I just began reading Thomas Merton’s 1956 book The Living Bread. While the primary subject is the Roman Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, I am finding it also speaks of the body of Christ and humankind in a way that this Presbyterian can easily affirm. The following quotes come from the Prologue.
Totalitarian states ruthlessly manipulate human beings, degrading and destroying them at will, sacrificing bodies and minds on the altar of political opportunism without the slightest respect for the value of the human person. Indeed, one might almost say that the modern dictatorships have displayed everywhere a deliberate and calculated hatred for human nature as such. The techniques of degradation used in concentration camps and in staged trials are too familiar to be detailed here. They all have one purpose: to defile the human person beyond recognition in order to manufacture evidence for a lie….
Techniques of degradation systematically foment distrust, resentment, separation and hatred. They keep men spiritually isolated from one another, while jamming them together physically on a superficial level—the plane of the mass meeting. They tend to corrode all man’s personal relationships by fear and suspicion so that the neighbor, the co-worker, is not a friend and support but always a rival, a menace, a persecutor, a potential stool pigeon who, if we are not careful, will have us sent to prison. (The Living Bread, p. 16)
As I watch the continuing descent into madness in this nation and around the world, Merton’s words speak loudly to me. From the unwarranted, illegal, and immoral actions of the government against immigrants to the attacks that are being committed in the Caribbean to the atrocities committed in Palestine and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, I see the degradation of basic humanity, what Scottish Poet Robert Burns called Man’s inhumanity towards man. (Source: Man Was Made to Mourn)
I also see destruction and division being sown in the rise of christian nationalism and the political, ideological, and theological fighting in the church. The idolatry that is christian nationalism is not what Jesus revealed in his calling of the twelve disciples to follow him. It is not what he spoke about in The Sermon on the Mount (specifically in the Beatitudes). In this setting, Merton calls us to remember that Christianity is a religion of life, not of death. (p. 14)
Creating division and sowing seeds of hatred, fear, and mistrust only harms human beings both individually and collectively. There is a better way for humankind to live. In this Advent season as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, my prayer is that the tide will turn and the peace that passes all understanding will transform this world.
Then the words of Jesus might be fulfilled. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… and also love your neighbor as yourself. (my paraphrase of Matthew 22:36-40)
May it be so…
“It is our duty—as men and women* of conscience—to behave as though limits to our ability do not exist. We are co-creators of the Universe.”—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Verse of the day
Do not envy the violent, and do not choose any of their ways, for the perverse are an abomination to the Lord, but the upright are in his confidence.
– Proverbs 3:31-32
Voice of the day
I grant you refuge in knowing / that the dust will clear, / and they who fell in love and died together / will one day laugh.
– Hiba Abu Nada, “I Grant You Refuge”
Prayer of the day
God of the displaced, may your heart ever-united with their sorrow guide an outcry against violence.
Verse of the day
And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
– 2 Corinthians 3:18
Voice of the day
Dear brother, dear sister, to God, who changed history in the course of a census, you are not a number but a face. Your name is written on God’s heart.
– Pope Francis
Prayer of the day
God who calls us by name, encourage us to walk in solidarity alongside our community, knowing and treasuring their faces as much as you do ours.
Sometimes we feel so much fear and anxiety, and identify so closely with our suffering, that our pain masks the questions. Once pain or confusion is framed or articulated by a question, it must be lived rather than answered. The first task of seeking guidance then is to touch your own struggles, doubts, and insecurities – in short, to affirm your life as a quest. Your life, my life, is given graciously by God. Our lives are not problems to be solved but journeys to be taken with Jesus as our friend and finest guide.
“To see the holiness, to see the synchronicities, to see all the messages, to see all the beauty that goes so often overlooked in the rush of our days is an invitation to slow down and see in a different way.”
—Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Virtual Celtic Pilgrimage: The Wisdom of the Irish Saints Brigid, Ciaran, and Gobnait — A Self-Study Online Retreat
What do you see when you slow down?
Verse of the day
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”
– John 8:12
Voice of the day
It is very important, friends, not to think of the soul as dark. We are conditioned to perceive only external light. We forget that there is such a thing as inner light, illuminating our soul.
– St. Teresa of Avila, “The Interior Castle” (1577)
Prayer of the day
Everlasting Light, when we are overwhelmed by the world’s darkness, enlighten us to the ways we can combat it, both in our surroundings and within ourselves.
“Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human’s education is to know those duties and how to perform them.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Verse of the day
For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.
– 1 Corinthians 4:20
Voice of the day
Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.
– Winona LaDuke
Prayer of the day
Ingrain a true sense of what should empower us as we face every day.
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