Important Things in Life: Perspective

Here it is Friday in the fourth week of Lent. My how lent flies when no one is having any fun. The people in Fargo/Morehead area are not having any fun. No one along the Red River is having any fun. People are going to lose their homes; whole towns may go under water. Suffering in that area of our nation will be great, and all the Catholic blogs can think about is whether or not the President of the United States should give a speech at Notre Dame. Or, whether or not the Pope was right about condoms.

WHO CARES?

Let us review.

1. Female Circumcision is practiced in many parts of the world.
2. The pope has said that Africa is under a Cloud of Evil. He's right, you know.
3. We execute black men like we were going to run out of them.
4. Starvation and nasty drinking water will kill more people today than you will meet all week long.
5. The south is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina...remember them?
6. Mississippi just got a whammy from some Tornados.
7. We have a drug war brewing on our southern border.
8. We are a nation that supported an administration that developed torture as policy...but oh! they opposed abortion. So much for the value of human life.
9. The world is dying from need of Christ, and we act like we don't care.
10. The Church is acting like it is still 1657.

What am I supposed to say to this? Well, I shall quote something from the first Mass reading today.

they knew not the hidden counsels of God;
neither did they count on a recompense of holiness
nor discern the innocent souls' reward.

I can hear you out there saying "Okay, he's lost it finally. This has nothing to do with what's he's ranting about." Oh, but you are wrong. In spite of all the ten points of my pain, I have seen that those three little lines from the book of Wisdom contain all the hope that will get me through the rest of this day. See what a little Lectio can do for an outlook?

The rest of the reading up to that point is about how the unjust will treat the just man. Before Mass as I pondered it, those three lines jumped out as I realized we do not know the hidden counsels of God, or the recompense of holiness. Also, we really don't even know who an innocent might be.

In Africa, an orphan might be considered a witch, in which case it's okay to kill him. An old woman without anyone to support her might be called a witch, and killed. Of course, that is if they survive the wasteland that colonialism left of Africa long enough, after drinking the nasty water, or just flat out starving to death.

Americans. Oh, we're holy all right. We're so holy we say, "what a shame about all those little brown people. Now stop abortion! Uphold life!" Does that include the little brown people of Africa? Or are they not quite real to us yet? Are they people? Or are they still little brown folks?

You'll accuse me of oversimplification. I accuse you of a cold heart.