“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my community, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.” You are Mary, and upon this beloved I will build my community. You are Perpetua and Felicity, and upon this endurance and happiness I will build my community. You are Hans and Sophie Scholl, and upon this grace and wisdom I will build my community. You are Jordan and Andre Anchondo, and upon this flow and courage I will build my community and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
It is not merely upon the word play of a different name given, but upon the difference of a lived conscience that the community of peacemakers is built. It is upon our integrity held dear in communion that we, like Peter, Mary, and so many others, make a difference in this world. We are each of us saints, beautiful and virtuous. Given to each of us is the mission to be the difference of peacemaking in a warmaking word. How are we giving witness to our sainthood? How are we living our peacemaking mission? How is it even imagined by some of us that we make such a difference when we live for empire, in witness to hatred, for the mission of violent civil war? You are Donald, and upon your narcissistic rule you would have the gates of the netherworld prevail against us. You are Mike, and upon your blasphemy you would have the gates of the netherworld prevail against us. How do we even imagine that as one of their supporters, in action or in silent abidance, we make a difference as witnesses to to peacemaking? How do we even imagine that upon our imperialism, our blasphemy, our destruction any peacemaker’s community is being built? As we imagine such a thing or intend it, we are crafting the netherworld, the world of the dead. We are unleashing the world of the dead upon the living. We tell ourselves we support Donald and Mike in the cause of righteousness – our moral absolute to end abortion will prevail. So it is that upon their fraud and bigotry, their incompetence and intended thuggery, their cruelty and violence, their white supremacy and neo-Nazism, and upon each and every time in the name of being anti-abortion, we supplied a compliant moral relativism, the netherworld has indeed been prevailing. Each time we complied we proved the motto of moral relativism, “the end justifies the means.” Deceiving ourselves into believing that abortion will, in the end, be outlawed we justified compliance to anti-life means. Each time we caved to the rulers we proved we had no moral absolute guiding us and only moral relativism ruling us. Thus, by means of sacrificing the sanctity of life with each and every deadly sellout we are responsible for this anti-life netherworld end. It is the netherworld in which the anti-abortion movement is led by the pro-abortion Caesar Trump, self-described as “very pro-choice.” It is the netherworld that explains and makes current the one crafted by German Christians who destroyed community in their sell out to Hitler. Those sell outs too, each and every time, also justified their immoral means and produced horrifically immoral ends. Sellouts, in their means and in their ends, never make a difference because they conform to the prevailing ruler and do not give a witness for peace.
The story is told of a young boy walking along a shoreline who is observed from afar. He is seen occasionally bending down, picking something up, and throwing it out into the sea. When the observer catches up to the boy he asks, “What are you doing?” The boy tells him, “The tide washed these starfish onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves. When the sun gets high, they’ll die, unless I help them back in.” The observer scoffed, “There’s thousands of starfish. You won’t make any difference.” The boy bent down again, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it out into the water. He then smiled and said, “I made a difference to that one.”
Prayer: Spirit, guide us in making a difference, a Pro-Life difference, each and every time.
Question: What is my moral relativism in this crisis that is asking me to make an absolute moral difference?
August 23, 2020 Gospel Matthew 16:13-20 Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sun, Aug 30, 2020 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time