Weekly Message

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

A friend of mine gave me the book Whose Church? A Concise Guide to Progressive Catholicism, by Daniel C. Maguire, a theologian at Marquette University. It is a fascinating little book. Very provocative. At the end of the chapter called “War Is For Dummies” he speaks about the “wisdom of tears.” Let me quote it here:

“I was amazed, as a young Catholic boy, when I saw on the back of a Catholic prayer book, the Missale Romanum, a prayer begging for the gift of tears. It said, ‘Oh God, strike into the duritiam, the hardness of my heart, and bring forth a saving flood of tears.’ As a little boy, I thought, ‘Who wants tears?’ When you grow up you don’t have them anymore, especially if you are a man.’ And that precisely is the problem. If you are without tears in a world of sorrows, it is a tragedy. You are not human. And take note, Christians, you are not Christic. Jesus wept. He looked at that city and said, ‘If only you knew the things that make for your peace, but you don’t.’ And he broke down sobbing. He was like the prophet Jeremiah, who said that unless our eyes run with tears, we will come to a fearful ruin.

Let us update that Jesus text. Let us have him say, ‘America, America, if only you knew the things that make for your peace, if only you could see the answer is not in your weaponry. If only I could, like a mother hen, wrap the wings of my vision around you, wings of justice and peace and compassion, if you could use your great talent and wealth to work to end world hunger, world thirst, world illiteracy, no one would hate you, no one would crash planes into your buildings. You could then burn those war chariots in a holy fire and you would at last know the nourishing energy of peace.’”

The quote comes from the end of the chapter on the Just War Theory. He easily could have included the domestic suffering that comes from our addiction to war and the machinery of war as it sucks up the resources that should go to the poor and powerless in our country. Tears are in order.

Faithfully,

Father Carl Diederichs