IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

In his novel, “Oscar and Lucinda,” Peter Carey offers this colorful image of gossip. The setting is a small town where there are rumors about the priest and a particular young woman. Here’s his metaphor: “The vicar of Woolahra then took her shopping and society, always feeling shopping to be the most intimate activity, was pleased to feel the steam pressure rising in itself as it got ready to be properly scandalized – its pipes groaned and stretched, you could hear the noises in its walls and cellars. They imagined he paid for her finery. When they heard this was not so, that the girl had sovereigns in her purse – enough, it was reported, to buy the priest a pair of onyx cufflinks – the pressure did not fall, but stayed constant, so that while it did not reach the stage where the outrage was hissing out through the open valves, it maintained a good rumble, a lower note which sounded like a growl in the throat of a smallish dog.”

What an apt image! Gossip does resemble steam hissing from a radiator or the growl of a small dog, and yet it’s important. For most of our lives, we form community around it. How so?

Imagine going out for dinner with a group of colleagues. While there isn’t overt hostility among you, there are clear differences and tensions. You wouldn’t naturally choose go out to dinner together, but you have been thrown together by circumstance and are making the best of it.

You have dinner together and things go along quite pleasantly. There’s harmony, banter and humor at the table. How do you manage to get on so well despite and beyond differences? By talking about somebody else. Much of the time is spent talking about others on whose faults, eccentricities, and shortcomings we all agree. Alternatively, we talk about shared indignations. We end up having a harmonious time together because we talk about someone or something else whose difference from us is greater than our differences from each other. Of course, you are afraid to leave the table because you already suspect whom they will be talking about then! Your fear is well founded.

Until we reach a certain level of maturity, we form community largely around scapegoating, that is, we overcome our differences and tensions by focusing on someone or something about whom or which we share a common distancing, indignation, ridicule, anger or jealousy. That’s the anthropological function of gossip – and it’s a very important one. We overcome our differences and tensions by scapegoating someone or something. That’s why it’s easier to form community against something rather than around something and why it’s easier to define ourselves more by what we are against than by what we are for.

Ancient cultures knew this and designed certain rituals to take tension out of the community by scapegoating. For example, at the time of Jesus within the Jewish community a ritual existed that essentially worked this way: At regular intervals, the community would take a goat and symbolically adorn it with the tensions and divisions of the community. Among other things, they would drape it with a purple cloth to symbolize that it symbolically represented them and push a crown of thorns into its head to make it feel the pain of their tensions. (Notice how Jesus is draped in these exact symbols when Pilate shows him to the crowd before the crucifixion: Ecce homo … Behold your scapegoat!) The goat was then chased off to die in the desert. It leaving the community was understood as taking the community’s sin and tension away, leaving the community free of tension by its banishment.

Jesus is our scapegoat. He takes away our sin and division, though not by banishment from the community. He takes away our sins by taking them in, carrying them, and transforming them so as not to give them back in kind. Jesus takes away sin in the same way as a water filter purifies, by holding the impurities within itself and giving back only what is pure.
When we say Jesus died for our sins, we need to understand it this way: He took in hatred and gave back love; he took in curses and gave back blessing; he took in bitterness and gave back graciousness; he took in jealousy and gave back affirmation; and he took in murder and gave back forgiveness. By absorbing our sin, differences, and jealousies, he did for us what we, in a less mature and less effective way, try to do when we crucify each other through gossip.

And that’s Jesus’ invitation to us: As adults, we are invited to step up and do what Jesus did, namely, take in the differences and jealousies around us, hold them, and transform them so as not to give them back in kind.

Then won’t we need scapegoats any more, and the steam-pipes of gossip will cease hissing and the low growl of that smallish dog inside us will finally be silent.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

ON ORDINARY TIMES
By Lucia A. Silecchia

As 2022 came to an end, so too the earthly life of Pope Benedict XVI drew to its close. “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.”

In the days and weeks to come, much will be said about his legacy as Pope and his impact as a leading theologian of his era. I will be reflecting on that myself. As a lawyer and not a theologian, I have studied Pope Benedict’s writings on the social issues of our time to see what they may mean for pressing questions of law and public policy. I have found in them – particularly in his trio of encyclicals – a deep well from which many will continue to draw deep insights on the moral roots of modern maladies.

Personally, however, Pope Benedict’s passing has given me insights on something else – a complement to lessons learned from his predecessor almost eighteen years ago. Both St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI taught me, and the world, something profound about how to face the end of life.

St. John Paul II is the first pope I truly remember. A relatively young man when he became pope, he captivated the world with his strength, energy, peripatetic journeys to the ends of the earth, and his role on the world stage through some of the most pivotal events of the late twentieth century.

The early images of St. John Paul II showed a vigorous man on ski slopes, alighting airplanes, and with agility, kissing the ground as he entered new countries for the first time.

Yet, as he grew older, St. John Paul II showed us all, in a very public way, what it is like to suffer through illness. So often, those who are ill, frail and approaching death are hidden away. They can too often be separated from friends and family who no longer visit because it is difficult to see loved ones change. Many want to remember those in declining health “as they really were” – without realizing that when we are weak and suffering we are still, truly, who we “really” are.

I remember the very last images released of Pope St. John Paul II. They showed a man weakened by illness and bereft of the robust energy that had marked the earlier years of his papacy. Yet, in that he showed the world the great dignity of those who suffer on the way to eternal life. It is unlikely most of us will ever approach death in such a public way. However, suffering and infirmity is part of our common humanity.

From St. John Paul II, I learned a great deal about the acceptance of suffering, the importance of keeping those who suffer at the center of our lives and not at the margin, and the dignity of those who are facing their final illnesses and the physical deprivations that accompany that journey.

From Pope Benedict XVI, I learned another lesson – the importance of prayer as preparation for passage from this life. When he shocked the world with his resignation nearly a decade ago, Pope Benedict XVI turned from a very public life of action to a secluded life of prayer and contemplation. His prayer was a way to serve the church through a very powerful way vastly different from the way he had served the church through so many decades of his life.

More recently, however, public statements and reports to the press have made it clear that Pope Benedict XVI was also deep in prayer in preparation for the end of his own life when he – like all of us – would meet his God.

In that, I learned a second valuable lesson. When I look ahead, I make plans for how I will live if I am blessed with the gift of years. I think about my physical health, financial security, and what my last wishes might be for myself and my family. These things still do not cross my mind very often, but I understand the practical wisdom in attending to them with care. From Pope Benedict, I have learned that it is not merely the practical and physical planning that need attention. Rather, time spent in prayer is the often neglected and best preparation for a happy death.

It is unlikely that most of us – unless called to a contemplative vocation – will willingly make such a dramatic surrender of the active life to devote the final decade of our earthly life to prayer. Yet, if it is in prayer that we better come to know and love God, then there can be no better preparation for eternity than growing to know and love the One with whom we hope to spend that eternity. From Pope Benedict XVI I saw that lesson lived.

These two Popes – collaborators in life and in prayer – will be remembered for what they did, wrote, said and decided during their lives. But for their fellow pilgrims, the very different lessons they taught about life’s end were their final gifts and blessings.

Thank you both for the ways you surrendered your ordinary times.

(Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.)

Reflections on Life
By sister alies therese

Betrayal is a horrible experience. If you have not been betrayed, you are most fortunate; many, if not most of us have been.

The children massacred in Uvalde, the people killed in El Paso for being Hispanic or Buffalo for being Black, or Dachau for being Jewish, have certainly been betrayed. We have betrayed one another through poverty (food insecurity, unfair wages, poor health care), abortion, war, mass shootings and the death penalty, and, of course, abuse and poor eldercare. And perhaps the worst betrayal of all is convenient, rigid or complacent Christianity, Catholicism.

These keep us from friendship with God; expressed as a deepening groan or a desire to serve self. Can I set betrayal aside and learn to put others first? Will I ever be friends with God again? Where has the light of Epiphany gone? The Wise Ones chose the Light by betraying King Herod.

We can experience overpowering and challenging choices when on the road to recovery and we see that in AA or Al-anon, and various sorts of other helping communities. Depending upon how one is addicted or challenged can make choices toward recovery even more difficult. In his book “The Betrayal Bond” (1997), Dr. Patrick Carnes tells this little story:

“Tribal peoples in Africa put out slotted cages filled with fresh fruit. The cages are anchored securely to the ground. Monkeys discover the cages, reach in, and grab the fruit. Of course, they cannot retrieve the fruit because as long as the hand holds the fruit, it will not fit through the bars of the cage, the monkeys are trapped. They could let go of the fruit and escape, but they refused to let go … trauma bonds are similar….” (page 210)

We know from AA that even when one has been betrayed by family or others, institutions, and certainly booze/drugs recovery is essential to living in the light. We also know that Bill W. (co-founder of AA) received advice from Dr. Carl Jung to tell stories to be set free of strangulation by fear and intimidation. These stories might reveal how betrayal has featured in life and made friendships difficult. Perhaps the stories might show how one has become a betrayer.

So, what to do now? What have we refused to let go of in order to put betrayal in the past? Are we stuck in a trauma bond? Is the light ever to be seen again?

What is the way back to friendship? In order to restore our friendship God took on a human nature to teach us how to forgive. Betrayal features in Jesus’ life more than just the Garden. Each time followers rejected what He taught; the message of God was betrayed. When we don’t stop the tongues of gossip or stand for something we believe in, we betray not only others but our inner life. Certainly, we are betrayed when we continue any big lie…that green is yellow, yellow is green, perpetuating the lie and making our ability to follow the light more difficult.

Arthur Simon, in his book “How Much Is Enough?” (2003) relates this:

“A six-year-old boy, taken to an ER following an accident was given a glass of milk. ‘How deep shall I drink?’ he asked. He came from a very poor family in which something as precious as milk had to be shared with six brothers and sisters, drinking too deeply cheated others.” (page 132) Of course, his choice is to share or to betray his siblings. What will he do? What might I do?

George Eliot sometime in 1850 said: “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”

“Forgiveness,” says Christina Baldwin, “is the act of admitting we are like other people.” We mess up, we are selfish, and we might betray ourselves when forgiveness is not on the table. Servant of God, Dorothy Day (and Peter Maurin) remind us of a basic Catholic Worker tenant: make it easy for people to be good. There is no betrayal in that. No, it is the light.

Jesus showed us the way and as we move into this new year, we might have pause to remember that – on the night He was betrayed, He left us Himself in the Eucharist to be always with us.

In 1785, Anne Letitia Barbauld noted: “Nobody ought to be too old to improve; I should be sorry if I was, and I flatter myself I have already improved considerably by my travels….” I should very much like to improve … You?
BLESSINGS.

(Sister alies therese is a canonically vowed hermit with days formed around prayer and writing.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

The full story of how Jesus Christ came to be born includes elements that we do not easily imagine when we sing our Christmas hymns. Jesus’ family tree and bloodline were far from perfect and this, according to the renowned biblical scholar, Raymond Brown, needs to be kept in mind whenever we are tempted to believe in Jesus, but want to reject the church because of its imperfections, scandals and bad history. Jesus may have been immaculately conceived. However, as the Gospels make clear, there is much in his origins that is as jolting as any contemporary church scandal.

For example, in giving us the origins of Jesus, the Gospels point to as many sinners, liars and schemers in his genetic and historical lineage as they do to saints, honest people, and men and women of faith.

We see, for example, in Jesus’ genealogy a number of men who didn’t exactly incarnate the love, justice and purity of Jesus. Abraham unfairly banished Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, rationalizing that God favors some people over others; Jacob, by scheming and dishonesty, stole his brother Esau’s birthright; and David, to whom Jesus explicitly connects himself, committed adultery and then had the husband of his mistress murdered to cover up an unwanted pregnancy in order to marry her.

Moreover, the women mentioned in Jesus’ background don’t fare much better. It is interesting to note, as Raymond Brown does, which women don’t get mentioned in reference to Jesus’ origins. The Gospels don’t mention Sarah, Rebekah or Rachel, all of whom were regarded as holy women. Whom do they mention?

They mention Tamar, a Canaanite woman, someone outside the Jewish faith, who seduces her father-in-law, Judah, so that she can have a child. They mention Rahab, also a Canaanite woman, and an outsider, who is in fact a prostitute. Next, they mention Ruth, a Moabite woman who is also outside the official religion of the time. Then they mention Bathsheba, a Hittite woman, an outsider who commits adultery with David and then schemes to make sure one of her own offspring inherits the throne.

All of these women found themselves in a situation of marriage or pregnancy that was either strange or scandalous, yet each was an important divine instrument in preserving the religious heritage that gave us Jesus. It is no accident that the Gospels link these women to Mary, Jesus’ mother, since she too found herself in a ritually taboo pregnancy and in a marital situation that was peculiar.

Further still, beyond these less-than-saintly characters in Jesus’ lineage, we see as well that some of the institutions that shaped the Jewish faith were also less than saintly. Institutionalized religion back then suffered from many of the same problems it has today, including the corrupt use of power.

Indeed, Israel itself (perhaps justifying the deed by referring to what Jacob had done to Esau) seized the land of Canaan from those who had a prior claim to it, claiming ownership by divine privilege.

Finally, and not insignificantly, we see too that the lineage that gave us Jesus built itself up not just on the great and the talented, but equally on the poor and insignificant. In the list of names that makes up the ancestors of Jesus, we see some that are famous but also others who can make no claim to specialness or significance. Jesus’ human blood, scripture tells us, was produced equally by the great and the small, the talented and the talentless.

What’s to be learned for all of this? Perhaps Raymond Brown captures it best. What all this tells us, he says, is that God writes straight with crooked lines, that we shouldn’t accept an overly idealized Christ, and that our own lives, even if they are marked by weakness and insignificance, are important too in continuing the story of the incarnation.

As Brown puts it: “The God who wrote the beginnings with crooked lines also writes the sequence with crooked lines, and some of those lines are our own lives and witness. A God who did not hesitate to use the scheming as well as the noble, the impure as well as the pure, men to whom the world harkened and women upon whom the world frowned – this God continues to work through the same mélange. If it is a challenge to recognize in the last part of Matthew’s genealogy that totally unknown people were part of the story of Jesus Christ, it may be a greater challenge to recognize that the unknown characters of today are an essential part of the sequence.”

Christianity isn’t just for the pure, the talented, the good, the humble and the honest. The story of Jesus Christ was also written and keeps being written by the impure, by sinners, by calculating schemers, by the proud, by the dishonest and by those without worldly talents. Nobody is so bad, so insignificant, so devoid of talent, or so outside the circle of faith, that he or she is outside the story of Christ.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington
Gift giving and the Christmas season go together like trees and decorations. It’s hard to think of one without the other. Adults understand this, but children usually have a different perspective.

When I was a little boy, Christmas to me was all about getting gifts rather than giving them. What was the best present you received as a child? I can still remember a few of mine. When I was in second grade my parents gave me a little robot. It was only about a foot tall, but it was simply the finest Christmas toy ever because it would come alive when I moved it forward and backward by remote control! Another year my favorite present was an illustrated copy of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, a book I still have on my shelf after all these years.

When I was around ten my favorite was a transistor radio. That little Zenith model really opened up the world to me. It wasn’t even necessary to stay home to listen to it. I could take it with me practically anywhere and listen to ball games and all the wonderful music of that era. To my young, immature way of thinking that was the greatest present ever.

But as I grew older those childhood attachments gradually became less significant as the things that really matter began to occupy more of my time and thoughts. Eventually, I came to realize that residents of Western democracies have been endowed with individual God-given liberties that oppressed and/or poverty-stricken peoples around the world do not have. How often do Americans take for granted clean air and water, abundant food, warm clothing, comfortable housing, good health and loving family members? And what a wonderful blessing to have children and grandchildren! Of course, not everyone in our country enjoys these benefits, but a lot of us do, and we should take the time to acknowledge these things and give thanks for them. And most of all we should be grateful for the gift of life itself.

But rather than focus on things received, our thoughts should concentrate on giving during this holy season. This means not only material gifts but monetary ones as well. Everybody has probably received requests for charitable contributions in which the sender lists a series of suggested donation amounts, ending with a blank space and the words “my best gift,” or something to that effect. The amount written in may be less than the minimum suggested donation or it may be greater. Either way, that phrase allows the contributor to set the amount according to his or her own resources.

This raises a question worth pondering: What’s my best offering? A friend of mine likes to say, God sent us His best: His Son and His Spirit. He loved us so much that He sent His love, His only Son, to be our Savior; and He sent the love He shares with the Son, the Holy Spirit, to be our advocate and comforter. Those are gifts that can’t be topped!

The Holy Family also left us beautiful models to follow. Mary gave her best when she said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38) What hope would the human race have if she had not agreed to become the Mother of God? In addition, Joseph set a high standard when he responded in the affirmative to God’s call by lovingly taking Mary into his home rather than denouncing her as the law prescribed.

Jesus offered Himself as well. The King of Kings left his celestial home and humbled himself by becoming the Babe in the manger. Then, at the end of His earthly life he sacrificed himself on the Cross in order to pay our sin debt. And now, so that we might have the Divine Life within us He offers His precious Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

So, if the members of the Holy Family gave their finest gifts, why shouldn’t I try to do likewise? Giving of self in service to others is not easy, but it affords tremendous bonuses because the giver receives abundant spiritual gifts in return. As St. Paul, quoting the words of Jesus, tells us: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

During this time of year many people, unfortunately, suffer from sadness and loneliness. If you are one of these, here’s a suggestion to bring some happiness into your life: do something to help another person. In doing so you will experience the joy that comes from cooperating with God’s plan. Here’s a quotation that helps put service to others in perspective: “Whenever you have an opportunity to do something for someone, do it, because you may be the instrument God uses to answer that person’s prayer.” The chorus to an old Protestant hymn gracefully captures the essence of these thoughts: “Others, Lord, yes others. Let this my motto be. Help me to live for others, that I may live like Thee.”
If we have God’s love in our hearts, it will be nearly impossible to keep it bottled up inside; we will feel compelled to share it with others. Christmas is about giving, and nothing has greater lasting value than the gift of God’s love. The more we love, the more we will want to give of ourselves. After all, that’s the most precious thing we can give this Christmas.

(Melvin Arrington is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages for the University of Mississippi and a member of St. John Oxford.)