Saturday, September 10, 2011

Ten Years After

09/11/11

What do we feed our hearts? What do we feast on?

Do we feast on freedom – or fear?

What is on the menu for today? What are we consuming?

What are we taking in to ourselves?

What do we seek for sustenance?

Do we feed on fear, anger, revenge – or peace and reconciliation?

What is on offer today, here, is the same as always –
and that is good news.

Peace and reconciliation, through bread and wine, the body and blood.

Ten years ago we woke to an unhappy morning.
It was 5:46 AM Local Time.

We rose in
shock and disbelief
witnessing events we could not control,
that seemed doomed to loop through our minds endlessly,
repeated as if present not past,
images indelibling themselves onto our minds.
Planes crashing, towers falling.

And then maybe after a few days
another possibility offered to us,
after trauma’s initial stages:
we could weep with grief,
we could grind with anger,
we could resolve on revenge –

or on some succor to the victims and families,
to reach out in compassion and try to understand –

not only how this evil could be
but how good could be found in those far from us,
different or the same.

Ten years after, now – do we feed on memory hardened and fermented into vinegary bitterness?

Do we try to forget?

Do we try to live?

Do we feast with gratitude for the gift of God’s merciful love? For Christ in the Eucharist, for the love shown in his gift of himself, in life and death and life again?

Bread and wine are not what it means –
they are how its meaning,
that life offered and given, that death and that resurrected life –
is conveyed to us.

To give us sustenance: that we may feed on him in our hearts
with faith and with thanksgiving.

Do we welcome the Christ hidden in the other? –
in those of whom Jesus said:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
‘Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
‘Blessed are the merciful,
for they will receive mercy.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
‘Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.



(Matthew 5.3-10), The Beatitudes

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