So I have a piece over at the Catholic Standard this week from the experience of my son’s first cross country race of the season. He ran his second today. This evening, he signed a card for his sister for her birthday. As I looked at his note, I could make out, “Happy Birthday,” and “I love you.” and I knew she would treasure his thoughts.
But it’s not all roses and tear jerking moments. He stays up to three listening to music on Alexa and trashes his room like some seventeen year old boys do. I’ve found a shocking number of pilfered soda cans in his trashcan when I made a morning patrol. Everyone, including those who are disabled, who have the capacity to inspire grace in others, is still both and. I got an email from his teacher about using his communication device to call another student names. The difficulties of growing up still exist, though sometimes submerged beneath the struggle of being itself.
What people like Paul teach us, is the ongoing miracle of being, of being people that God loves despite all our flaws, both known to others, and known only to Him. It is what every person teaches, that each person, no matter how sinful, no matter how unpleasant or rude or selfish or prideful or greedy or lusty or envious or wrathful, no matter how destructive to others and the world at large, is beloved. God loves that individual soul with everything, because God can do no less than infinite ever.
What that startling reality should do, is shake us to our obligations to God, which are for everything, for all things, and that nothing we do is irrelevant or ignored. Our sins are forgiven, through the sacraments, through restoration, through seeking forgiveness, but not without our active willed participation. God does not grant a blank check. You do what you want. I love you so it’s okay. God grants the unknown fullness of time we’ve been given, to seek Him, to know Him, to love Him, and to love others and all of creation, as the gifts they are.
Right now, a lot of us are struggling with having love for our neighbor, which means, we’re struggling with loving God’s will, both for them and ourselves. It also means, God wants to work through us, to show the world something better than it keeps allowing, accepting, and doing.
How do we begin?
By recognizing we cannot be neutral in our lives, morally or physically or socially. We cannot be lukewarm.
The soul of a People dies a little every time we ignore injustice.
Every time.
The soul of a Nation becomes less what it should be whenever a who becomes more important than law, than the community, than freedoms.
But if we want better, we’re going to have to be active participants in both demanding it and being it.
Time and policies and actions seem to be coming so rapid fire, it can seem that we are powerless to stop anything or do anything, but that is incorrect. We are only powerless if we cede our voices for the false security of hoping we will pass by unnoticed. Those who suffer by our silence notice, and those who benefit from our silence notice as well.
So how do we reclaim both our courage and the authority to be a people governed by laws, not fiats, and by a system, rather than a party, or a person? We return to exercising our rights, to speak, to protest, to assemble, to worship, to associate, and likewise, we demand that the institutions that were designed to act as checks and balances to each other, fulfill the obligations for which they were created, through the people who have chosen to be there.
Say no. Say no to raids. No to petty lawsuits and investigations designed to bully some, so as to intimidate others. Say no to the endless demands. Be speakers of truth, even to power.
Engage in discussion of ideas, online and in real life.
Walk for those who are afraid to walk. Speak for those who fear speech will cost them their livelihoods or worse, their families. Call our representatives to demand they be leaders and statesmen. Call to demand they be brave. Speak out against the systemic eroding of due process, of civil liberties, of respect for the balance of power, and for the rule of law. Engage in the arena of ideas online and in real life, and engage your neighbor, to strengthen communities and the bonds that should unite us, love of true peace, true justice, kindness and community.
What is being done in our name, is tacitly allowed by our silence. What is being done in our name, will be hung around our necks like milstones if we remain still.
Demand our press, our military, our elected officials and public servants on every level be people of integrity, who do not view their positions of power, authority or trust, as anything less than a sacred duty, and not a means to an end to attack, control or intimidate anyone and everyone who opposes
whatever the latest whim is.
Refuse to be intimidated. These actions by our government, both in international waters and at home, both by what is done and what is not done, are immoral. They take people from families. They imprisson and remove without judge, jury or due process, only force. This is wrong and we all know it. So we must act. Surely, these people who are our neighbors, deserve a bigger fight, a greater outrage than the removal of a celebrity from a night talk show.
Write letters to the papers, write to your friends, be unflinchingly true. Be reminders of who we have been, not simply a different flavor of what we are in danger of becoming. Demand better by being better. Demand it of everyone, and for everyone.
Finally, and this is not in contradiction of the high expectations we must hold for our country, we as a nation must be bigger hearted than those we oppose. We cannot defeat injustice by being unjust. Likewise, we cannot fight evil by being worse. Nor can we be silent. Despair is a luxury we cannot afford if we want our country to not become remade in his image. If we do not want a government of the people, by the people, for the people, to vanish from the Earth, we must speak up for it and be it.
We must be willing to run the good race, even if we come in last.
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