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On the Lord’s Team! Sports as an image of the Christian Life

St. Paul used the image of an athlete to describe the Christian life in Several places. Consider this one:

Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified. ( 1 Cor. 9:25-27)

Clearly there are many virtues necessary to the athlete that are also of great necessity to the Christian:

  • Discipline – The athlete must carefully and persistently train the body. Without a clear and repetitive discipline, the sport will not be mastered, and neither will the body have proper stamina, strength and coordination. Athletes train every day and work to perfect their mastery of the sport. So too must Christians undertake a clear discipline, and persistently train in the ways of faith through prayer, scripture, sacraments, moral virtue and self mastery. The Christian must practice every day.
  • Persistence – The Athlete must follow discipline all the time, not just occasionally. To fail in persistent training not only jeopardizes good performance, but it risks injury. So too for the Christian. We cannot expect much progress with an on-again, off-again regimen. Without a persistent good habit of prayer, scripture, sacraments and practicing of moral virtue the Christian not only stunts progress but also risks injury (sin).
  • Rules – Every sport has rules that must be accepted and followed. The athlete is not free to reinvent the game. They must play by the rules or risk exclusion and disqualification. S0 too the Christians must play by the rules set by God. If we are going to be on the winning team and secure the victory, we have to abide by the rules. To refuse this, is to risk being disqualified. We are not free to reinvent Christianity as so many try to do today. There is only one playing field and one game. Follow the rules or risk being ejected.
  • Alert for Injury – A good athlete listens carefully to his or her body and any signs of injury. If injury is detected they see the team doctor quickly and take measures to heal as quickly as possible. Further they avoid injury by learning proper form, stretching etc. So too for the Christian. We must monitor ourselves for injury and upon discovery of even minor injury, we should consult our team physician, the priest, and get on the mend quickly. Further we should avoid injury by learning proper Christian form (moral life) and avoiding what ever leads us to sin (a kind of stretching to avoid moral injury).
  • Teamwork – Many sports involve learning to work together for the goal. Athletes cannot merely seek glory for themselves, they must have the good of the whole team in mind. They must learn to work with others toward the common good and overcome any idiosyncrasies or selfishness that hinders the common goal. So too Christians must strive to overcome petty and selfish egotism and work for the common good, learning to appreciate the gifts of others. The team is stronger than the individual alone. Life is about more then just me. When others are glorified, so am I, if I am on the same winning team.

Well, you get the point. Why not add a few of your own thoughts on how sports is a good analogy for the Christian life?


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Both Head and Heart

It’s one thing to read about what God is like; it’s another thing altogether to experience who God is. In a nutshell, this message is at the heart of the teaching of the saint we honor today: St. Bonaventure.

Bonaventure was a Franciscan, not least because he was healed of a childhood illness through the personal intercession of St. Francis. Bonaventure would later write the famous Life of St. Francis, and he served as the Minister General of the Franciscan order.

Bonaventure was also a great scholar. Alongside his colleague St. Thomas Aquinas, he was a thirteenth century professor of Theology at the University of Paris. Because of his great scholarship, he is recognized today as a Doctor of the Church. On account of his virtue, he is celebrated today as a saint.

As he was both learned and holy, Bonaventure was well aware that knowing God is more important than knowing about him. He wrote, “…seek (your) answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research.”

The God whom Bonaventure calls us to seek is a God of love. Bonaventure speculates that even if humankind had never sinned, God would still have become one of us in Jesus, because God loves us so much that he always has wished to live among us as one of us. Nevertheless, Jesus had to die for our sins on the cross, which Bonaventure tells us to reflect upon “full of faith, hope, and charity, devoted, full of wonder and joy, marked by gratitude, and open to praise and jubilation.”

Bonaventure the scholar would never discourage us from seeking Jesus with our head. But Bonaventure the saint challenges us to seek Jesus, most of all, with our heart.

Photo Credit: echiner1 via Creative Commons

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The worldliness of the Church

I had the great fortune of being in Rome for the past ten days, attending a colloquium and doing some lecturing on the mission and vocation of the laity. The events brought together theologians, canon lawyers, diocesan directors and ecumenists to reflect on the role of the laity in church and society since the Second Vatican Council.  In my own preparation I came across a phrase from Hans Urs von Balthasar who described the mission of the laity as “turning the face of the church toward the world.” He went on to say that the laity reveal “the worldliness of the church.”

 Is this a good thing?

My first thought was “Is this a good thing?” We often hear the church accused of being too worldly—too concerned about money and material things. On the other hand, we have been trained to think of the church as all about the sacred and the world as all about the secular. Certainly, while walking the streets of Rome you see the sacred and secular living side by side. The vocation of the laity is to move the church from the side into the middle! The laity take the church to places that priests cannot; to boardrooms and bedrooms to breakfast tables and backyards.

A Church committed to the World

Rather than separating the secular and sacred, rather than thinking of the church as a refuge from the world or as an alternate existence, the Council Fathers pledged that the hopes and fears of the world will be the very hopes and fears of the church. We Catholics see the world as full of great ways to experience the love of God and share the love of God. We don’t see the world has hopeless and sit waiting for the kingdom to come. We don’t see people who don’t realize they’ve been given the gift of faith and decide we should simply ignore them. We don’t think that nothing good can possibly come from the marketplace. What we do see is a world that is good and can be made great by the power of the Gospel.

What the Fathers at the Council did realize was that the church can’t do this without the laity. The particular mission of the laity is secular, not in opposition to the sacred but rather living the sacred in the midst of the secular and thereby making the ordinary holy.  Don’t we see people whose lives can be transformed by the Gospel and do we decide to share it with them? Haven’t we all seen a situation at work that can be solved or made better with the application of Gospel principles even if we never mention that is where we learned them? Haven’t we found ourselves thinking if only my friend would talk to a priest, he or she would feel so much better and see a way through this situation? Do we offer to make the introduction to the priest?

As lay women and men we need to recognize the power we have to make holy the ordinary things of life by infusing them with the spirit of God. The Church is depending on us to take it to the world.

If you are interested in learning more, my friend and colleague, Aurelie Hagstrom, who is chairperson of the theology department at Providence College wrote a book called  The Emerging Laity in which she explores the work of the Second Vatican Council in this area.

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On Overcoming the Sin of Human Respect through the Fear of the Lord

At one level “human respect” seems a good thing. After all we ought to respect, honor and appreciate one another. What then is meant by the “sin of human respect?” At its core, the sin of human respect is that sin wherein we fear man more than God; where we more concerned with what people think of us and what we do, than what God thinks. This is an unholy fear, a sinful fear which is at the root of a lot of sins we commit as well as of many sins of omission.

Consider some examples:

  1. A man goes up to a group of other men who are gossiping and also speaking inappropriately about certain women in the office. Perhaps he knows that their disparaging comments about the boss are unfair or even untrue. He knows too that speaking of the women in the office using crude sexual imagery and lustful references is wrong. But, because he has walked up to this group and wants to “fit in” he joins the conversation as contributes to what he knows is wrong. He laughs at off color jokes and makes no attempt to steer the conversation in more appropriate directions. He does this because he fears rejection and is more more anxious as to what his co-workers think of him than what God thinks. He fears man more than God. That God is displeased with his actions is less of a fear and grief than that any of these men should be displeased.
  2. A young woman knows that sex before marriage is wrong and that this displeases God. However, she has dated a number of men now and has slept with most of them. She does this partly because she fears rejection. Perhaps if she does not give way to the desires of the young men she dates they will reject her and she will be alone. She thinks that a woman “has to do this” in order to be popular and desirable. She fears man more than God. What human beings think is more important to her than what God thinks. She may well minimize the displeasure of God by saying. “Oh well, God understands” but at the same time she maximizes possible displeasure of weak and fallible human beings by thinking that displeasing them would lead to catastrophe. She respects, that is, fears man more than God.
  3. A pastor of a parish has a mandate from God and the Church to preach the whole counsel of God. But over the years he has struggled to preach the hard things. After all teaching on things like abortion, fornication, divorce, contraception, homosexuality, euthanasia, Capital Punishment, and so forth, causes some people to be upset. He fears this anger, he fears offending people, he fears being misunderstood. Once, when he spoke about abortion, (because the Bishop said he had to) three parishioners came up to him and told him he should not bring politics into the pulpit. Once, early in his priesthood, he had mentioned divorce since the gospel was about that. A woman came up to him after Mass and said that she was divorced and felt hurt and “excluded” by his mentioning that divorce was problematic. Experiences like these have led the priest to “play it safe.” He always finds joke to start the homily and people love it (him). He chooses to preach only in abstractions and generalities. It is enough to exhort people to be a little more kind, a little more generous, but specificity he avoids. He does this because he fears man more than God. That God might be displeased that his people are not hearing the truth on the important moral issues of the day, or receiving proper instruction in the disciplines of discipleship is a vague and distant fear to this priest. But one person raising an eyebrow at what he says is enough to ruin his whole week. Thus he goes silent as a prophet and becomes a people-pleaser instead. He respects, he fears man more than God. This is the sin of human respect.
  4. A parent knows somehow that she is to raise her children in the fear of the Lord and train them in godly ways. But Oh, the protests when she tells them to clean their room or to go to bed, or to do their homework. It is just such a hassle to endure their anger and disappointment. Then too she remembers how stern her parents were and how she had vowed she would be nicer to her children. So, little by little, she lets her authority erode and the kids more often get their way. Her husband too is not a strong disciplinarian and he too wants to be thought of as a “cool” dad by his kids and his kids’ friends. Thus, God’s insistence on prayer, discipline and respect for elders, gives way to what the kids want. The oldest, a teenager, doesn’t even want to go to Church any more. But after all, “You can’t force religion on kids” they think. Here too, the parents fear their children more than God. They have greater respect for their children than for God.

So here are some examples of the “Sin of Human Respect.” This sin runs very deep in our wounded nature and, as we have seen, causes many other sins. Many people are desperate for attention, respect, acceptance and approval from human beings. Many of these same individuals, even the religiously observant, struggle to be nearly as concerned with what God thinks, or if He approves.

God has a simple solution to this: that we should fear Him and thus not fear anyone else. There is an old saying, “If I kneel before God I can stand before any man.” It makes sense that it is a lot easier to fear (respect) one, than many. Hence, the more we learn to fear (respect) God, the less concerned we become with what others think. Now, to be sure this is not an invitation to become a sociopath who cares not one whit what others think. We are to remain polite, groom ourselves, and not intentionally pick fights. But in the end we are instructed by the Lord to be freed of all the fearful trepidation of what others think.

To say this is a simple solution is a bit of an intellectualism to be sure. It is not easy to extract ourselves from this very deep drive of human respect. In fact it takes a life time. But the first step to any healing is to admit we may have a problem and begin to see it for what it is, understand its moves, and let the Lord steadily free us.

Perhaps some scripture quotes that address various aspects of this problem will be a fitting conclusion to this reflection

  1. Through the fear of the LORD a man avoids evil. (Prov 16:6)
  2. Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the LORD. (Prov 23:17)
  3. Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil. (Prov 15:16)
  4. The fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” (Ex 20:20)
  5. You alone are to be feared O Lord (Psalm 76:7)
  6. God is more awesome than all who surround him. (Psalm 89:7)
  7. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me. I will not fear the tens of thousands drawn up against me on every side. (Psalm 3:4-5)
  8. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. (Jer 32:39)
  9. The Pharisees came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.” (Mark 12:14)
  10. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets (Luke 6:26)
  11. If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. (Luke 9:26)
  12. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna (Matt 10:28).
  13. If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you(Jn 15:18-19)
  14. It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal; I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord. (1 Cor 4:3)
  15. From now on, let no one make troubles for me; for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body. (Gal 6:17)
  16. We know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience (2 Cor 5:11).

In this video Fr. Frank Pavonne exhorts us to risk all as prophets of God and not to fear any one or anything more than God.

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Lily of the Mohawks

Conversion often comes at a price- a reality that our Lord made quite clear in today’s gospel. He warned that following him would break up entire families. “One’s enemies will be those of his own household,” he said.

This is as true today as it was in Jesus’ day, especially in those places where becoming Christian is understood as rejecting one’s cultural heritage, as is experienced by converts in predominantly Muslim or Hindu lands. In our society, converts might be thought of as crazy; in other societies, converts can be thought of as almost criminal.

This was the experience of Blessed Kateri, whose memorial we celebrate today. We call her the “Lily of the Mohawks,” but her uncle and adoptive father, a seventeenth century Mohawk chief, did not think of her in such glowing terms. When she became a Catholic with the help of French missionaries, her family treated her as a slave, and even denied her food on Sundays, since she refused to work on the Sabbath. Ultimately, her life became endangered, and she was forced to flee to a Catholic community some 200 miles away, where she remained the rest of her short life.

Blessed Kateri’s witness can remind all of us that we need to place allegiance to Christ above anything else that may lay claim to us, and regardless of what the cost may be. As she herself said: “I am not my own. I have given myself to Jesus.”

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/nab/071411.shtml

Photo Credit: northern green pixie via Creative Commons

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How Can the Saints Hear Us? Because God is Able!

A common Evangelical protest against the Catholic practice of praying and interacting with the saints is that they “can’t hear us.” Those who disbelieve our practice often quote 1 Kings 8:39 which says, for you alone (O Lord) know the hearts of all men. Hence, according to this quote Saints, who are not God, cannot know our thoughts unless we speak them aloud.

This means, we must therefore speak them aloud. And this in turn ridiculed, or at least dismissed, by many Evangelicals who consider it absurd to think a saint way up in heaven would have adequate hearing to perceive us, way down here on earth talking to them. Further, even if they could hear us, how could they distinguish thousands or millions of people talking to them all at once? And so on, with these sorts of objections. To be fair, not every Evangelical shares all these objections nor do they always attempt to ridicule our practice. But objections and attitudes like this  are common enough to merit response.

The straight answer to the objections that saints cannot know our prayers due to lack of hearing, or inability to mind read, is set aside by Scripture itself which does speak of them as interacting with our prayers. More of this in a moment.

But some attention should also be paid to the highly naturalistic notions held by our critics, of the saints in heaven. To simply presume they “hear” in same way we do here on earth, or that their minds are operative in same way that ours are, or that they even experience time in the same serial way we do, are all highly questionable premises.

To begin with, the saints, through their more perfect union with Christ, ought not be presumed to experience their human faculties in exactly the same way as here on earth. Obviously their bodies have not yet risen, and hence they do not “hear” in the same manner as we do who still have bodies. Neither are their minds mediated through the physical brain as our is. Even when the trumpet shall sound and the bodies of the saints be restored to them, we need to understand that their humanity, body and soul, will be a glorified humanity. While we do not know all the aspects of a glorified humanity we will surely not have the forgetful and slow minds we have now. Neither ought we presume that our hearing will be limited as it is now.

So, to be clear, we ought not merely presume that the saints in heaven, even now, experience all the limits we do. They are caught up in Christ, and bound to Him more intimately and perfectly.

Secondly, the saints do not likely experience time like we do. Heaven is called, among other things in Scripture “eternity” or “eternal life.” Now eternity does not refer merely to the length of time or life, but also to the fulness of it. The fulness of time includes past, present and future, as one thing, in one moment. While we cannot be sure if the saints experience the “comprehensive now” as God does, we ought not presume that they experience time merely as we do either. Heaven is quite surely outside our earthly experience of time.

Hence, our understanding of heaven ought to include a mystical dimension and it is wrong to simply project our currently broken and fallen human condition on to the Saints in heaven or to presume them inside time exactly as we are.

Jesus rebukes the minimalists of his day – Regarding this tendency to make heavenly realities look either silly or untenable by projecting earthly categories there, Jesus had to rebuke the Sadducees of his day. They attempted to make heaven (which they rejected as a reality) look silly by projecting an earthly marriage scenario there of a woman who had seven husbands. Jesus said to them “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven (Mk 12:24-25). Thus, heaven is not like earth, and should not be reduced to it.  Nor are the souls in heaven presumed to be exactly the same as they are now.

Hence, to presume that Saints can hear us is not outlandish, for they are in Christ, and they are perfectly in communion with him in heaven. It is obviously Christ himself, then, who fosters our union with the Saints and their ability to remain in communion with us. For there is only one Body of Christ, and all the members are untied by the Head, who is Christ.

Now that the Saints do interact with us and present our prayers to God is stated in the Book of Revelation:

[T]he twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Rev 5:8)

Later we also see that the angels also collect the prayers of the saints:

Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne (Rev 8:3).

“Saints” here is used in the common first Century biblical sense as meaning those on earth who have accepted Christ (cf Eph 1:1; Phil 1:1; 2 Cor 9:1; Phil 1:5; Rom 16:2 and many,many more), not merely in the modern Catholic sense as only the canonized saints in heaven.

And thus, the image and teaching here is that the Holy Ones in heaven collect the prayers of the saints on earth and present them to God, like incense.

That these prayers have dramatic effects is illustrated in the verses that follow in Rev 8:

The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. (Rev 8:4-5)

There follow seven trumpet blasts with confer God’s judgment and justice.

So the saints in heaven do hear us, they do collect our prayers and present them God and their intercession has powerful effects, the text from 1 Kings above, not withstanding.

Those who merely deny this based on some human notion of implausibility I would argue come under the Lord’s judgement: Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? (Mk 12:24). For though it may seem implausible to human minds, our God is able.  And he reveals in Scripture that he not only able to empower the heavenly saints and angels in this regard, he is also most willing.

Here is a very good and brief video on this by Tim Staples

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Astronauts, Firemen, Librarians, and Teenagers

When my son Charlie was 3, he said to me: “Daddy, when I grow up, I’m going to be an astronaut, a fireman, a librarian, and a teenager! For him to have said this is pretty normal. Most children, even though they enjoy being kids, sincerely look forward to growing up.

I think this childlike desire to grow up can help us understand Jesus’ words in today’s gospel. If you recall, Jesus said that God doesn’t reveal himself to “the wise and the learned”- people who think they have it all figured out, who in their mind can see no need to grow. Instead, our Lord continued, it is to the childlike that God is revealed- those who recognize their need to “grow up,” so to speak, in God’s grace.

This should present a challenge to us. Maybe today we need to examine ourselves and ask: Do I recognize my need to grow? Do I really want to grow? What should I do in order to grow? And then we should look forward with excitement to what we’ll become when we do “grow up”- not a fireman, not an astronaut, certainly not a teenager- but a saint, completely refashioned into the image of Christ.

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/nab/071311.shtml

Photo Credit: ceemarie via Creative Commons

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We are Not Born Hating Anyone: Asking For the Grace to Tear Up "The Memo"

At the bottom of this post is a video of a large dog and a small cat who apparently never got the memo that they are supposed to fear and hate each other. As the video makes clear, they are bosom buddies who love to romp, play, wrestle and even snuggle. How unlikely, and yet, there it is before our eyes.

While the interactions between animals are mysterious and not to be compared with human relationships, and I can’t help thinking of humanity as I look at these animals. What would things be like if some of the “memos” we pass back and forth were never received or got lost?

I remember some years ago when the former Yugoslavia broke apart as the long reign of communism ended there. Good news, as Soviet style rule ended. But then, a horrible blood bath ensued as and the Bosnian, Serbians and Croatians turned on one another, rekindling old hatreds going back hundreds of years. I remember wondering how people who had lived largely without violence for so long could still hate each other so. It seemed that the injustices of the past predated most of the people who were alive now.

Bosnian babies were not born hating Croatian babies. Some one must have taught them to hate each other. Some one gave them “the memo.” So when the “strong man,” Tito left the scene, ancient hatreds which had continued to be handed on from parent to child, exploded. Looking with my American eyes, I wondered how the Bosnian, Croat and Serbian people could even distinguish each other. To me they all “looked alike.” But they surely knew the differences, drew the lines, and spiraled right down into the hell of hatred.

I realize that I may be over-simplifying things, but there is also the tendency to over complicate matters. The fact is, no child enters this world with an intrinsic hated of a whole group of other children. Some one teaches them that. That part isn’t complicated.

Another awful example of this was what happened in Rwanda in the early 1990s. There, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes had separated back in 1959. But suddenly in 1990 Civil war exploded and in 1994 a Tutsi Tribe undertook an attempted Genocide of the Hutu tribe killing as many as a million in a very short period of time. Some argued that the tensions went all the way to colonial times. But here too, most of grievances seemed to predate the soldiers and vigilantes who undertook to massacres. Who taught them this hatred? Who “gave them the memo?”

When I was a child I lived in Chicago, Ill. I never remember my parents ever telling me to hate or even be wary of Black people. I give them a lot of credit for that. Neither do I remember any awareness of Racial tension or hatred in my neighborhood. However, to be clear, I was still very young and the racial riots that Followed Dr. King’s assassination did not really register on my 7 year old mind.

But in 1969 we moved to Northern Florida (think “Southern Georgia”). And there the racial tension was in the air. I remember being confused and bewildered by the unexplained resentments and fears. I guess I was too young, and was a newcomer and had not read “the memo” which indicated that I was to be suspicious, hateful and in no way mix with “them.” I remember seeing the Black children on the other side of the playground and they were playing with some “really cool” toys. Not having read the memo I went to join them. I was rebuffed not only by fellow Whites, but also by some of the Black children who were unaware that I had not read the memo and considered my “incursion” unwanted and even threatening.

Crazy stuff. We are not born hating anyone, any race, or ethnicity. Some one teaches us that. And this very fact increases the total disgrace that such hatred is. There is an old phrase that talks about “burying the hatchet.” You may call me naive, and simplistic, even myopic, but I wonder, what might happen if we could just “tear up the memo.”

I hope most of you know me by now well enough to understand that I am no moral relativist. I am not suggesting there is no such thing as truth, right or wrong, injustice etc. Neither am I one to dispatch slogans like: “Can’t we all get along?” or “Coexist.” For these sorts of slogans often rest on faulty premises that there is no real truth to announce or protect. But honestly, some of the hatreds we struggle with go back to things long gone, that predate any of us here today, and which, quite frankly, are not even grievances we know much about.  There are just some “memos” that need to go to the shredder.

The Catechism makes some very helpful observations:

Deliberate hatred is contrary to charity. Hatred of the neighbor is a sin when one deliberately wishes him evil. Hatred of the neighbor is a grave sin when one deliberately desires him grave harm. “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”….

Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity. Peace is the tranquility of order. Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity…..

Injustice, excessive economic or social inequalities, envy, distrust, and pride raging among men and nations constantly threaten peace and cause wars. Everything done to overcome these disorders contributes to building up peace and avoiding war: Insofar as men are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them and will so continue until Christ comes again; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming together in charity, violence itself will be vanquished and these words will be fulfilled: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (CCC # 2303,2304, 2317)

Well, if nothing else, enjoy this video of two animals who never got “the memo” that they are supposed to be mortal enemies, and consider joining me in the dream that some of us humans too will never get “the memo.”

Photo Credit above: From the Zazzle Catalog