Thoughts About Ezekiel – Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ

In his commentary on the Book of Ezekiel, Fr. Berrigan wrote the following about Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones.

…he [Ezekiel] allows room for a touch of madness, surrounded as we are by evidence of insanity in high places—addictions to death-dealing, domination, greed, ego, the forms of death that govern authority high and low today. Ezekiel, truth-teller, points to another way. He resists every attempt to be “normalised, by wicked authority,” “assimilated” by the world. He will not grow spiritually sodden; no business as usual, no war as usual, no waste and want as usual, no religious rote and rot as usual. God, he declares, has another, far different, hope for creation, for ourselves. For the “widow and orphan,” the abused and condemned and forgotten, those who count for little or nothing, “lives of no value.” And we, the beneficiaries of such sanity, so talismanic an ancestor, can only give thanks. — Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings, pp. 252-253

Fr. Berrigan wrote that the prophet and truth-teller points to another way. What if that way was love? Transformative love that changes lives. Love that changes vision in order for us to see our enemies as our sibling instead. Love that helps us to agree to disagree while still working together to help the most vulnerable in the world.

Perhaps then we can do something positive for the community and the world. I believe that these words from Martin Luther King, Jr. may well hold the key to such a transformation. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

This is my hope… this is my prayer. Darkness transformed into light and hatred transformed into love. Dear reader, will you join me in that prayer and work? From our lips to God’s ear may we pray.