We live in a fragmented world. Society all over is disintegrating at least in some way. Civilizations are in conflict. If we are to believe what Samuel Huntington wrote, then we have reason to be afraid, mortally afraid, much more than we ought to be worried about the global warming phenomenon that threatens a great meltdown of our polar ice caps.
We do not even have to go too far down the road to see that our society is disintegrating. We do not even see eye to eye on who should be leading this country. We never liked any president. We are neatly divided between issues. Not even our Bishops present a united front. Some are dancing paltsy waltsy with questionable figures, and some are downright inimical to certain high profile political bigwigs. Such a state of affairs is not a monopoly of our political system. In our parishes, in our communities, in our schools and apostolic ventures, there is a whole lot of intrigue, of subtle alliances and groupings, of cliques that do more harm than good. We are back to the Filipino culture of insecurity that I was talking about in the first day.
And yet, we claim we are a Eucharistic breed of men, favored like no other with the grace of being able to confect ordinary bread and transubstantiate it into the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord. We preside at reconciliation liturgies. We mediate between warring families, siblings, and groupings in and out of our regular turf. We talk endlessly about unity. We pray even unceasingly about it. We minister, indeed, to a broken world. We minister to a society – and to ourselves – for whom unity is still a distant dream, perhaps a pie in the sky, a process that not even God, by his allowing us to chart our destinies in our freedom, can do with dispatch, and at a pace we all would like to have.
Our prayer, like that of Christ’s, is still “Lord, that they may be one.” But the good Lord had a second portion to that prayer which we cannot ever hope even to get anywhere near to …”even as you and I, Father, are one.”
And this is where our reflection would bring us to. It leads us to the absolute foundation and basis of the unity we pray for, and that foundation is nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else but the Trinitarian God.
We priests are a spoiled lot. We generally get what we want. We speak and the whole retinue of parish staff gets into action. We ask and we receive. We preach and we expect compliance. We expect no less than obedience. In our pride, there is a tendency to rely solely on procedures, techniques, and tactics to get things moving. We think we are the Savior, even if the Church already had one, as Pio Laghi wisely cracked. We think unity could be had if only we made the right moves, embraced the latest group process from Wharton school of business, or the Kennedy School of Public Service.
But unity is first of all God’s work because first of all it is what God is. It is what God wants and it is what God does, ever so subtly, ever so slowly. His pace does not get beyond our pace, even if he could. And the reason is simple. He wants unity not despite us. He wants unity because of us. He wants unity for us. And he wants it done with us, not without us. This means, to paraphrase Forrest Gump’s wise momma, “The pray-er is, as the pray-er does.” Handsome is as handsome does. Unity happens when we work for it together … each one of us … all of us all together now … to get there.
To get there, we must work together. But we need to define what this working together really is all about.
I call it doing Eucharist. Eucharist is something we do. It is a verb. It comes from a deep need to be grateful. For gratefulness is what being Christian at bottom is. Louis Evely, back in my College days, wrote in one of his popular books, “If you have nothing to thank God for, there is nothing Christian in you.” But Eucharist is not something we do alone. It is something we do together.
It almost sounds strange, but we priests and religious are called to be Eucharistic men and women. But before we can be Eucharistic, we first need to be grateful people. When we get what we want, when we can command and commandeer people and get them to be doing things at our beck and call, when we feel entitled to receive, we cease to be grateful. People who get and grab are never grateful. They think it is their right to have things. But people who receive, reply with gratitude. To get is too violent. To receive is to be gracious and magnanimous with praise and thanks. Just look at how Mary prayed. Magnificat anima mea Dominum! For a whole slew of reasons … for whatever reason … come what may, happen what might, everything is seen as gift … everything is seen as grace.
Allow me to call your attention to what robs us men of the innate and natural capacity to be gracious recipients of gifts. It is inner violence. It is anger. Surprised? Yes. Nothing blocks our capacity to be grateful more than anger that clouds our minds and psyches from the good that we ought to rejoice in. Remember what I told you in one of my first talks? In formation we first need to define our humours, our angers, our sympathies, and antipathies before we can define who we are. Rosetti puts it more clearly: “The journey of Christian human formation is a journey out of anger into gratitude and joy.” All too often we talk, and rightly so, about our need to turn away from disvalues like materialism, consumerism, and the culture of death, as Rosetti points out. But he goes on to say that all too often again, we fail to include that which destroys our humanity so surely and so subtly and that is what anger and inner rage does to us. The forces of evil and Satan, the father of lies have all conspired to lead otherwise good men towards dysfunctional and catastrophic behavior patterns that affect so many people. Satan is very much active in the sin and sickness of anger that is allowed to grow, to rise in power above the shadows and dark recesses of denial and secretiveness.
Satan, as we know, loves to work under the cloak of deceit, secrecy, and suspicious silence. This is how inner rage attacks otherwise good men in our midst. We allow anger to fester. We allow it to increase. We cover it up with a perpetual smile and apparent good-naturedness. We refuse no request. We are available for anything at any time of day or night. We drown ourselves in work, all spiritualized in the garb of apostolic zeal and cura animarum. But we don’t say is what harms us – the seething resentment, the scalding anger that builds up like a dormant volcano that all of a sudden erupts and manifesting itself in terms of subtle and not-so-subtle rebellion, nonconforming behavior, bitter and sarcastic remarks against others, especially superiors, reading too much from otherwise innocent behavior and remarks from them, and that all too common Filipino tactic – avoidance and evasion, the cold shoulder treatment, not going for prayers with others, not going for meals together with others, etc. Satan just loves to work in the shadows.
I have to tell those superiors who may be in this difficult situation. You need to differentiate yourself in a healthy way. You need not blame yourselves if one or two or more of your confreres seem to have it against you. On many occasions, whilst you may be the object of anyone’s anger, you ought to be mature and differentiated enough to know that you are not necessarily its cause.
We need to become Eucharistic men. What exactly does this mean? Does this mean being pious and giving that pitiful, wan look during Mass? No. I mean digging deeper into oneself to see what is there in us that is not very Eucharistic. Where does all that inner rage come from? What is really the root cause of that anger? Becoming Eucharistic persons is exactly being like the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. They were bitter, sad, angry and disappointed. The one they were relying on, left them in the lurch. He was crucified. They were now orphaned by a leader of their hopes who would have socked it to the Romans. But he was dead.
I would like to think that before they could be Eucharistic, they first had to let go of all that anger and disappointment, and self-pity. They were open about it. They talked among themselves about it. They even spoke of their disappointment to their unknown guest who at some point began journeying with them. They were processing themselves and allowed themselves to be processed. By the time they sat down to supper, they were ready to be Eucharistic. They were ready to give thanks, because they were already grateful and joyful. And their joy was made full … when they realized the gift of presence of him who offered, of him who gave away, gave thanks, broke, and shared.
Eucharist is all about brokenness shared and admitted and accepted. It is all about receiving and giving thanks for what one has received. When we, as priests and religious, as brothers in the Lord recognize our brokenness and our woundedness and confess it to one another, we are ready to do Eucharist. We are ready to be men and women of communion. And the only reason for this is simply this … we also have first become men and women of compassion … compassion for ourselves, others, and all who, like us, are journeying in pain.
I end with a beautiful one-liner from Catherine Dougherty … “Love and joy are fruit of faith, sacrifice, and pain.”
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