REFLECTION

EAST OF KIDRON

Martí Colom

It is not hard to imagine Jesus sitting on an bank of the Mount of Olives, maybe with his back against the trunk of a sturdy tree, perhaps with a sprig of rosemary on his lips, looking, across the Kidron Valley, at the breathtaking view of the temple, with the sun shining on its perfect walls and huge blocks of yellowish stone.

The temple that Jesus observes is quite new: Herod the Great began to lift it some twenty years before the birth of the son of Mary, and its construction lasted until recently. Thus Jesus is seeing a building that has just been completed, in all its glory and radiance, a structure designed to impress and provoke admiration, another large edifice of a king who has loved ambitious architectural projects (like Caesarea by the Sea or his palace in the fortress of Masada). With this magnificent temple Herod intended to leave the final imprint of his own name and a permanent reminder of his long reign in the city called holy. Herod was a remarkable politician who managed to stay in power for over thirty years thanks to both shrewdness and brutality. By building the temple he, whose Jewish identity had always been questioned because of his Edomite origin, wanted to win the support and appreciation of the people and of the powerful Sadducee party.

 

What nobody knows yet is that the temple will not last a century, and that in the year 70 the wrath of Rome will demolish Herod’s great project. Now, when Jesus of Nazareth looks at its defiant walls with concern, the temple seems destined to remain here for a thousand years.

What does Jesus think? What does he feel? Let's imagine it: Jesus suffers. He opposes everything this temple represents. Throughout a long personal itinerary that took him from his native Galilee to spend time with John the Baptist in the desert, and then back to Galilee, now he clearly sees the incoherence, the absurdity, the distortion of the faith that this temple embodies. In the fertile lands of Galilee Jesus has grasped that the Spirit of God is present in every person and in daily life. He has understood that all exclusions are manmade and only serve the interests of those who wish to impose their will on the rest. Jesus has chewed the verses of Isaiah in which the prophet speaks for God saying, “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats… learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:11, 17).

And now this new temple disfigures again the compassionate face of God, poisoning its tenderness, masking its sweetness. The temple is conceived as a series of separate spaces that sharply divide the world of the “sacred” from that of the “mundane”, when in fact this beautiful world and everything in it is God's work! Jesus knows that the well-defined areas of the temple, ever more exclusive (the courtyard of the gentiles, the space for men, for the priests, the holy of holies...) serve to reduce men and women to the stature of children or even worse, slaves. The temple is a monument to fear, yet God is a breath of hope. And worse still: the temple is also a lucrative business where some take advantage of the sincere faith of the people.

Jesus suffers. East of Kidron.

This vignette of a tired, even outraged Jesus, sitting and watching with pain the temple from the Mount of Olives, provides an image to indicate that there are still today other "Kidron rivers": they are the lines that define where do we stand in relation to religious power. Maybe they will not be a stream or a mountain, but they are present in our decisions, in our way of looking at the world, in our hearts. It remains very important, if the experience of Jesus matters to us, to be able to remain always east of Kidron.

East of Kidron we realize that all spaces are God’s, not just the temples. More so, east of Kidron we learn that very often the paraphernalia of the great shrines is of little help to the liberation of those who open themselves to God in their hearts, being able to see and recognize God in others, in human situations of joy or pain, in the streets, on the road. East of Kidron we learn not to trust puritan views that promote sharp separations between saints and sinners. We fear, east of Kidron, the attraction of magical places: and we fear it because we know that when someone decides that this or that space is a promised land, soon others will say that it is “my” promised land where “you” have no right to live. And in the process, once again, we will have forgotten that all land is holy. East of Kidron we sense that the splendor and the magnificence of our buildings are projections of the importance that we would like to have, but inaccurate readings of God’s soul. God loves discretion and simplicity. Huge temples do not speak about God’s goodness; they speak of man’s arrogance, of our delusions, of our need for admiration and of our power struggles. East of Kidron we grow in relationship with a God that cares deeply for all people. East of Kidron we decide not to seek refuge in artificial languages, in affected gestures or in pretentious religious titles; all these would soon become reasons for us to move away from people, with the excuse of getting closer to God. East of Kidron we use everyday language, we show ourselves as we are, we live without hierarchies and we know that we get closer to God as we get closer to others. East of Kidron there is a garden without walls, an open space where everyone is welcomed. There, nothing protects us and nothing asphyxiates us. East of Kidron we find the land of men and women that want to live their dignity in freedom, as adults.

Understanding the Process of Family Reintegration of the Children of Casa San José (Cochabamba, Bolivia)

Editor's Note: Recently, several Agora XXI blog entries have acquainted our readers with the background and present activities at Casa San José in Bolivia.  The present article gets to the hopeful heart of the matter: reuniting the children with their families in conditions that improve the likelihood of successful family life, and some of the difficulties encountered.

Casa San José has, as its principal goal, the reintegration of street children and adolescents from Cochabamba into their families.  In dealing with agencies that take in minors (such as in our situation with street children), and which pursue their reintegration into their families, the Bolivian government asks through the Children and Adolescent Court that the families complete a series of requirements and thereby demonstrate that they are suitable for the return of the children.  As part of the process the Casa San José social worker prepares a status report and tries to explain to the children about the legal proceedings that, at times, can be complex and involve many, seemingly endless, steps in Children’s Court. This formal process often delays the assimilation of children. Therefore the children, despite our patient efforts to explain all of this to them, are often bewildered, frustrated and demoralized.

REFLECTION

FROM ASHES TO THE GLORY OF THE RESURRECTION

Javier Guativa

Next Sunday is Palm Sunday and we will be at threshold of Easter. As we approach the end of Lent it is good to review what the days of Lent have meant for us and remind ourselves that Lent is not an isolated liturgical season, but is closely linked to the celebration of Easter. Lent is to Easter what Advent is to Christmas. We all know that great feasts are prepared for in advance; we need to prepare our hearts to celebrate them with joy.  And to get to the festive joy of Easter we had also need to prepare ourselves, patiently, through the discovery of who we are and self-growth.

For many Catholics, Lent is not their preferred time of the year, perhaps, because, since the imposition of ashes, we are reminded of our death, through words like "sacrifice", "discipline" and "fast" that are repeated in the readings. We come to believe that we are in a season focused on pain, rather than seeing this season as an opportunity to grow. Very rarely do we think that Lent is a second annual opportunity that we have to check whether our values and priorities are in line with God's desires for us.

We began Lent with the Spirit leading us into the desert. A difficult place in which we were invited to confront the fears, doubts, failures, disappointments, and despair that often creeps into our lives, something we usually avoid doing. A good Lent, however, ends with a new understanding of ourselves, and a willingness to change and grow away from our torments.

Let’s look at three areas for meditation that could help us to review our Lenten season in light of the Easter festivity that is approaching.

Shoulder to Shoulder to Improve the Sight of Many

Each year during the month of January, a group of volunteers from Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA, come to the Dominican Republic to conduct an ophthalmologic clinic in the parish La Sagrada Familia in Sabana Yegua. The group is composed of surgeons, ophthalmologists, nurses, and others of good will. These people, already busy with their own lives, make a significant and inconvenient commitment to journey far from home to provide advanced medical services, not readily available or affordable, to the local people of the parish. 

When the medical specialists and their aides arrive, they are joined by an enthusiastic group of Dominican volunteers who generously and attentively support them with translations and other logistical activities during the hectic week of nearly non-stop work. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the two groups meld into a dedicated and efficient team. In the clinic, the sight of many people, with a variety of different ailments and conditions, is examined, evaluated and treated. Many surgeries, already planned during the months before the clinic, are performed.

OPENING OF THE DIVINE MERCY CHILDREN’S CENTER, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

In January we inaugurated the new Divine Mercy Children’s Center in the community called “El Alto de Ganadero.” It serves 50 children aged 2 to 5.  Before this center, we ran the service out of a small building that belonged to the local community, where we served 35 children a day.  However, the conditions were far from ideal, such that it was necessary to obtain a place that was more suitable for the center.

The new building was built thanks to the generous collaboration of many people, but especially of group of Dominicans that reside in the United States.  The Missionaries of the Divine Mercy, who return annually to their native country to see their families and to promote evangelization in small communities, decided to back this beautiful initiative in one of the poorest places within La Sagrada Familia Parish.  We wish to thank them for their solidarity and dedication to their fellow Dominicans.

REFLECTION

THINKING ABOUT POPE FRANCIS: NOTES ON FAITH, TRUTH AND MERCY

Martí Colom

Francis’ pontificate, and especially the issues that the Pope wanted to include in the agenda of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, have caused uneasiness in some sectors of the Church (no doubt that at the same time they have been received with great joy by many others). And it has become common to hear among those who look with some doubts at the direction of this papacy the opinion according to which, in their estimation, the Pope’s message will eventually force us to choose between truth and mercy, between right teaching and compassion, between doctrine and a welcoming spirit. 

Certainly, the Pope and those who are in tune with him insist in the need to make of mercy the mark that would identify Christians. Those who hesitate about this attitude accept, obviously, that compassion is desirable and rooted in the Gospel, but they listen to the call to build up a more welcoming and merciful Church (the famous “war hospital” of which Francis has spoken about) and then ask themselves: Will we have to end up giving up the truth in exchange for the pastoral and welcoming style that Francis is asking of us?

It seems to me that to frame the issue in these terms (truth or mercy) is a mistake. Perhaps we have to reach the point where we can declare that our truth, our right teaching and our doctrine are first of all mercy, compassion and hospitality.

No truth should ever weigh more for us than the respect towards the dignity of every human being and the promotion of his or her wellbeing. When we forget this and we begin to think about mercy as an aspect of our faith that is desirable but somehow secondary, then we have emptied Christianity of its very essence.

To be Christian is not to follow a collection of finished, intellectually understood religious and moral truths as much as it is an attitude in life, grounded in the example of Jesus of Nazareth, a way of being in the world and to relate to others; an attitude which has an enormous potential to transform our reality and to help us be open to God. Our faith resembles more a search for the Divine, a slow and humble approach to the Mystery, than the mandate to guard an unchanging body of truths. In fact, it is when we believe the latter that the defense of these truths ends up justifying the exclusion and even condemnation of those who do not accept them.

Therefore, it is simply false that we are moving towards a dead end where we will have to forget about truth in order to be able to practice mercy. What we will have to forget are partial understandings of the faith, easy suspicions, simplistic dichotomies and legalistic reduction-isms of the Gospel that so often disfigure the merciful and welcoming face of Christ.