Facebook Catechism on World Events

The internet brings us the world. It's a wonderful tool, but it also makes us culpable for our inaction when we know 1) what is right, 2) what is wrong and 3) chose to ignore it.

Yesterday, I saw this photo by Huthaifa Shqeirat illustrating the scale of the Syrian Refugee crisis via one photo of one camp.

Impulsively, I shared the photo, but the scope and scale of it, coupled with the now famous photo of the three year old boy drowned on the beach shore, haunted my thoughts.

What is a person to do in this great big world when there is so much need?  I knew myself to be somewhat ignorant so I started to do research.  I read. I tried to read more. Nothing was easy. In some cases, it disheartened me. I read the back sources.  After reading multiple sources I trusted to be honest, if not impartial, I found examining this crisis in detail is like examining an infected wound you caused yourself. It's ugly. It's a mess. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't exist.

It's small wonder part of me wanted to crawl back into a diversion.  Look! There's a Buzzfeed of photo bombs...but the story kept demanding I pay attention, which annoyed me. After all, what can I do?  Wringing hands and feeling guilty is useless, but what power do we have here, far away from where any meaningful aid or human contact can be rendered? 

Then I read today's readings.   

Now normally, I love the Beattitudes.  Who doesn't? LK 6:20-26

Raising his eyes toward his disciples Jesus said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for the Kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who are now weeping,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man.

Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. 
For their ancestors treated the prophets 
in the same way.

But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
But woe to you who are filled now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will grieve and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.”

Today, the Gospel punched me.

I sat there reading it, knowing I have never been poor as these are poor. I have never been hungry as these are hungry. I have never wept as these weep. I have never been hated or excluded or insulted as these have been, for Christ or even for my own faults.

We live in an country of untold wealth, comfort and freedom. As a nation, though not to a person, we do not know how to suffer slights, much less injustices. We tend to justify our actions and inactions, both subtle and gross, for ignoring glaring pain and grinding poverty because whatever it is, is too big, too far away, too complicated, too much beyond our power, too much too much beyond what we as individuals can possibly do.

It is why I love this pope.  Pope Francis' called for Parishes in Europe to each adopt one refugee family.   It is a very Blessed Mother Teresa way of living out the life of the sermon on the mount, the call to us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for those in need, take on some of these souls abandoned.  She began with one dying man.  Mary the Blessed Mother, began her life of pure ministry with one yes. The Pope is asking for the Churches in Europe to say "Yes."

But what if the United States were to respond to Pope Francis's coming to see us, by doing the same? I don't know how it could happen, but what a luminous city on a hill witness it would be to the world, about what our hearts aspire to be.

A classmate from college thoughtfully pointed out, "Processing of Syrians is lengthy, much longer for them than other refugee populations, due to bias and fear in America. (And parts of Europe). Processing includes security, health and other screenings. Religion is only part of the picture."  

But perhaps it's time to help push past the seeming impossibility of it all.  There is evidence the political winds on this subject are changing, even if only because social media is pressuring those who aspire to power, and those who currently hold it, to act.

What can we do?

1) Contact Your Bishop to see what your diocese can do. There's also a lengthy discussion on the USSCB page regarding Migration and Refugees.

2) Contact your Senator. to see what is being discussed and what can be done. 

3) You can also sign a petition to the White House asking it and the government to authorize the resettlement of 65,000 Syrian refugees.  (Two capacity filled games of Fenway Park) or Frederick City, Maryland's entire population if you want to wrap your head around the idea.   

4) Pray..  St. Alban is the patron saint of refugees.  St. Anthony for the world to find a solution and for these people to find a home where they can do more than survive.

5)  John Mark M Reynolds said in an excellent movie review of War Room,  "Here is a basic fact: Christianity is a religion of the Cross. We take up our cross daily and follow Jesus. Prayers are the work of the soul and all our prayers are answered, but some are answered “not yet” or with continued pain. God sits in the Heavens and governs the universe. He desires what is best for me . . . but also for every being in the cosmos. I cannot always have my way in the short term in a broken universe.

Prayer is not a short cut to my will, but it is a surrender to the Will of God. I have seen great miracles in my life: healing that cannot be explained, people set free of demonic oppression, and insights that can only have come from God. I have also seen people walk long hard roads, because other people around them are evil. To continually tell people that prayer solves everything is functionally a lie. Prayer does solve everything, but it does not keep us from needing to do what God has called us to do." 

He's right.  We can't just pray, check that box, read those links, make that call or sign that email and move on.  We must investigate further.  One day's worth of googling by one mommy blogger won't tell the whole story, nor should it be considered extensive.  I welcome corrections, additions, points of view and links to useful places that might help all of us collectively to do more than watch from the sidelines.  

We have on the internet, the equivalent of the strange couple we don't know, knocking at the world's door.  It is completely reasonable, rational and logical to shake our heads and shut the door, saying, "There is no room in the inn."

 Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple– truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” (Matthew 10:40-42).  

I thought about putting up pictures of the refugees, but I think the reality is, we know there are people displaced, owing to faith, owing to politics, owing to greed, owing to war. We know they exist.  That leaves us with the next part of the situation.  How will we respond? 

Offer Up, Speak Up, Prayer Up

We know that the world is a mess and I know sometimes we tend to think "That's just the way it is."  The overwhelming nature of suffering and evil can lead one to shrug one's shoulders, because there is nothing we think we can do.

But if we think at all about what we know about human nature, what we love, what we seek, what we hope, we know the way the world should be, is a warmer lighter welcoming place than what we tacitly accept as we let the news of Iraq, Syria, the border of the United States, wash over us as simply the baseline of every day.  We haven't as Christians, adopted a strategy for dealing with evil, but it is time we should.  

Speak up.

Failing to speak is the equivalent of coming to accept that the trains run by our towns, and we will have to answer for our desires to remain uninvolved, to stay out of it.   It is lazy to think, "What could we do?" or "What can we do?" or "What good will my speaking out do?" It demands nothing, it risks nothing, and it allows one to pretend acting would mean nothing.   Rationalizing tepid comfort allows the evil to progress unhindered. 

The answer is, we must speak up, or evil flourishes in the silence, in our unwillingness to even raise the slightest hint of noise.  We can name evil evil, otherwise it pretends it isn't and people let it. 

The forced moving of Christians under threat of genocide is evil.  Beheading of journalists, of children, of anyone, crucifixion of people by these extremists, is evil.  Failing to name these acts and the sufferings caused by those who support/follow/act on behalf of ISIS as evil, is moral cowardice.  

Here are the web pages for the The White House, The United Nations,, The Senate and The House of Representatives, Catholic Relief Services and Samaritans Purse.  I don't know who else we should contact, but ask the Holy Spirit where to speak and who to speak to, and then get talking.   Get them to talk.  

Offer Up...
We can stand here with those far away, offering up the trivial petty small pains of an ordinary day for those for whom, there is right now no such luxury as normal and ordinary.   How?  By contacting your senators and leaders, by writing about it, by reading about it, by pondering what would we leave aside for our faith? What would we be willing to sacrifice and surrender?

Right now, there is the ice bucket challenge for ALS. Only someone living under a rock does not know about this trending method of providing a jovial moment  on the internet for a charity, but here is a different challenge, would that it became viral.   

Today, offer up a drink at dinner.  Be thirsty.  Why?  Because fasting and prayer matter, and offering up a little something for those who have nothing, has meaning, even if the world thinks otherwise.  No one will see that you aren't having a drink. You can't post not drinking or show it in a picture.  It won't even make a good tweet.   It won't make sense except in the context of solidarity with those who suffer.  The Beattitudes say, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice...they shall be satisfied.   So be thirsty.  

You'll know it though, with everything in you, because you'll want a drink, and that will remind you of everyone who doesn't have anything, because they had to leave everything, just to hold onto the one thing we take for granted in this country, their faith.   We will be thirsty for the less real water, because those not here, were willing to be thirsty for the life giving water which flows from Christ.   And every time you think as you eat your dinner, "I'm thirsty,"  smile.   Ours is a terribly tiny sacrifice, but it should be a gift willingly given. 

Prayer Up...

Remember when all hell seemed to be breaking loose in Syria and Libya and Pope Francis asked for people to pray and fast for peace back in 2013 and the knots which seemed intractable for a time, loosened, and the war which seemed inevitable, abated.  It seems to have returned.
 44"Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came'; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.45"Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation."  Matthew 12:45


And so the demons have returned, worse than the first.  No one can think the acts we've witnessed in recent days are not demonic. The acts we've seen harken to September 11th, to the bombings in other countries on the anniversary, and worse.   

And as we all know, some demons can only be evicted with prayer and fasting.  So offer a Hail Mary, a decade, a rosary, a chaplet, an hour of adoration, a mass, time with scripture, with your family.  Every scrap of prayer is counted in Heaven against the darkness we inflict upon each other, by what we do and don't do, and helps bring about the healing of the world.  And man, does this world need healing.  Everyone in this country has a 3 day weekend before them, so no one can say, I didn't have time.  Now, it becomes a choice.  

If we want justice, pray for peace.  Time to make this Labor Day weekend, one remembered for more than Bar-b-cue, beaches and baseball.