Christian Unity

This is a reflection at the end of the 1997 version of the "Week of Prayer for  Christian Unity" celebrated world-wide every January.


Many of our ideas about what constitutes unity have been sorely strained in recent decades.  There are few among us who still think unity necessarily involves that we all think the same way, belong to the same organization or engage in exactly the same practices. Unity can surely support and even require a wide diversity. Maybe we are more conscious of that as Canadians than most precisely because of our diversity.

    What we have in common as Christians is faith in Christ.  And today's reading provides a good opportunity to ask where Jesus fits into our religious experience.  Jesus calls his first disciples and they are drawn to him like a magnet.  There must have been something very attractive about Jesus to cause grown men to leave their work, possessions, family and go off this way.  This is no less true today.  One of the major magazines in Quebec recently placed Jesus on its front cover as "Man of the Year."  What is it about Jesus that drew and continues to draw so many to him?  One thing is sure, he is not the sacarine figure so much of popular piety in North America has painted.  This is a robust figure, solidly grounded in his own times, yet with a message and a presence that totally transcends his times.  Truly a universal figure.  Moreover, by his resurrection, Jesus attains the fullness of his Messianic vocation as the Christ.  In the resurrection Jesus becomes permanently present and available to the entire human experience.  We can encounter Christ everywhere and at all times.

    Reflecting on this week of prayer for Christian Unity, it occurred to me that there are ways in which Christ is revealed in the lives of people who, while they share the values, the mentality and the practice of Jesus, also entirely escape our categories of  religion, denomination or even lifestyle.  (And,  there are also many who call themselves Catholic but who share little of what the New Testament reveals to be the mind, values and practice of Jesus.) 

    The important thing is that we do have some record of Jesus. There is a reference point.  He cannot just be anyone we want to invent.   Jesus had a specific way of looking at things, a specific set of values and a specific practice.  Throughout the centuries, different thinkers, different saints, have found quite varied dimensions of Jesus' mentality, values and practice.  For me, this includes his place among the poor and excluded, his intimate relationship as Son with God experienced as his Father and our Father -- yet Father with all the nurturing, compassionate characteristics we often attribute to Mother.  Characteristic of Jesus is the way he shared himself with anyone open to accept it. Whatever each of us may find when we turn back to the Gospels, the important thing is that these be insights that shape our religious experience,  sought out in light of very adult struggles and adult needs. 

    I find it significant and often disturbing that many adults retain the image they learned of Jesus when they were children and then hope that this will be enough to guide them through their adult years.  Obviously a child's notion, at this important religious level, will provide only children's' answers.  It's not enough for an adult.  Our search to understand Jesus is something that has to continue throughout our lives.  There has to be continual scrutiny, re-examination, re-evaluation.

    The focus of religious experience among Christians must always be to encounter the living, risen Christ in our lives and our world today.  However, in order to do that we need the reference point of the Jesus of Nazareth who became the Risen Christ.  We need to examine those specific areas of his mentality, his values, his practice that will help us recognize his presence in and around us today.

    Today we begin the countdown to the great jubilee.  No better moment for a time-out to reconsider the figure of Jesus, his place in our lives, personally but also collectively as a human family at the end of a millennium and the turning of a huge epoch in human history.

Globalization

This is a talk I gave to a large gathering about five years ago.  Even though it is dated, it might serve some purpose still. I have edited it very slightly


    The theme assigned to us has two vectors: the economic agenda called “globalization” and also the struggle for a globalization of solidarity and for societies of inclusion.  Both are important.

    Note, first of all, that between English and in French there exists a difference in the vocabulary used to talk about this topic.  In French, the term used is “mondialisation.”  The difference is significant.  “Globalization” implies a reference to geography; “mondalisation” refers much more to social structures.  What is global embraces the entire planet. What is “mondial” embraces the universe of culture and its relationships.   Obviously the reach of the economic forces at work today extend throughout the planet.  But it is the universe of meaning, relationships and communities that should especially concern us. 

    Secondly, the predecessor to globalization is mercantilism and liberalism.   Marco Polo and the explorers of the 16^th century opened up an enormous process of trade between continents.  However, for our purposes, what is significant is the way in which trade became connected with a political agenda that included colonization, the carving up of continents, the forced labour of millions to enrich Europe and the slave trade.