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May 8 , 2006 • VOL. 44, NO. 9 • Oakland, CA
COMMENTARY
•The Christian challenge is to live a just life
•Icons -- a
source of meditation
on the mysteries of the Divine
The Christian challenge is to live a just life
With four
children, justice was a big concern at home. Every Christmas, for example,
my wife and I would count gifts to make sure no child was slighted.
As the kids grew, equal numbers failed as a measurement – a bicycle
is not worth the same as socks. And a lot depended on which child you
were considering.
Each values items differently. To further muddle the waters, one wants
to “live simply,” so he’d rather receive nothing at
all.
A family is a microcosm of the world and where we learn about right and
wrong, love and forgiveness, justice and fairness. In our home, justice
demanded that six people receive their due.
The world has six and a half billion people, so justice is a bit more
complicated. Somebody always seems to get more than the other guy.
People of faith generally recognize a set of safeguards or rights that
are derived from natural and revealed law:
“Authority must recognize, respect and promote essential human and
moral values. These are innate (and) do not have their foundation in provisional
and changeable “majority” opinions, but must simply be recognized,
respected and promoted as elements of an objective moral law.” (Compendium
of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Sec. 397)
Benedict XVI was very clear in his first encyclical, “Deus Caritas
Est”: “A just society must be the achievement of politics,
not of the Church…The direct duty to work for a just ordering of
society…is proper to the lay faithful.”
The pope is at once very liberating (“I don’t have to save
the world”) and challenging (“I need to live justly.”)
Creation of a just society, in short, depends on us – the lay faithful
– as a starting point. We may be passionate about different issues,
different injustice.
Our Church leaders also have an obligation to share and teach the Good
News, so that the Catholics have a solid foundation from which to engage
in public policy debates.
For example, given a grave concern for human life, how does that translate
to women in crisis pregnancies, the death penalty, stem cell research
and other life matters?
Does the sadness we feel when we see a homeless family or a dejected street
dweller drive us to action on affordable housing, addiction relief programs,
or other ways of address societal ills and individual predicaments?
Some of these injustices may result in direct action by us, some may result
in driving us to contact our elected representatives, and others may not
touch us deeply at all.
The Church has provided an excellent blueprint for social justice derived
from the life of Jesus, the lessons of the Gospel and natural law. (For
a list of themes see www.usccb.org.)
Based on current events, I will highlight some of the following which
speak to me:
• Human life and dignity must be respected in a just society. All
other human rights are derived from being alive in the first place. Without
life, no other rights are conceivable and all are secondary.
One of the challenges of political life in the United States – and
a much larger topic – is just how to live and promote this view
without being preemptively dismissed from the public policy debate.
• A broad consideration of who is my neighbor is essential to a
just society. Is it neighborly to brand all undocumented people as criminals,
not deserving of assistance?
If the family who lived next door to us had trouble, wouldn’t most
of us find a way to help? In the family of nations, how can we best help
our national neighbors? Saying “it is their problem” doesn’t
strike me as being very neighborly.
• Religious freedom is central. In the 21st century United States,
that is often interpreted as freedom from religion, not of religion. Some
insist that their interpretation of religion must be imposed on all. In
other cases, some attack conscience clauses as an assault on civil liberties,
instead of a religion’s honest questioning of societal trends.
The debates raging in the United States today – abortion, immigration,
poverty, inadequate housing, education, addiction – are moral and
ethical issues that people of faith have every right to speak out on.
In fact, we are obliged to preach the values of the Gospel. We may disagree
on policy, implementation or, even, what the most important issues are
– as long as the debate remains civil.
And that is what is lacking in so much of politics today. A just society
can not form if it is constantly being polarized.
There are a lot of gradients between all and nothing. People of good will
may disagree.
(Steve Pehanich is executive director of Catholic Charities of California.)
A visitor to the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens,
Greece, walks past an 11th-century wall painting of St. Nicholas, who
is revered in Eastern and Western churches.
CNS PHOTO/REUTERS
Icons -- a source of meditation on the mysteries of the Divine
Over the past
decade, I have become hooked on icons. The first time I fell in love with
an Eastern Christian icon was when a seminary professor explained the
symbolic meaning of Rublev’s Icon of the Trinity. In it, there are
three figures with bowed heads seated around a table set for a meal. This
image represents the three angels entertained by Abraham and Sarah in
Old Testament times (see Genesis 18:1-8), and is viewed by Orthodox Christians
as a prefiguring of the revelation of the Holy Trinity.
The three distinct persons look a lot alike—perhaps as a way of
showing that persons of Father, Son, and Spirit exist as one true God,
in the perfect harmony and inter-relatedness of love.
The drawing perspective is not “realistic”—as evidenced
by the slope of the table—but that is by design. This is not an
“earthly” banquet, but a heavenly one, and you, the viewer,
are invited to that empty space at the table. That’s right: the
Holy Trinity is drawing you into communion with God in the heavenly feast.
Everywhere I go these days, I see Eastern Christian icons making their
way into Roman Catholic quarters. There are icons for sale in Catholic
bookstores. Parishes are purchasing icons for their worship space. I have
even heard of Catholics learning iconography, the sacred task of creating
icons.
If Roman Catholics are going to embrace this ancient spiritual art, I
think it is important for us to learn the deeper meaning and significance
from those who have preserved the theology of the icon from ancient centuries.
We must be careful not to treat icons as merely another art form.
Although icons are not to be worshipped, they are to be treated with the
greatest respect, much more than an American Catholic typically uses for
statues or other sacramentals.
Icons are very near to sacraments in terms of conveying to us a sense
of divine presence. That is why one often sees Orthodox Christians bow
before the icon, stand facing the icon during prayer, or lift their little
children to kiss the image.
One way to expand our understanding is to read books about icons in a
slow, prayerful manner. “Praying with Icons” by Jim Forest
(Orbis) provides a good introduction to icons and how to pray with them,
along with 25 icon meditations.
Henri Nouwen’s “Behold the Beauty of the Lord” (Ave
Maria Press), and Gregory Collins’ “The Glenstal Book of Icons”
(Liturgical Press) also contain beautiful icon reflections.
A recent book by Russian Orthodox priest Father Michael Evdokimov, “Light
from the East” (Paulist) arranges icons in accordance with the liturgical
calendar, along with insights on prayer and liturgy from the Eastern Christian
perspective.
There is a rich theology behind the creation of icons and their use in
prayer. Key to this is the Christian belief that all humans are created
in the image of God.
Because of sin, this image within us has become distorted or spiritually
ill, but Christ came to heal us and restore that image of God.
Just as Christ reveals the true, holy image of God, the holy saints in
heaven also reveal this image of God. Perhaps that’s why the faces
in icons so often look alike: all the saints are filled with the presence
of Christ. Like St. Paul, they can honestly say, “It is no longer
I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (see Galatians 2:20).
While icons are often called “windows of eternity” because
they reveal something of the world beyond, they are also like a mirror.
Gazing upon the icon, we begin to see what God desires of us: for we,
too, are called to be transformed into the image and likeness of Christ.
(Julie McCarty is a spiritual writer living in Eagan, Minnesota.)
