomoly, that 2008 and 2012 represent the new norm, realignment to the Left. But I don’t see this as a realignment towards the Left. I think it is a realignment AWAY from the Right. I think Americans are relatively sane in regards to big government. But they simply don’t trust Republicans and are even frightened of them.
While the Democrats use it as an excuse to pretend their Leftist agenda is awesome despite public disapproval, I think it is very true for the GOP. I think the Republicans have a messaging problem.
Some more thoughts:
Romney is a great guy and I think he would have been a good president. But he played right into voters’ fears by being a rich white guy and he didn't do enough to transcend that stereotype.
The President went small in the campaign. Romney went big. But not big enough. In retrospect, Romney should have made this election not about the economy, but a referendum on the Future. Right or Left? Small government or Big government? Fiscal sanity or Fiscal disaster?
Romney should have made it clear that a vote for the President was a vote to embrace and cement the new norm of greater entitlement and regulation of society, which America can no longer afford.
To put it simply, Romney failed to message how high the stakes were in the election. Every nation gets the government it deserves.

-- Joseph de Maistre, Lettres et Opuscules

Thuộc về ai?

Ai trong anh em muốn xây một cây tháp, mà trước tiên lại không ngồi xuống tính toán phí tổn, xem mình có đủ để hoàn thành không? (Lc 14,28)

Being in the Church, Not of It 
Often we hear the remark that we have to live in the world without being of the world. But it may be more difficult to be in the Church without being of the Church. 
Being of the Church means being so preoccupied by and involved in the many ecclesial affairs and clerical "ins and outs" that we are no longer focused on Jesus. The Church then blinds us from what we came to see and deafens us to what we came to hear. 
Still, it is in the Church that Christ dwells, invites us to his table, and speaks to us words of eternal love. 
Being in the Church without being of it is a great spiritual challenge.

BREAD, CIRCUSES AND THE WAR ON THE UNBORN
The US Presidential Elections in an Historical Context
By Elizabeth Lev

As we enter into the final days of the presidential election in the United States, the constant mantra from the entertainment industry for the reelection of President Barack Obama has been the promotion of “reproductive rights.” Starlets and aging glamour queens have come out of the woodwork to tout the importance of Planned Parenthood (the world’s largest abortion provider), the necessity of taxpayer-funded contraception (including abortifacients and sterilization), and the supposed “war on women” of the Republican party.
In a country faced with real terrorist threats (including the recent murder of US ambassador Chris Stevens), a severe economic crisis and a natural disaster in the form of hurricane Sandy, this fixation on sex and entertainment is bizarre—yet, for students of history, strangely familiar. A similar campaign was waged by Emperor Vespasian in 70 AD, when he sought to distract the Romans from fire, ruin and invasion with the games of the Coliseum.
The Coliseum, more precisely known as the Flavian Amphitheater, is probably the best known monument from Ancient Rome. Millions of people flock to its skeletal remains every year, delighting in the tales of the gladiators, marveling at its size, and posing for photographs with costumed Roman soldiers in the arena of death. The Flavian amphitheater, however, much like the colossal remains of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, would be much less pleasant if it were still active today. The building should not only serve to delight, but also to teach.
The Coliseum was built during a very precarious era for the Empire. Nero had proved himself not only unworthy of his exalted title of “Augustus,” but had left the city depleted of men and money after the great fire of Rome. His Golden House parked in the middle of Rome’s prime real estate had been the final straw for an exasperated population, which rioted and forced the emperor out of the city, where he ultimately killed himself.
Thus the next Emperor, Vespasian, inherited an angry Empire. Businesses had been lost, life savings dissipated and many lives gone. It would be very difficult indeed to convince the Romans that the Empire was a better solution than the recently extinct Republic. Vespasian, whose greatest gift seems to have been an ability to appear as a “people’s emperor” (history records many down-to-earth quips that still bring a smile today), found a way to quell the rising dissatisfaction: the entertainment industry.
This was not entirely original with him. The Roman Republic had outlawed theaters, claiming they were breeding grounds for rebellion, which captivated the idle with tragic stories designed to incite dissent. Pompey the Great circumvented this law in 52BC, becoming the darling of the people, and Julius Caesar, not one to lose an advantage, quickly built another theater, which he never lived to see completed. The successful demagoguery of the proto-Emperors was not lost on Vespasian, who knew that, more than appealing to piety or philanthropy (two qualities highly prized by the Romans) the quickest way to make the populace succumb to his will was to give them entertainments, which, in the Empire, were called “munera” or gifts. Juvenal, a Roman poet who witnessed the first years of the Coliseum, saw clearly the teetering moral foundations of the Empire. In Satire X, he laments, “The public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things----Bread and Games!”
This was the Rome of Vespasian, a people turned inward to its own desires, ignoring the good of the nation and its nobler pursuits, and seeking only to be fed and amused. In this world, a gladiator could rise to sway the populace as did Spartacus, whose prowess in the arena was equated with the ability to lead the polity. Our modern age does not throw condemned criminals and prisoners of war into the ring to die for our amusement, although, thanks to cinema and video games, this human appetite is still fully appeased.
Our era, like the Romans, looks to sex for its ultimate entertainment, the unfettered ability to take pleasure however and whenever we like. Seemingly more pacific than the murders in the arena, rampant sexuality encourages people to exploit each other for amusement, under the guise that this is a harmless pastime as long as both are consenting. The philosopher Seneca, watching the games even before the age of the Coliseum, already understoodhow a little “harmless entertainment” would transform his people. He wrote,
“There is nothing so ruinous to good character as to idle away one's time at some spectacle. Vices have a way of creeping in because of the feeling of pleasure that it brings. Why do you think that I say that I personally return from shows greedier, more ambitious and more given to luxury?”
Pope Benedict XVI has identified the obsession with sexuality as a form of escapism similar to drugs. In his book “Light of the World,” while speaking of sex tourism and drug addiction, the Holy Father noted that the West feels a need for these “drugs” as it has “A craving for happiness has developed that cannot content itself with things as they are…. The destructive processes at work in that are extraordinary and are born from the arrogance and the boredom and the false freedom of the Western world.” A pagan philosopher and a Catholic theologian singing in harmony?
But are these modern games victimless? Does really no one get hurt? In the arena, the Romans at least threw to the amusements of the people condemned criminals, men who had fought against the empire or disobeyed its most serious laws. In the eyes of the Roman people, these people had lost their status as human beings by defying the might and order of the Empire.
Today the victims that are sacrificed for the pleasures of the citizens are wholly innocent: the unborn. As much as we would like to separate them, sex and human life are still intertwined. But the savage agenda of “reproductive rights,” treats the unborn like the condemned criminal of Rome--as less than human, an unwanted by-product of bedroom entertainments. Unlimited abortion and contraception including abortifacients, paid for by every American taxpayer, wages war on these innocent lives. In Vespasian’s amphitheater, the games were free, a gift of the military spoils of a generous emperor, but in the abortion arena, every American, working to raise a family, will be paying for the emperor’s sinister pandering
There are, of course, many cases where abortion and contraception are resorted to out of hardship, violence and very difficult situations, but Planned Parenthood did not become a 4 billion dollar a year industry by catering to women who are victims of rape and incest. The abortion business has given 12 million dollars to the Obama campaign and Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, has taken a leave of absence to campaign full time for the incumbent.
When those promoting the right to abortion are the same who make sexually provocative entertainments, it is not rape victims they are championing. The Playboy Foundation’s status as major donor to Planned Parenthood is not motivated by concern for victims of rape and incest, but rather seeks to snuff out the unwanted consequences of the freewheeling lifestyle it promotes. A television ad likening voting for the first time to losing one’s virginity, seems par for the course for these people, attempting to titillate young people into the voting booths.
Sadly, among the starlets like Scarlett Johansson and Eva Longoria, Meryl Streep has also declared her belief that the crusade to de-fund Planned Parenthood and place legal limits on abortion amounts to a “War on Women.” She stands like a modern Spartacus, ready to rally others to an ill-conceived and ill-fated quest. Dozens of actors and actresses have spoken out in support of the radically permissive abortion stance of the present administration.
The Romans and Greeks, however, as seduced as they were by the games, were never foolish enough to believe the words of an actor. The Greek word for actor “hypokrites" was understood, at least by the Greek speaking authors of the New Testament, to mean one who says one thing and does another. Actors are paid to make you believe they are aliens or angels, presidents or prostitutes. Indeed, many of our modern “hypokrites" play the noble artist among their fans Stateside, but hawk toothpaste and soft drinks in advertisements on the other side of the globe. Are these the people who should guide Americans in the decisions that will affect their children and their grandchildren?
In the ancient world, it was scholars and philosophers who stood up to decry the folly of a regime that would manipulate its people through bread and circuses. In our own Brave New World, such students of reason are needed more than ever.
* * *
Elizabeth Lev teaches Christian art and architecture at Duquesne University's Italian campus and University of St. Thomas' Catholic Studies program. Her new book, The Tigress of Forlì: Renaissance Italy's Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de' Medici" was published by Harcourt, Mifflin Houghton Press Fall 2012. She can be reached at lizlev@zenit.org