Tag Archives: solidarity

Souls of the Just and Hope

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Today is the Feast of All Souls, also known as the Day of the Dead.

This morning I celebrated this Feast with immigrant families waiting to visit their detained loved ones outside Delaney Hall, the private for-profit immigrant prison in Newark, NJ. Despite the estimated $60 million annual profit GEO Corporation makes on the operation, they force families to wait outside for hours on an active driveway for a chance to see their loved ones. Thankfully a group of dedicated volunteers are there each visiting day to provide practical support with beverages, food, chairs, blankets, hats, gloves and perhaps most importantly compassion.

In the first reading for today from the Book of Wisdom we hear: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God.” And in the second reading from Romans: “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Every time I am at Delaney Hall I leave with more hope, even in the face of the intentional cruelty done in the name of my country, because of the goodness of people.

Today one of the families woke up at 5 am to make tamales and Mexican hot chocolate which they brought to share with others families and the faithful volunteers who are there during visiting hours to support the visitors. The family told us they wanted to give to us like we give to them. I will admit this brought tears to my eyes. And I was not the only one. (Plus the tamales and hot chocolate were delicious)

Homemade tamales!

Other volunteers brought toys and art supplies for the kids. And there was even a face painting station. For children whose families have been torn apart and who wait for hours outside a chain link fence topped with concertina wire for a chance to see their detained mom or dad, these simple gestures also give them a chance to be a kid and have some good memories to see them through.

Face painting

Other volunteers set up a colorful altar, an ofrenda, for the Day of the Dead. We remember our loved ones who have gone before, so fitting as an emotional and spiritual support for the families visiting their detained loved ones.

Indeed hope does not disappoint because God’s love is poured out freely into our hearts. We in turn pour this love into the world, especially places and spaces of suffering and oppression.

In the words of the collect from today’s liturgy:

Listen kindly to our prayers, O Lord,

and, as our faith in your Son,

raised from the dead, is deepened,

so may our hope of resurrection for your departed servants

also find new strength.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God, for ever and ever.

Amen

Life, Death and US

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As a Bernardin Scholar at Catholic Theological Union (MA in Theology 2015)  I have the honor of carrying the name of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, perhaps most recognized for his articulation of the consistent ethic of life. Simply put, human dignity and the right to life extend from the beginning of life to natural death.

As I read the news this morning, especially this article detailing the deaths that will be caused by the US backing out of its commitments to share our abundant resources with those most in need of life saving assistance across the globe, I remembered these words from an address Cardinal Bernardin gave in 1984:

“It is clearly simply inadequate simply to say that human life is sacred and to explain why this is so. It is also necessary to examine and respond to the challenges to the unique dignity and sacredness of human life today. Human life has always been sacred, and there have always been threats to it. However, we live in a period of history when we have produced, sometimes with the best of intentions, a technology and a capacity to threaten and diminish human life which previous generations could not even imagine.”

I find it tragic, indeed sinful, that those with the power of my nation today who have the capacity to protect and save life are instead taking swift, rash, and devastating actions to withhold resources from those most in need for ideological purposes. Millions of people will literally die in the coming months and years, and in our globalized society we in this country will not be immune.

One child who becomes paralyzed because we let Polio vaccines expire in a warehouse is too much. 200,000 will be paralyzed without US assistance.

One child starving is unacceptable, and these cuts mean one million children will not receive life saving malnutrition treatment.

Some of the contracts that were ended by a terse email claiming these good works were no longer convenient for the US government included:

-TB treatment for one million people including 300,000 children

-The only source of water for 250,000 people in a refugee camp in Democratic Republic of the Congo

-Malaria tests, nets and treatments for 93 million people

-A grant to UNICEF’s polio immunization program, which paid for planning, logistics and delivery of vaccines to millions of children.

-HIV treatment  350,000 people in Lesotho, Tanzania and Eswatini, including 10,000 children and 10,000 pregnant women who were receiving care so that they would not transmit the virus to their babies at birth.

The list goes on and on and we, the American people whose “convenience” was named as the reason why, will be complicit in the deaths that will result if we do not speak up and call this what it is … sinful.

I for one will not and cannot be silent.

I will pray, especially this morning for the intercession of Cardinal Bernardin.

I will act by speaking out and advocating for what is right.

I will stay informed and raise consciousness so that we can all form our conscience.

It is literally a matter of life and death.

St. Edith Stein, pray for us … a Saint for these times

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I have long been haunted by a quote by Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Carmelite nun, Jewish daughter and sister, philosopher, one time atheist, convert, contemplative, martyr of Auschwitz .

“Nowadays I always feel transported into Napoleonic times, and I can imagine in what tension people lived then everywhere in Europe. I wonder: will we live to see the events of our days become ‘history’? I have a great desire to see all this sometime in the light of eternity. For one realizes ever more clearly how blind we are toward everything. One marvels at how mistakenly one viewed a lot of things before, and yet the very next moment one commits the blunder again of forming an opinion without having the necessary basis for it.” Edith Stein: A Self-Portrait in Letters, quoted in the People’s Companion to the Breviary.

This quote is included in the office book published by the Carmelites of Indianapolis. It is the reading for Week IV, Friday, evening prayer. The first time I heard this read during community prayer when I was a candidate back in 2005, my heart stopped. I didn’t know much about Edith Stein, except that she had been killed in a concentration camp. But it led me to learn more about her, which only made the quote that much more powerful.

When she was a professor of philosophy she studied the problem of empathy. Writing in 1925–the same year that Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was published–she proposed that the capacity for empathy ensures “openness among human beings” rather than separation or alienation. She engaged in her philosophical study of this capacity for empathy because she believed it “to be descriptive of human reality and the foundation needed for productive action” for life in the human community.

Now, on this sad day almost 100 years later, a day which our nation’s present leader has chosen to round up children, women and men–largely of one ethnic group–transporting them to camps, separating families and causing terror to thousands of people, I cannot help but ask for her intercession.

Nowadays, I sometimes feel transported to her times. And it is a scary time to be, one that rocks one’s faith in humanity and causes one to cry out to the heavens. What tension we live in today. Are we complicit? Are we bystanders? Or do we stand on the right side of history, crying out “Not in My Name,” and acting on behalf of human dignity?

And then of course there is today’s Gospel reading, the Good Samaritan, which makes it crystal clear what we are to do. What sad twisted irony that the raids against our immigrant brothers and sisters are set to begin today when this Gospel is proclaimed in churches across our nation. Of course, no doubt, many families are staying away from church today, afraid that they might be swept up, no matter what their legal status. And others listen with deaf ears.

Today, the Carmelite Nuns of Great Britain shared a quote from Edith Stein on their Twitter account in which she reflects on today’s Gospel reading.

“‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ This commandment is valid unconditionally and without qualification. The neighbour is not the one whom I ‘like’ but any and every human being with whom I come into contact, without exception.”

Without exception. Unconditional. Without qualification.

When Edith Stein was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 in the chapel of her monastery in the Netherlands and taken to a transit camp for deportation, eventually to Auschwitz, she commented: “I never knew that people could be like this, neither did I know that my brothers and sisters would have to suffer like this. … I pray for them every hour. Will God hear my prayers? He will certainly hear them in their distress.” 

When she arrived at Auschwitz, she ministered to God’s people in distress, even as she was one among them.

“It was Edith Stein’s complete calm and self-possession that marked her out from the rest of the prisoners. There was a spirit of indescribable misery in the camp; the new prisoners, especially suffered from extreme anxiety. Edith Stein went among the women like an angel, comforting, helping, and consoling them. Many of the mothers were on the brink of insanity and had sat moaning for days, without giving any thought to their children. She immediately set about taking care of these little ones. She washed them, combed their hair, and tried to make sure they were fed and cared for.” –Edith Stein,  A Biography, quoted on Carmelites of Boston website.

And so I pray.

St. Edith Stein, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, you who studied empathy, lived a life of compassionate love, pray for us. Inspire empathy, respect for human dignity, and action for justice. Lead those of us who might become bystanders instead to solidarity and compassionate love. Help us to pray for conversion of heart in those who wield their power without enough apparent capacity for empathy or neighborliness. Most of all, be with those who suffer. Comfort the mothers, fathers and children facing inhumanity in these dark times. Pray for us all, that our hearts may become wider, wide enough to encompass all our neighbors, unconditionally and without exception. Amen.