Every parent wrestles with this in some form or fashion, realizing that a family unit not adequately caring for itself can be burdensome to society at large, while, at the same time, aware that a family too closed in on itself and its own welfare not only isolates itself from advantages accruing from closer attentiveness to the needs of society at large, but also deprives society of contributions it can provide.

This dilemma affects the choice of relationships allowed children, whether with neighbors or with classmates, and also the selection of a neighborhood in which to raise one’s family, with its school system and parish church.

The impact of connectedness, or lack thereof, also affects the extended family, frequently impacted, in this day and age, by the sometimes frequent geographical moves that a family makes, often to distant places, and this can either turn a family’s focus in on itself, or it can induce an openness to its new surroundings and relationships. The saying of Jesus to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Mk 12.31) heightens the complexity of this issue by placing love of others and love of self on the same level, by equating love of self and others.

When the U.N. pronounced May 15^th of each year to be International Family Day, it recognized the vital connection between the well-being of family life, and of a thriving society. A society that has not been enriched by vibrant families will be needy. The phenomenon of massive migrations of families, across the globe, illustrates people unable to meet their needs, seeking better conditions elsewhere. The root cause of this problem can be either their inability to provide adequately for themselves, or the failure of society to help them, possibly because support is lacking from those capable of providing it. 

Whom does one take care of? Is the family to nurture itself, or society at large, or both? This same issue resonates with a long-standing debate in American society on states’ rights vs. prerogatives of the federal government. This disagreement reflects the same dynamics operative in the discussion about how best to raise a family: by focusing on its own well-being to the extent possible, thereby relieving society at large from the responsibility of caring for it, or by alerting it to caring for the surrounding society on the score that a strong set of social institutions works to the family’s own advantage. When some argue that all politics is local (states’ rights), they mean that only those on the scene can best know and provide for the needs and benefits of those at home. On the other hand, there are those who argue that balkanizing the body politic into discrete units, with each looking to its own needs and benefits, is harmful even to these smaller segments precisely because oblivious of the whole, and they suggest that the individual family best serves its own interests when it engages in linkages and connections to others (federal government).

Our analysis so far tells us that we are looking for a unifying principle between being responsible for your own local unit and community while forming the family consciousness and behavior with regards to a global and deeply interrelated society. The Church consistently teaches us that the family is the basic unit of society and this teaching is not subject to change. The way the church understands this concept however is evolving, consider Pope Benedict XVI’s 2008 World Day of Peace message. In the first six paragraphs he extols this teaching that indeed the family is still the basic unit of society and must be protected as such. But from paragraph 6 on Pope Benedict XVI redefines the family unit within a more interrelated global reality.

The social community, if it is to live in peace, is also called to draw inspiration from the values on which the family community is based. This is as true for local communities as it is for national communities; it is also true for the international community itself, for the human family which dwells in that common house which is the earth. Here, however, we cannot forget that the family comes into being from the responsible and definitive “yes” of a man and a women, and it continues to live from the conscious “yes” of the children who gradually join it. The family community, in order to prosper, needs the generous consent of all its members. This realization also needs to become a shared conviction on the part of all those called to form the common human family. We need to say our own “yes” to this vocation which God has inscribed in our very nature. We do not live alongside one another purely by chance; all of us are progressing along a common path as men and women, and thus as brothers and sisters. Consequently, it is essential that we should all be committed to living our lives in an attitude of responsibility before God, acknowledging him as the deepest source of our own existence and that of others. By going back to this supreme principle we are able to perceive the unconditional worth of each human being, and thus to lay the premises for building a humanity at peace. Without this transcendent foundation society is a mere aggregation of neighbours, not a community of brothers and sisters called to form one great family.

A Passionist concern:

Within the various aspects of Passionist ministries and service we often find ourselves engaging with families. Whether it is in the parishes, retreat houses, schools, missions or any one of our social missions, we almost always find ourselves at the service of the family unit. The family, like our own community, is feeling the pressures of a changing world. Whether they are conscience of it or not they are addressing issues that relate to an emerging cosmology and at minimum they can identify aspects of globalization that is making an impact on the family unit. Consider for example some of the frustration and disconnect that an older generation has with their adult children whose lifestyles and values seem markedly different then their own. Consider also the young married couple that is entering a lifestyle of commitment and self-sacrifice in the midst of a globalized society of massive interrelationships. It becomes our responsibility to offer the family unit a perspective of hope, understanding and possibly some tools or resources that will help their community integrate within this all encompassing phenomenon.  

The family is both self-sufficient and interdependent. It cannot meet all its needs. But if it is too dependent on others, it will find that the available common goods do not always meet its particular needs. By doing for itself what it can, it avoids becoming a drain on public resources. By reaching out to society in solidarity, with others, to provide common goods, it helps form a social bonding with others that meet both its own needs, and the needs of all others. The Passionist JPIC Office and the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center are developing tools and resources to help families integrate this both/and reality. Through methodologies of Christian simple living and sustainable practices like the Lent 4.5 Program of the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center and the “Live Simply so Others May Simply Live” retreat of the Passionist JPIC Office Families can learn how to value their own time together as a safe and protected social unit while growing into a deeper conscience of global solidarity. The mantra that we offer the family is the same that is being said all over the world: Think Globally, Act Locally.  

Finally let us also address the primary issue that we will face if we have not done so already with regards to the family: The issue of identity. The emerging social order is at present giving us a crisis of identity. This is a natural crisis that always accompanies major sociological and cosmological shifts. Our own community is in the midst of this crisis as we try to comprehend the place of our charism, spirituality and community within this globalized reality. We will notice that Catholic families are also being stretched in their identity. The older generation will not know how to cope or relate with a younger generation that is far more technological and interconnected then they ever were. The younger married couples are going to struggle with how they are to identify their own roles while respecting the other members of their intimate family community. Some young men for example will attempt to impose a familiar family male role only to find that their spouse has other hopes and expectations. In many ways our task again will be to listen and to walk with the members of the family that try to comprehend their role and identity within this new reality. But we must also be able to offer guidance, encouragement and a perspective of patience and understanding as they journey on this difficult transition.      

Our Passionist spirituality offers a powerful perspective for the crisis of identity. To begin with we offer an ethic of compassion. The family unit, as with the rest of society, is going through a massive transition and this will require the members of the family to be patient and understanding of the journey that they and their family members are taking. Compassion is the principle by which we endure and share in the suffering of others based on the fact that they do not walk it alone. We are all together on this journey and by sharing our own difficult transition into this emerging reality we become a suffering companion to them. By placing their own crisis within a larger social framework we offer them the ability to see God’s work in all this. Our other great gift of course becomes the spirituality of mystical transition that is at the heart of our own Passionist charism. We are dying to new life. That is the Passionist principle that Fr. Thomas Berry used to offer a spiritual perspective to the massive cosmological transition that we are facing. Within the context of globalization we can also use this principle to help see that God’s hand in this. Individually, socially, we are at the foot of the Cross wondering where all this is headed. This is an opportunity for families, as it is for us, to reflect on the core values and message of our faith and to creatively reintegrate them into the emerging family dynamic.

He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Passionist spirituality is centered on the image and salvific purpose of the Cross throughout the development of humanity and creation. Beyond the vast letters and the diary that St. Paul of the Cross wrote the only booklet that we know he ever produced was an intense spiritual exercise based on the devotion to Christ’s passion which he called “Mystical Death”. In this work and in some of his letters St. Paul of the Cross, the founder of the Passionist (not to be confused with St. Paul the Apostle), centers much of his spiritual direction on a mystical transformation that we are all privy to and from which we grow ever deeper into our relationship with Christ. This mystical transformation occurs to us within our life journey when moments of great suffering happen to us. For St. Paul of the Cross all suffering has the capacity to bring us closer to the redemptive suffering of the Cross, this is the part of the journey that he calls “Mystical death”. It is not an actual death but in a sense it is a part of us that is dying. We let go of something that we have been used to or comfortable with. When we can allow this suffering to transform us and to be redefined by our suffering in way that will change our actions, behaviors and way of thinking  then we begin to participate in a “Divine Rebirth”. In our life journey major events like suffering will give us mini passion and resurrection moments that can transform us towards God and Christ if we allow ourselves to be transformed into a greater existence.

But Fr. Thomas Berry, CP also suggested that the “Wisdom of the Cross” as defined in Colossians challenges us to see the wisdom of suffering as it impacts creation as well. Since humans have the gift of consciousness then we are called to reflect on “a certain coherence between the grandeur of the universe and the majesty of the cross of Christ”.  In the following passage from his article titled “The Wisdom of the Cross” Fr. Berry applies the Passionist spiritually of “mystical death” and “divine rebirth” to the evolving universe.

This coordination can be understood quite clearly when we consider the central role of sacrifice in the redemption process and then observe the central role of sacrifice in the unfolding of the emergent universe. We might even say that the redemptive suffering of Christ lies in the line of creative transformation moments revealed to us in the universe throughout the entire course of its history.

Fr. Thomas Berry integrated the Christian principle of redemptive suffering to the contemporary situation of environmental devastation. In doing this he challenged us to see how we can transform our own relationship with creation. Our world is in the midst of suffering and we bear some responsibility for this suffering. Catholic social teaching has called us to reflect on these environmental issues and to transform our relationship with the earth in order to respond to this level of suffering that will have an impact on us all.

We are called to address the issue of toxic chemical pollutions:

Nor can the moral character of development exclude respect for the beings which constitute the natural world…. We all know that the direct or indirect result of industrialization is, ever more frequently, the pollution of the environment, with serious consequences for the health of the population.-  Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, #34

We are called to address the issues of global warming and climate change:

At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God’s creation and the one human family. It is about protecting both “the human environment” and the natural environment…. We seek to offer a word of caution and a plea for genuine dialogue as the United States and other nations face decisions about how best to respond to the challenges of global climate change. – USCCB, Global Climate Change, #3

We are called to halt environmental degradation like deforestation, desertification and mountaintop removal:

The way humanity treats the environment influences the way it treats itself, and vice versa…. Every violation of solidarity and civic friendship harms the environment, just as environmental deterioration in turn upsets relations in society. Nature, especially in our time, is so integrated into the dynamics of society and culture that by now it hardly constitutes an independent variable. –Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, #51

We are also called to address the situation of water scarcity, a situation that is of particular concern for our own basic existence:

Similar attention also needs to be paid to the world-wide problem of water and to the global water cycle system, which is of prime importance for life on earth and whose stability could be seriously jeopardized by climate change…. The ecological problem must be dealt with not only because of the chilling prospects of environmental degradation on the horizon; the real motivation must be the quest for authentic world-wide solidarity inspired by the values of charity, justice and the common good. – Pope Benedict XVI, January 2010

The Passionist JPIC Office has developed a retreat program based on the redemptive spirituality of the Cross to move us towards a transformed relationship with the earth and each other. The program is called “Living Simply so others may Simply Live.” Towards the end of this program we promote an action program adapted from the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center that will give individuals some practical ideas for adopting a Christian lifestyle that is attentive to these ecological issues and that pursues a right relationship with oneself, the human community, and the environment.  Visit our Passionist JPIC Resource page to see if this program or the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center program is something that you parish or retreat center may want to explore.

Thoughts for your Consideration:
The sea is an awesome image that reveals the great power of creation. On the one hand the sea is turbulent and destructive. Yet the sea is also life-giving and calming. The early apostles who lived around the Sea of Galilee were very much aware of this awesome power.

I myself live by the Atlantic Ocean. I am privileged to witness the great power of the Sea. In the morning as I head over to work I can see the various shipping boats as they are heading out. As we near the middle of summer most of us become attentive to weather forecasts reporting indications of hurricane patterns. In the two-thousand years that we have progressed from the days of those early fishermen, we still can connect with their ambivalence over the destructive power of the sea.

In the first reading we find God using the image of the sea to humble the arrogance of Job. But in this passage God uses the image of the sea to convey two ideas. First, God affirms the Divine power to control the sea. Secondly, we get a sense that God’s own power is very much like the sea’s. The book of Job is about a human who is trying to comprehend the destructive power of God in allowing a good man like him to suffer. In this light we, like Job, become aware of the fact that we are only one component in a great fabric known as creation. For us to make the attempt to accept the will of God we must place ourselves in a mystical relationship with the rest of this great fabric. Then and only then can we hope to comprehend what St. Paul of the Cross called, “the greater Good.”

In the Gospel reading the disciples become aware of Jesus’ divine essence in that he has some control over the force of the sea. And yet Jesus admonishes his disciples for not having enough faith. What is Jesus calling us to do in this passage? Are we expected to have such power as to control and dominate the sea itself? Or is Jesus challenging us to reconsider our relationship with creation so that, through the prism of faith, we may be able let go of our fear of the sea and begin relating with this awesome power in a way that allows us to coexist. Such a challenge is baffling when we consider our traditional relationship to this force of nature, and yet this is the challenge that Jesus places on us.

In the second reading, St. Paul places this overall invitation to relate with creation in an historical perspective. We are called to be witnesses to Christ who for our sake died and was raised. And now all of creation is asked to be renewed under the transformation that began with Christ. That calls us to a special relationship with all of creation. It calls us to adopt a new vision of solidarity. We are familiar with the need to be sensitive to the global human family and begin to at least attempt to see events from the perspective of others. But today we are called to relate in a new way to the rest of the great fabric known as creation. Fr. Thomas Berry (who died on June 1st, 2009), once said:  “We often marvel at other people, particularly impoverished peoples.  Why are they so happy amid such difficulties of life?  They have developed a way of dealing with life creatively from within the structure of their own inner development.  What do we do?  We decide that we cannot accept the disciplines that strengthen from within.  We want to control the outside, we want to change things.  We want to control the very structure and functioning of the natural world.” (Befriending the Earth, p. 116.)

Today, rather than fearfully oppose the sea, we are invited to extend our empathy towards it.  A couple of Berry’s quips, for which he was famous, might help us with this new challenging perspective: “People say you can’t treat people as things; I say you can’t treat things as things.”   -and- “We are literally cousins to every living being”.  So many of them live in the sea.

In the beginning, the story of Genesis says. In my own life as a Passionist, I especially remember two things that date all the way back to 1951. (I won’t tell you how old I was.) Fr. Coleman Haggerty was teaching us about evolution. This was so far back I don’t know whether he was for it or against it, but for some reason he made a point of the Greek translation of that phrase: “in the beginning” . . . en arche (ἐν ἀρχῇ). He noted that these were the same words with which St. John’s Gospel begins . . . because linking the two texts suggests a cosmic dimension of Christ. The words, then, gained what Thomas would call a “numinous” quality for me. The other thing I remember was that 1951 was also the year that Thomas’s teaching career at the Prep Seminary ended—in no small part because in that McCarthy era, he felt he could not teach college level European history without having the students read Karl Marx! This began my interest in his confident intellectual leadership. Today, it allows me to interpret, in terms of the new cosmology, our reading from Genesis when it says humans “have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the cattle and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground”. It would be better to think about Thomas’s quip: “Maybe opera is the degradation of the bullfrogs.”

Genesis speaks of God. Thomas spoke with a sense of mysticism about the Divine. His thoughts are particularly apt on this, the day before the Feast of the Trinity. “There exists in the Christian world” he said, “this sense that the inner life of the divine is community. To say that community is at the heart of the ultimate simplicity (we attribute to the Divine) is a challenging statement.” Barbara Reid, OP, a scripture scholar teaching at Catholic Theological Union, says: “Augustine liked to speak of the three persons as ‘Lover, Beloved, and Love.’ Hildegard of Bingen favored ‘Fire, Burning, and Flashing Forth.’ One might name them ‘Eternal Giver, Receiver and Outburst of Joy’. There is no limit to the ways we can speak of the profound mystery of the Three in One.” She further notes: “the saving activity of God is concrete and visible both in great moments and in the routines of everyday life.” (America Magazine. May 25, 2009)

Thomas would so agree with her that there is no limit to the ways we can speak of the profound mystery of the Three in One. He considered the model of differentiation, inner articulation, and communion— insights emerging from our scientific understanding of the universe—as another way. He thus offered a vast theological program to further articulate the numinous meaning of ἐν ἀρχῇ.

Our second reading is insisting we realize that Divine love is gifted to us; the gift is primary . . . our love of the Divine is secondary. The genius of the author of this epistle is that he gives us a practical guideline: “No one has ever seen God, yet if we love one another God dwells in us and God’s love is brought to perfection in us.” In the several beautiful and moving eulogies of Wednesday’s service in Greensboro, various members of Thomas’s family introduced us to the many ways this man of towering intellect also proved to be a man of outstanding heart. By St. John’s standard: “The person without love has known nothing of God, for God is love.” Thomas certainly proved himself to be in possession of profound knowledge of the Divine. That is what he meant in yet another quip: Resist Ecstasy!

But Thomas gave us a challenge in what he called the Third Mediation of the Divine. Succeeding the Christian mediation found in sisterly and brotherly love, but not dispensing with it, the Third Mediation of the Divine is discovered in the numinous universe. He said: “The basic mood of the future might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through Earth. . . . Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture. (Dream of the Earth, 137)

Finally the Gospel for this Mass of the Resurrection deals with the counter intuitive Evangelical norm of “turning the other cheek” and learning to love those who would present themselves to us as enemies. Each person here, I am sure, could cite numerous examples of this altruistic behavior in Thomas’s life story that would surely make us expect that St. Luke’s sense of the exuberance of the Resurrected life applies to him: “Give and it shall be given to you . . . good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over.” However, I feel that St. Luke is also giving us the opportunity to contemplate a further aspect of the numinous cosmos. St. Luke’s sense of exuberance suggests what Thomas called the asymmetry—the wild disproportion—between the gift and response.” He cites the sacrifice parents make for their children. If the child responds with gratitude, the asymmetry is accomplished. Yet that too can demand sacrifice. Thomas said, further: “The thing that exists in our times and the root of the tragedy might be considered to be our unwillingness to make the return for what has been given us. . . . We did not choose to be here, the story (of the universe) selected us to be here. Once we are here, we must be willing to fulfill the destiny assigned to us; that is our grandeur, that is our blessedness, that is our joy, that is our peace. . . . We are not making the journey simply by ourselves. We are making it with the entire universe community, the human community, the life community, the earth community. . . . All the great enormous sacrifice.” He later names that sacrifice as “the entire industrial system” and describes that system as “taking beneficial resources and giving back poisonous products, rather than the return of gratitude.” (Befriending the Earth, 132- 133)

But the last note is not tragedy, but dance. Along with Thomas, we are aware that the story of the universe has “brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, (so) there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process.”

• Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18
• Romans 8:31b-34
• Mark 9:2-10

Thoughts for your consideration:

This Sunday we are asked to see things in a new way. Although the apostles have been with Jesus for a while now there is nothing that can quite prepare them for the ultimate cosmological experience of the Resurrection. It is not an accident that Mark places the transfiguration story right after Jesus makes his first announcement that he will die. No sooner does he make this announcement when Peter balks at the idea. Jesus realizes that asking his disciples to follow him in what appears to be an absolute social tragedy is going to be a hard sell. In the case of the apostles their limited human perspective was going to require some divine intervention if the gospel story of God’s ultimate love of humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus was going to make any sense.

As expected Peter, James and John were dumbfounded by the experience. They know not what to do and Peter awkwardly offers to build tents. But the experience fulfilled its purpose. It allowed the three leaders of the disciples to be open to the great divine mystery that was unfolding. They accepted a new cosmology whereby God would reconcile himself with our humanity, even though they could not understand this. But whenever Jesus again discusses the mystery of his death and Resurrection, the apostles (probably looking toward Peter to speak up as he did the first time) accept what they obviously do not understand.

Abraham goes through a very similar story. He is faithful to the one God and through God’s intercession his only son was born. But now God begins to act like the other Canaanite gods. He demands blood sacrifice from his first-born son. This is a typical ritual, tribal covenants and divine allegiances were often sealed through the blood sacrifice. So Abraham goes to fulfill his social responsibility. But at the moment where Abraham, who is at this point full of sorrow, is ready to deliver the blow the angel of the Lord stops him. Abraham is challenged to see his relationship with the Divine author of creation from a new lens.

Ultimately God is a God of life and that is what we believe through faith. However, because of the reality of sin and injustice in our world, this new life will come after a painful journey where we purge ourselves from the social and material values of our world. Catholic social teaching describes to us the lens of the common good, solidarity and Care for the Earth. Philosophically many of us can accept these principles as good and worthy of pursuit, but can we really know the full impact of what they mean. Can we accept the implied sacrifices that it will take for us to live our lives in a way that truly consistent with these principles. Can we really see the world as a global community and can we identify the entire human community as our brothers and sisters.

In his message on January 1 Pope Benedict XVI wrote “The recent crisis demonstrates how financial activity can at times be completely turned in on itself, lacking any long-term consideration of the common good.” Maybe we have to see our economic system in a new way (especially in light of the current fiscal problems) as something more directed to the common good of all and not the enrichment of the few.

Questions for Reflection in your Faith Sharing Group:

• How has your awareness and commitment to Christian values changed over the years?
• How have you grown in your commitment to social issues?
• To issues of peace and justice? 
• This Lent, how is God calling you to see things in a new way – from a new point of view?
• What is your experience of working with immigrants and refugees?
• Do you know any? How have they taught you to know or see?