On Peace

 If we consult Google translate and see the translation in Hebrew from English of "how are you?" we will see the word "shalom", peace. If we consult the youtube on how to say "how are you" in Hebrew we will get something like this, "ma shalom'kha". So there we have the word "shalom"., peace The phrase "how are you" then is roughly translated in Hebrew as "are you in peace".  

If we consult, again, Google translate of "goodbye" in Hebrew, we again see the word "shalom", peace. Goodbye, take care, shalom. Be in peace as you move away.

Are you "complete"? "Integral"? When a house is built and completed, it is in shalom. A completely constructed house allows for a harmonious and intact daily life. There is peace in daily life. Shalom has its roots in shalem, according to Hebrew language specialists. Shalem means whole, complete, intact. It can apply to personal wholeness or also to social-political wholeness. 

It may be interesting to note that shalom is also applied to wishing an "intact" death. "You shall go to your fathers in shalom, you will be buried at a good old age.” (Genesis 15/15). Whatever happens to you in and after death, may you be in shalom.

In the psalms we read about what a friend is. A friend is "someone of my shalom", someone of my peace. I can place my trust on that person; I can rely on that person. So we read, for example, the verse complaining about a friend who has "unfriended" me, so to speak. "Even the man of my peace, who ate my bread, has raised his heel against me" (Ps41/10). Even the person of my peace has raised the heel against me. The relationship thus is no longer intact, integral and trustworthy. The person who is contributing to the peace of my life is now an obstacle to my peace. The psalmist thus complains.

When there is justice there is shalom. In justice each one is respected in dignity. The dignity is conserved intact. Earth gives sufficient fruits, each one has enough to eat, each one lives in security, each one sleeps well, each one can bloom in life. To live in peace is not just to be free from violence and tensions, it is also to be able to bloom. 

Of course shalom includes the presence of the Lord God in life. Shalom is a spiritual condition of living with the Lord God who assures everyone that the covenant is sustained. It is the covenant that guarantees security, justice, cooperation, harmony within society. Because everyone in society recognizes the presence of the Lord God who has given the gift of Covenant, there is shalom in that society. In union with the Lord God, “no sword will pass through your land” [Lev 26/6]; “God will bless his people with shalom" [Dt.20/10].

For the Christian, Jesus is situated in peace. He is a gift of peace. Hence the angels announce to shepherds that there will be peace thanks to the coming of Jesus. 

"And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” [Lk2/13-14]. 

The coming of Jesus signals peace, completeness, integral life, blooming because all will be reconciled with God and with each other. 

It has become the task of the Apostles--and consequently the Church--to announce the Good News and put this peace in effect. Thinking about this then we can ask ourselves if, in our own personal--and social lives--there is this completeness, this wholeness, this shalom.

I might be getting what I want, but is it what I REALLY AND DEEPLY want. Does it make me whole, integral, intact? Or does it ruin me and ruin my shalom? Are the things that I do in conformity with the covenant that the Lod God has installed in the midst of society? Is it in line with the peace of Jesus? Am I, like the Apostles, on mission to promote peace? 

Do I have peace in me? Deep in me can I say there is peace? And when in deathbed I go to my fathers, do I go in shalom? As I move away, do I go in shalom?

Reflections on Abraham's call to "take, go and offer"

  "Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you" [Gen22/2]. Three verbs here: take-go-offer.

1. Take the son you love, your son. That's Isaac, the son from the sterile Sarah. Isaac is a surprise; never quite expected. Abraham starts to consider Isaac as his son--emphasis on "his". Yes, he is a "promised" child. But he is the Lord God's promise, not Abraham's. So the Lord God tells Abraham to give him up--take him up the mountain. Abraham can refuse this order to "take" Isaac. He does not. His paternity is now placed in faith. 

2. Go to the land of Moriah. Abraham had done his going away from his own homeplace. "Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you" [Gen12/1]. . Now he has another going away, this time from his own son. He is to go away from his son to a future designed for Israel. [Remember that prior to the Abraham story we read about the stories of Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark and the tower of Babel, all descriptions of the conditions of the human being after the Adam and Eve story].  

Abraham is quite silent. He says nothing. He says nothing to Isaac. He says nothing to the servants. He is cloaked in silence. 

Well, he does say something to his servants, but it is no explanation of what is really going on. He also replies to Isaac's question. "The Lord God will provide" [22/8]. The Lord God will provide what is needed for the sacrifice. He does not however say that he will sacrifice his son. Abraham is completely absorbed in faith. 

3. Offer. Offer the son to the Lord God. The future is now outside the hands of Abraham; it does not rely on Abraham and his plans, goals, dreams. Offer the son because the paternity is now that of the Lord God. The future of Israel will have to be abandoned in the hands of the Lord God. 

We know the story, an angel comes and stops Abraham from killing Isaac. There are interesting commentaries on this and let us leave them to the expertise of Biblical scholars. There is just one point we can discern. Offer all hopes and dreams based on one's own expectations and lay them all in the hands of the Lord God.  The human, in the figure of Abraham, is called to overtake continuously what prohibits the human from what the Lord God has given. This includes overtaking dreams, plans, goals, desires that prohibit the human from living with the dignity that the Lord God has provided. This is our dignity as "image of God", our dignity as children of the Father, our dignity as brothers and sisters to each other. It is our dignity that has to be realized in the course of history--as represented by the history of Israel in the Bible. In a way Abraham is reminded that his faith in the Lord God is marked by a recognition of what it is to be truly human as the Lord God has designed the human.

It is tough and at times incomprehensible to be told to "take, go and offer". There are moments in life when this feels cruel. Life has its "comfort zones"that are shaken by the three verbs, "take, go, offer".  But as Charles de Foucauld prayed, "Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord.". Good luck to all of us. 

Reflections on "Forgiveness"

Forgiveness. What is this? Those who pray the Our Father pray, "forgive us our trespasses". In that prayer to forgive is to forgive like the Father. The way the human forgives is aligned to the way the Father forgives. Something happens in the heart of the person who forgives and it is what the Father wishes to happen. 

If we look at what have transpired in our lives, the times when we forgave others, we might note two things. One is that the moment of forgiveness was an event. It happened at a precise moment. Also, it happened as if the forgiveness was like a "gift" to the person(s) who hurt us. 

1. Forgiveness then happens in an event with a date on it. It is something like this.

Time moves on with a hurt we cary in our hearts hoping maybe that the hurt will go away on its own. But then we also know that during all that time there is an ember that can be triggered to become a huge flame. A memory might arise and we realize that the ember is there inside. The hurt, the grudge, the pain still linger within. The flow of time has not thus guaranteed a new order of feelings and behaviour. The flow of time has not easily allowed the inauguration of a new happy life order.

Come to think of it, the event of forgiveness is like a "conversion" or a "surgical operation" that cuts out the grudges deep within. It is like a decision made, giving up the hope for a better past.

This is easier said than done, of course. The act of forgivness does not present a new situation as if nothing happened before, as if no hurt was ever done. It is more like constructing a new life. 

2. It is also like a gift. Oh, we might feel that the person who hurt us does not deserve the gift. That person who hurt us does not seem to have the right to be forgiven. 

For the person in pain, hurt and holding grudges, forgiveness may be unjustified.  Unless the injury remains unpaid and unrepaired there will be no forgiving of the other. Reparation and restitution belong to the system of justice. Of course we want justice. We need justice. 

But maybe there is something paradoxical with forgiveness because we give it as a gift even if we feel that the person who hurt us does not merit the gift. Imagine saying, "Oh I forgive you even if you do not deserve it". 

Are we capable of forgiving those who have really--and I mean REALLY--hurt us? Are we capable of looking for something beyond justice? What about ourselves, our relationships with our very own selves. Some of us might have done actions that make us hate ourselves and make us unforgiving towards our very own selves. Self forgiving can also be very difficult. 

So, the question remains: Are we really capable of forgiving? I do not know. What I do know is that there are perons who have been so hurt and have, nonetheless, been forgiving. To reply to the question I would like to look at the Our Father prayer given at the Sermon on the Mount. 

The prayer gives us a reference point. If we are to forgive we do it just like the Father. Forgiveness does not arise exclusively from our own decisions, it also "consults" what the Father will do in the same situation. So as the Father forgives, we do the same. We decide to forgive based on how the Father forgives. 

How does the Father forgive? Continuing with the Sermon on the Mount we can get a clue from the description Jesus made regarding the "perfection" of the Father. This is not a geometrical perfection. Rather, it is a perfection of the way the Father treats us all. The Father "makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust" [Matthew 5/45].

Something in each person remains untouched; it is conserved and must even be protected. A person may be "bad or good", "just or unjust". but that person remains to be a child of the Father and has the human dignity of being a child of the Father. The creation story will say that the person is "image of God". 

No matter what any person does or has done, the sun will rise on that person, the rain will fall on that person. There is no discrimination here. To forgive is to keep this in mind. No matter how I have been hurt--by others or by myself--I must remain constant about the fact of human dignity and the fact that each person is image of God. Justice and mercy need to have their focus on this dignity. If I find it so difficult to accept others and to forgive those who trespass against me, I need to however continue functioning based on the respect of human dignity, the respect of the image of God. Never must I violate the dignity of anyone and always, when the occassion is given, must I promote the dignity of others even if consider them as "intolerable", so to speak. This, if I am not mistaken, is the "bottom line", the "non-negotiable" level. 

I might have difficulties with my dislike of certain persons and I might even fall in the cultural trap of relating with others in terms of liking or disliking them. Much of social life, in fact, seems to me so unforgiving towards particular, disliked, persons. However, the Christian faith in the dignity that God has bestowed on each and every single human person must serve as a solid foundation.  The "minimum" we can do in forgiving others-- and ourselves-- is to keep the recognition and respect for human dignity.