Although Jesus emerges from the Old Testament, and comes to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, He does so in a way that far exceeds anyone’s expectations. Jesus shatters all human categories and resists any attempt to reduce or classify Him according to our limited way of thinking. He establishes our status with God on a completely new basis, that of faith, and allows us to share in His own relationship with the Father, that of a son. This is so overwhelming and disconcerting that it’s hard for us to accept.
And so there exists the perennial human tendency to “shrink” Jesus, to scale Him down to a more manageable size, to alter the Gospel in order to make it more manageable for us. This is a temptation for all of us individually, and for every culture and mentality: to reduce Christianity to an ideology and to refashion Jesus according to our own preconceptions and preferences. And it’s this that incites the violent opposition of St. Paul, not only because we distort the reality of Jesus, but also because in so doing we shortchange ourselves and deprive ourselves of His unique gift.
We need to continually rediscover Jesus in all His originality and adhere with all our strength to the newness and fullness of life he offers us, resisting with all the tenacity of St. Paul every temptation to deny, betray or redefine Him.
Luke 11: The Best of Fathers. The Gospel of Luke this week picks up on one of the strands from St. Paul in presenting us with Jesus’ teaching on the Father. First, the Our Father itself: a gift of Jesus in response to the plea from the apostles to teach them how to pray. It is, at heart a prayer of boundless confidence. First the boundless part: the Father we have who fills the immensity of heaven, the unimaginable greatness and absolute holiness of His name, the complete beauty and perfection of His kingdom, and the unerring truth and excellence of His will. It’s really a mind-expanding, even a mind-blowing prayer if we stop to think about it. And yet before this awesome majesty, in the second part of the prayer we hurl ourselves into the all powerful and outstretched arms of the Father. We express a limitless trust in the Father’s ability and willingness to meet all our needs of whatever kind, in His mercy and readiness to forgive our sins, in His power to protect and save us.
So that this doesn’t remain abstract and theoretical for us, Jesus follows the words of the Our Father with an example drawn from our own experience. He points out that if we, despite all our selfishness and pettiness, know how to care for our children, and would never give them anything harmful, but only the good things that will be helpful to them, how much more will the best of Fathers, His Father, our Father who art in heaven, give only the best of things, above all the very gift of the Holy Spirit to His children who call out to him. Jesus uses an example of one friend who bothers another friend until he gets what he needs from him to encourage us to even pester God for what we need! Could there be any greater motivation to ask, seek and knock until the Father, who’s waiting to answer us, grants us what we need!
Celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (October 7) in Sudan. There are probably some people who are reading this who remember that the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary was formerly called the feast of Our Lady of Victory. It was instituted by Pope St. Pius V to commemorate the victory of the Christian fleet over that of the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto in 1571. The victory was attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose aid was sought through praying the Rosary. The captain of one of the ships in the Christian fleet had in his cabin a replica, given to him by King Phillip II of Spain, of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe (see the Wikipedia article).
The Battle of Lepanto, artist unknown I shared this story at the weekly prayer meeting of a group of evangelizers in Torit, then asked them if it reminded them of anything in their own recent experience. Heads nodded and assenting voices chimed in, “Ay.” When I asked them what, they responded: “The civil war with the Islamic forces from the north.” The Ottoman Turks were, of course, Moslems.
Prayer Meeting with EvangelizersI hastened to point out that our brother Moslems are not our enemies whom we seek to conquer by violent means, but rather that the real meaning of the feast is that in the midst of all our struggles, it is Our Lady, who - through her powerful intercession - enables us to experience the victory of Christ in our lives, the victory of faith over the pressure of the “world” (1Jn 5:4), and the victory of the love of Christ that makes us more than conquerors in the midst of all with which we contend (Rm 8:37).
St. Daniel Comboni (1831-1881) is the great missionary bishop of Central Africa. He founded missionary orders of both men and women who carried out an amazing work of evangelization in several countries on the continent, and are still present today. The first country where Comboni labored, and the place where he died, is Sudan, specifically Khartoum. The legacy of his spiritual sons and daughters is carved in stone and flesh in the churches and schools they helped to build throughout the Diocese of Torit, and in the faith that still lives in the communities they helped to establish. Two of St. Daniel Comboni’s famous mottos are: Africa or death! And: To Save Africa with Africans. He was beatified by Pope John Paul in 1996 and canonized by him in 2003; his feast day is October 10. It is inspiring to witness firsthand the fruits of his labor, and to be in a diocese where one of his spiritual sons, a Sudanese Comboni priest – Fr. Joseph, is vicar General.
St. Daniel Comboni
Venturing Out. This week I’ve been able to accompany Dennis Kiyimba, a young enthusiastic Ugandan, who is carrying on the New Strength, New Hope ministry established by American missionary Katie Gesto, on several of his evangelization outreach activities in the neighborhoods and outlying communities of Torit. Since October is the month of the Holy Rosary, on Monday evening we gathered with a group of families in a local home for a talk, the Rosary and some spontaneous prayer. On Tuesday I participated in the weekly evangelizers prayer meeting. And on Friday evening I led a time Eucharistic Adoration in the sacristy of the parish church. Dennis is doing a tremendous job in encouraging the faith of these families as the Church recovers her strength in Southern Sudan. I am heartened by his presence here. We have discussed the situation of the youth in Torit and hope to be able to work together on efforts to draw them more fully into the life of the Church. It has been especially good to come into more contact with the local community as I delve into studying the colloquial version of Arabic spoken by most people here.
Dennis and Sister Margaret
Children of the neighborhood
House of the host family
Family homes (above and below)
People gathered for prayer
Remnants of Great Suffering. At almost every turn one collides with reminders of the deep wounds of Torit’s recent past. I’m told that human skeletons are still sometimes found when people are clearing high grass and brush for planting.
One day this week I was driving back to the compound where I’m staying with Fr. Dario Hakim, chancellor of the diocese, when I happened to comment on what a beautiful town Torit must have been before the war. He vividly remembers when bombs were dropped in the market place, the force of which decapitated a woman and buried a man below a stone wall that collapsed. At one point he was shot while driving along the road and had to flee on foot for his life.
When we arrived back at the administrative compound I had the privilege of meeting Claudio Opwona, one time diocesan education coordinator and author of a short history of the Diocese of Torit that was published on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary in 2003. He is in the process of revising that history for the silver jubilee to take place in a few months. He points out in the book that the most recent civil war broke out just two weeks after the diocese was established in 1983, and his description of the almost constant displacement, insecurity, and uncertainty in which the diocese lived its first twenty years is almost incomprehensible. The fortitude and perseverance of then Bishop Paride Taban and the priests, religious and laity of the diocese is heroic. He showed me a photo he had taken of the skulls and bones of SPLA officers who had been killed by their own colleagues on suspicion of rebellion, and recounted to me the carnage and unburied bodies he encountered when he visited Torit just after it had been liberated in 2002.
On Tuesday for Daytime Prayer we prayed these verses from Psalm 74, which could really be a lament for Torit:
Turn your steps to these places that are utterly ruined!
The enemy has laid waste the whole of the sanctuary.
Your foes have made uproar in your house of prayer…
Their axes have battered the wood of its doors.
They have struck together with hatchet and pickaxe.
O God they have set your sanctuary on fire;
they have razed and profaned the place where you dwell…
Why, O Lord, do you hold back your hand?
Why do you keep your right hand hidden?
Yet God is our king from time past,
the giver of help through all the land.
The incomprehension in the face of such overwhelming suffering and destruction gives way in the end to hope. It is with this hope that Torit and Southern Sudan moves ahead toward the future.
A Word from St. Paul for the Current Economic Crisis. This is the year of St. Paul, proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI, a year in which we give special attention to his life and the inspired Word of God that was communicated through his preaching and letters. St. Paul, along with St. Peter, is one of the co-patrons of the Diocese of Torit. Just today in the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours for Saturday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, we read an excerpt of St. Paul’s First Letter to Timothy which rang prophetically in the light of the current world-wide economic crisis:
“Command those who are rich in this present world… not to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” (1 Timothy 6:17-19)
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