Apostles for Today
Prayer and Reflection
November 2018
Holiness, A Journey Made Together
“Hungering and thirsting for righteousness: that is holiness” (GE 79).
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
justice for they will be filled.” (Mt 5:6)
I think I have been hungering and thirsting for
righteousness since I was a small child growing up in the fifties as the middle
child with four brothers. My dad was on the basic wage and didn't want my
mother to work. Mum struggled to make ends meet. The boys would play outside
while I would help mum with the housework. I was told that the money would have
to be spent on the boys’ education rather than mine as they would be the
bread-winners for their families. Fortunately, I won scholarships and was able
to go through to University level and postgraduate studies. Lots of experiences
though made me hunger and thirst for women not to be pushed into the background
or abused but rather for all people to be treated with equal dignity and
respect. I believed that God loved all of us equally.
No matter how poor our family was, my mother
would help out others and my father was a member of the local St Vincent de
Paul conference. As I grew I became aware of the neighborhood, the society,
and the world and the injustices that abound.
I started teaching primary school at nineteen
and four years later was Principal of a Catholic primary school with some
pupils who came from the local area and others who came from a very large
Migrant Hostel. In the nineteen-seventies, they came from Argentina, Chile,
East Timor, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, the Philippines, Hungary, Iran, and other
troubled parts of the world.
As a staff we worked hard to ensure that these
children could get as good a start in their new home as possible. They arrived
not speaking English and most had experienced trauma. Some had parents who had
been killed or that they had been separated from.
They missed friends, grandparents and extended
family members. In such a situation how could I not hunger and thirst for
righteousness and do whatever I could to try and bring it about for these
children and their families.
There are so many things that make me angry in
this world because they are not in accord with what I believe is the will of
God. For me, righteousness is about trying to discern what God wants for people
and for all of creation. This means, first of all, being in right relationship
with our God of infinite love. How I live and the choices I make matter. I also
need to work at being in right relationship with myself and with others. I was
older when I came to know Pallotti’s charism and with it so many things fell
into place and were inspirational.
St Vincent Pallotti was an apostle in the way he
lived his spiritual, priestly and corporal life. He worked at bringing about
change to correct some of the injustices of his time. He saw boys who needed
education and set up evening schools for them. He found women to care for
orphaned girls. He had his eyes open to the society around him and found ways
to make a difference. He gathered people from various states of life to help
him to carry out the works that would transform the lives of those who were
cared for. His actions showed that he hungered and thirsted after justice and
did something about bringing it about, not just as an individual but as a member
of a growing community.
This very much followed the way Jesus lived as
an Apostle of the Father. There are so many stories in the Gospel of Jesus
challenging people to live in right relationship with their God.
The story of the cleansing of the temple is the
one that first springs to mind of Jesus acting with righteous anger.
Before the destruction of the temple Judaism was
a cultic religion were people needed to bring offerings of animals and birds to
be sacrificed by the priests. The problem was that the sellers and
money-changers had moved onto the forecourt of the temple which was part of the
religious precinct. This meant that profane Roman coins, such as the denarius
were being exchanged for acceptable Jewish shekels and so defiling this sacred
space. As a Jew, Jesus could see that this way of acting was not in accord with
Jewish teaching, with being in right relationship with God and so he did
something about it. Arguably this was the final straw that led to his
crucifixion.
In today’s world standing for a viewpoint that
differs from the popular one takes courage too. Standing up for and welcoming
migrants and refugees can take courage. Confidence in a God of infinite love
can give us courage to take a stand when some groups of people, such as the indigenous,
the homeless, the aged, those with mental illness or those with drug
addictions, are treated as less worthwhile or of lesser dignity while the
pockets of the wealthy are further filled. As an individual, I can make a small
difference but as individuals working together we can make big differences.
In his recent apostolic exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate, which is on the
call to holiness in today’s world, in Chapter 3, Pope Francis draws on the
Beatitudes. He tells us: “Hungering and thirsting for righteousness: that is
holiness” (GE 79). Try and get hold of a copy and read it. It is available on
the Holy See website in a number of languages.
For personal and
communal reflection and prayer:
1.
What is your story of becoming aware of
injustice in your world? Are you ever unjust in the ways you treat others? Or
yourself?
2.
Are you aware of the injustices in this world,
in your community or social context? What can you do to bring about difference
or do you lack the courage?
3.
Have you ever considered, or prayed for, the
varying gifts that people, those who are not ordained, including the married,
single and consecrated, and those ordained, have that could be used together to
foster the cause of Justice?
Anne
Dowling,
Mariana
Community, Australia.
____________________________________________________
Segretariato
Generale, Unione dell’Apostolato Cattolico
Piazza San Vincenzo Pallotti 204, 00187 Roma, Italia uac@uniopal.org
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