Sustainability
Today’s readings: Proverbs 9, 1-6; Ephesians 5, 15-20; John 6, 51-58.
The challenge for Christians living today is how to rise to the occasion without giving in to temptations of pessimism or apocalyptic reading of whatever surrounds us. At every juncture of history these were real temptations, and believers have always been very prone to superficial reading of the times.
This is precisely what St Paul speaks about in Ephesians when he writes: “This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it”. On a very positive note, St Paul exhorts his community not to miss out on the golden opportunities that present themselves in life.
There are moments in life which we normally consider as opportune. ‘Opportune’ means a favourable time, an opportunity to grasp, something not to be missed.
From a faith perspective, it is a moment of grace. It is a time not to miss, but at the same time which can so easily be missed.
In today’s readings, the personification of wisdom in Proverbs is coupled with Jesus himself who in John’s classic discourse in chapter six is presented as the guarantee of a life that never ends, or as the remedy against all that kills in us the spirit of true life.
Wisdom cannot be confused with knowledge, which we acquire and which makes us believe we can explain or dominate all that life is about. Wisdom is something we need to aspire to; it comes from above, it is not an achievement.
There is a certain basic stupidity in our lives in the way we approach whatever we go through. At times this lends itself to the presumption of knowing it all. Presumption kills the spirit in us, it leaves no opening towards redemption.
Presumption impoverishes the spirit, because the moment we are led to believe that we have conquered the world, we come to realise that we ourselves have rather been conquered and enslaved.
St Paul in Ephesians speaks about dissipation and being thoughtless or stupid, but also about the possibility of redeeming the times we live in.
Wisdom enables us to have foresight, to see in depth, not superficially.
The gospel today speaks of a wisdom that is somewhat different from that of the desert fathers who entered into solitude and retirement, who lived in hermitages in search of enlightenment.
The gospel today, in the words of Jesus as daily and spiritual nourishment, suggests a different wisdom that we need daily, that makes us grasp the moment we live in.
It is the enlightenment that comes our way. It is the revelation of God’s wisdom to children and those who are like children; it is the wisdom that seeks out the poor andmarginalised in the strategic points of the city.
It is the wisdom that comes down from heaven and that makes life sustainable. The Jews kept arguing about this without even noticing that they were missing the whole point.
That was the sin of the Jews and that is our sin whenever, like the Jews, we miss God’s wisdom in time, in the here and now when we most need to be enlightened.
It’s always like crucifying Jesus to save religion, the same story repeating itself to this day.
To have this wisdom, to be enlightened by God’s grace, is what makes life sustainable. And that is what first and foremost we needand what Jesus is speaking about in this gospel.
Unfortunately, along the way we always fall prey to stupidity and gratify ourselves with easy substitutes.
Sandra Schneiders, who authored numerous books on spirituality, has written that “the theology which undergirded our spirituality in the past cannot be resuscitated, and intelligent people cannot live a spirituality which is theologically bootless. We are, to a large extent, running on theological empty”.
Substitutes do not nourish us. We badly need to go straight to the point where our spiritual nourishmentis concerned.
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Pule' Carmel
Aug 19th 2012, 13:51
*** Sustainability is the capacity to endure the pace. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions; achieving sustainability will enable the earth to continue supporting human life as we know it.
In my life I learnt that there are three sources to tap for sustainability, God whom I do not understand, but I believed he changed Himself into the energy and matter that now makes the Universe and all the matter in this Universe no matter what the shape, including humans who after death, will eventually all return to be part of God to form one or more cycles. Once God transformed Himself into our Universe he left it free to behave according to the rules of matter and energy. This reduces the sustainability sources to THE RAW MATERIAL AROUND ME, including THE SOCIETY ITSELF as it is in fact evolved raw material which may be tapped to sustain ourselves, all at the detriment of the sources we tap.
Assuming that all persons obey social laws based on the HUMAN contents of ten commandments then, it would be a wonderful world if a man and a woman form families who would till and work the land, but still this sort of natural life would need the killings of hunted animals as in sustainability it requires the lion eating the deer and the crocodile eating the watering animals around its lake, and we killing rabbits and chickens.
But life is not so simple, as amongst human society there are always members who tap society itself as slaves for their sustainability, and they invent all sort of unnecessary services which are all based on the fact that humans are weak, fear the unknown and get tired after a day’s work and so like to be entertained, especially in the last few hundred years where man had to leave his family to go and work in a modern city where the pressures are higher and the need for social workers who effectively live as parasites grew in number. The fact that women are now forced to go to work another babysitting social parasitic profession is being demanded.
This introduced work phenomena which could not be sustained through natural market forces and natural balance of forces where rabbits grow if foxes are reduced in number and those that remain will flourish, temporarily anyway. Now City life which grouped together more that the land could accept found that unemployment grew to an unhealthy number and so the governing bodies invented a centralized system which financed an artificial project market system financing unproductive projects which are not sustainable, but the unemployment figures look politically reasonable. This philosophy had to support charitable institutions.
Paper or electronic money now support unemployment and this now entails A SUSTAINED CHANGE OF revaluing the old moneys so that wheels will appear to be turning. Once clever people know of these phenomena, they would leave handling earth’s raw materials and divert their talents in serving society in entertainment and solace and religions and accountancy and economics and all those professions which the animal kingdom does not contain. Places like the University equalize recommendation amongst Professors of Theology and Professors of Art and Professors of Music and Professors of Engineering and Professors of Economics and Banking and other artificial needs all geared to lessen unemployment as long as the central system pumps up artificial money WHICH MUST BY THE MISGIVINGS OF THIS PHENOMENA ALWAYS CHANGE ITS VALUES! The result of equalizing the Productive professions to those entertaining and solace giving professions would be that most children within that society would be advised to take unproductive professions, financed by the central financial system rather than a natural market force. Thus the system is no longer sustainable.
I am sorry to say that the Church and other institutions contain many services that the natural world does not contain and it defines its own unnatural markets “financed by an ever changing values of the payment at the time, depreciating the past values!” LIKE THE EVER CHANGING VALUES OF THE MONATERY ARTIFICAIL SYSTEM THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT HAS ADOPTED, THE CHURCH TO SUSTAIN ITSELF MUST KEEP CHANGING THE VALUES OF ITS OWN LAWS.
It has broken my heart to write this, but I am an honest man and cannot fool people any longer in what it takes to sustain values!! In order to endure sustainability we must all live closer to nature and not ride on society’ back playing the language game
Mr Emanuel Farrugia
Aug 19th 2012, 12:11
“I am the living bread, which came down from heaven”
We are used to thinking about Jesus living in us and inviting him into our hearts. We are not so accustomed to meditating on the reality that we already live in Jesus' heart.
The recognition that we live in Jesus is both comforting and challenging. It's comforting because it means we don't have to do everything. When our personal lives are chaotic or disappointing, when our society is polarized and violent, we remember that we live and move and have our being in Jesus. There is a promise along with the expectation. We are promised that we are no longer people who walk in darkness, but people who have come into the light. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness (Jn 12:46).
Jesus clearly states that His body and blood are a pledge of eternal life and a guarantee of the resurrection of the body. St. Thomas Aquinas gives this explanation: "The Word gives life to our souls, but the Word made flesh nourishes our bodies. In this Sacrament is contained the Word not only in His divinity but also in His humanity; therefore, it is the cause not only of the glorification of our souls but also of that of our bodies" ("Commentary on St. John, in loc.").
Precisely because the Eucharist is the sacrament which best signifies and effects our union with Christ, it is there that the whole Church manifests and effects its unity: Jesus Christ "instituted in His Church the wonderful sacrament of the Eucharist, by which the unity of the Church is both signified and brought about" (Vatican II, "Unitatis Redintegratio", 2).
Emanuel Farrugia [TARXIEN] former student Faculty of Theology UOM
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