Apostles for Today
June 2016
Mercy and respect for life
Dear sisters and brothers in
the UAC
After Pope Francis proclaimed
the Holy Year of Mercy, I was asked by the General Secretariat whether I would
contribute to Apostles for Today by writing a reflection on “Mercy and respect
for life (in the broadest sense)”. I agreed, because the topic interests me.
Meanwhile a few months have passed and, frankly, I do not quite know what to
write. On the one hand the word mercy does not play a great role in our current
everyday language; on the other hand, it has now reached a level almost of
overuse in the Church. And now I am asked to add my own opinion about it! At
the same time, I realise that it is more my nature to ask questions than to
give binding answers. But maybe I was “chosen” for this topic because I have a
special relationship to “life” through my job as a doctor, and thus my
experience comes more from real life than from theological speculation. And so
I want to share with you my thoughts, questions and efforts to explain.
When I approach a topic, I
like to begin with a glance at the etymological dictionary. This explains the
German word “erbarmen” – “to be
merciful” as “to free from poverty, misfortune, misery, deprivation or, in the
most general sense, from loneliness”. Therefore, in German, the term has a very
charitable character. In Hebrew, on the other hand, the word for mercy, “hesed”, is related to that for “womb”,
and therefore to birth, creation, and so is directly linked to life. In our own
existence and in looking at the history of the world, we experience the fact
that life in itself is afflicted with misery, with suffering and death. Why
this is so, why the all-powerful and benevolent God created such a frail world,
is a question about which many theologians have racked their brains; ultimately
I have found no solution that really satisfies me.
God
created the world out of love, and out of mercy he redeemed it. We know and
have internalised this article of faith. But I find it difficult to see myself
as friends with a God who in the enthusiasm of his first love creates a world
which he then realises has turned out pretty miserable, so that he needs to
intervene again to bring the whole thing to a successful conclusion. (Maybe
that sounds a bit too casual and not sufficiently reverent, but this happens to
be one of the major objections of people who take a critical view towards our
Christian faith - and I would like to take these brothers and sisters
seriously.)
We believe that human beings
are created by God, are creatures, and therefore so very different from God;
not omnipotent, not infinite, not eternal. But we also believe that we are
created in God's image, which is reflected in the fact that God grants us
freedom, cognition, creativity and dominion over the world. We are not God, but
at the same time each one of us is made uniquely in the image of God. This is
our glory that can turn into our misery whenever we abandon that image and
decide, through words and deeds and attitudes, that we are greater than God,
that we want to live all or part of our lives without reference to the call of
his infinite love which is inscribed in our very being. Here lies the root of our sinfulness, from
human origins right up to the present. We human beings are conscious of this
dilemma of our glory and our misery at the very heart of our existence, of our
lived experience.
I escape
from this dilemma only when I consider creation as not yet concluded, not
completed. What for us creatures is happening in time, is for God, who is
outside created time, a state of being “from eternity to eternity”. This is the
only way I can explain to myself that the biblical creation account stands at
the beginning of “our” time and God calls everything, good and indeed very
good, and that then Paul writes to the Church in Rome that “the whole of
creation to the present day sighs and groans in travail” and is still on the
path to becoming good, even very good, in the fullest sense.. The love of the
Father, the Creator, is eternal, and in this eternity he creates out of love
the world, life, human beings in his image. In the Son, creation is already
anticipated, as it says in John's prologue. He is, now speaking in a human
scale, the beginning and the end of creation, its origin and destination. Through
his incarnation he guides and accompanies human beings through the time of
imperfection. The nature of this support is mercy, the incarnated love of God,
flowing into the creation. The fruit of love is creation, the fruit of mercy is
re-creation, the new creation or, more understandable for me, the completion of
creation, as the prophet Isaiah describes it (Isaiah 11: 6-9). Certainly my
thoughts are no “high theology”, but they help me overcome my questions and
doubts.
If God is
infinite love and mercy, then love and compassion are the most noble
characteristics of we human beings as images of God, albeit to a limited and
finite extent. If God accompanies us in compassion on our way to completion, it
is our calling to accompany the creation over which we reign, the life that has
been entrusted to us, the people who are on the way with us in mercy and
compassion. If God “shows consideration” towards our temporal imperfection, has
“respect” for us, then we also should show consideration to the wretched, the
desolate. This means not only looking ahead, so we don’t stray from the right
path, but also to look around, to see whether those around us need our help.
And they definitely do need
it. This calls for the well-known and often-quoted works of mercy: the so-called
corporal works (based on Matthew 25,35 -40) relating to the basic human needs,
focus on the plight of people. The spiritual works, formulated by Aurelius
Augustinus, relate more to interpersonal relationships, with a focus on needs
in relationship to fellow human beings.
One of the foundations of
Pallottine spirituality is the likeness of all people to God. This is not a
privilege that entitles us to all sorts of things, and certainly not to the
destruction of life and the ruthless exploitation of the earth, but is our
calling to follow God in his respect for creation, in His love and mercy. It is
the calling of each one of us. Basically, charity is institutionalized in our
modern welfare state, and therefore there are not a few who understand it as a res publica (a matter for the State) and not as a call for
personal action. But precisely my profession of doctor shows me that
relationship, based on compassion, mercy and on loving attention has to be a res privata (a matter for private individuals or groups), if it is
to bear fruit and thus to succeed.
Respect for life. What does
that mean for me? And what does that mean for us in the Pallottine family? I
think it means looking lovingly at all creatures, of whom Vincent Pallotti said
that he desired so much to be united with them in the Cenacle, even at all
created things: to be prudent, cautious and considerate.
Such an attitude could
certainly make the world a better place.
Alois
Wittmann UAC
Germany.
____________________________________________________
Segretariato Generale, Unione dell’Apostolato
Cattolico
Piazza San Vincenzo Pallotti 204, 00187 Roma, Italia uac@uniopal.org
No comments:
Post a Comment