By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
Facing the World Crisis today!
17th Sunday in Ordinary time
2 Kings 4: 42-44; Ephesians 4: 1-6; John 6: 1-15
The times are bad…those are words that we hear from almost all quarters today – economic or cultural or sanitary or moral or political or religious or ecclesial… every corner of human existence seems to echo this judgement invariably. Need, misery, unbalanced growth, neglect of the majority middle class, domination of a few, the gross problem of the migrants, resistance and revolts all over, a general sense of loss of meaning and a sort of helplessness that fills the minds of every person of good will, and added to all these the Pandemic that is still having its sway over humanity at large… that is what the scene looks like today!
How do we revive the earth, and the humanity… it is by acting hand in hand with GOD. We are presented with three mentalities to grow in, for the revival of this world today. Three mentalities that can be called GOD mentalities – Giving oneself, Other centred and Doing one’s part!
GIVE… a heart to give – that is the essential correction needed for the humanity today. We need to have a heart to give, to give with all our heart. That is what God does. God gives, and gives, and gives! When we begin to grow within us a heart to give, to truly give not merely of what we do not want, nor of what is excess with us but of ourselves and of what we actually need and of all that we have, that is Giving after the heart of God. God is essentially a Giver! Elijah is ready to Give, Jesus wants to Give, God is ever ready to Give! Do I have the heart to Give? We know the tendency to Give today…calculations of gain and profit, returns and publicity dominate the act of giving. They become more personal statements of polpularity and establishing what one wants to achieve. True Giving that is divine has to be an authentic self-giving, as the Lord gives and never counts.
OTHERS…an eye for the others – is the radical perspective that needs to guide humanity today. People have ceased to think of the other. Whether a daily scene of jostling in the public places like railway stations or bus terminus or the national politics and policy lobbying…everywhere humanity has grown cold to the other, thinking only of the self, only of the petty private interests. Even when they think of the common good, they think of what is common to a small circle to where they belong, and not the Greater Common Good…the good of the whole humanity, the good of the whole world – Lokasamgraha (the welfare of the world), Sarvodhaya (the rise of all), vasudhaiva kutumbaka (the world-family spirit), Universal brotherhood and Sisterhood, the care for the Common Home…these have become merely wishful thinking! Humanity needs to revive its other-centered existence – with the conviction that when the whole humanity is well, I shall be well too. It cannot be definitely the other way around!
DO… a mind determined to do – this is the fundamental mindset that can redeem the situation today. At times the good willed persons can lose heart seeing the enormity of the opposition. The Word today presents to us the determination of the man who brought the barley loaves to Elijah, Philip who brought the boy with the few loaves to Jesus… they knew what they were doing actually is nothing before the task that lay before them, but they were kind of determined about what they were doing. The Lord will provide the change that is needed for the times, but the times require that we act hand in hand with God. Lamenting and cursing the times would do no good, unless we do on each of our part, whatever little that we can, joining hands with as many as we can, in doing which we shall be acting with God hand in hand. There is no point in waiting for the opportune time or the best ocassion to rise to – but wherever we are and in whichever mode we can, we need to make the little difference that we can: that will be making present the Reign of God wherever we are.
In Giving, in being sensitive to the Other, and in being determined to Do…, we act hand in hand with God, in fact we initiate the very “new thing” that God wants to do – the new heavens and the new earth, the Reign of God here and now!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.