Editor's Note
Dying, Rising, Going Forth
A few weeks ago I attended a play in Raleigh produced by the Justice Theater Project. You may have heard of this group (http://www.thejusticetheaterproject.org/). Their mission is to use the dramatic arts as a way to call public attention to the needs of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. The play I saw, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness, has stayed on my mind as Easter approaches, and as each day seems to bring its share of bad news, economic and political.
There are just three characters in the play, an American, an Irishman and an Englishman. They’re civilians, chained in a Beirut basement during the Lebanon hostage crisis of the ‘80s. The drama isn’t political, though; it’s human. It shows how desperate circumstances can lead people from mutual hostility to the kind of selfless love the Gospel preaches. When everything we value is taken from us, the men realize, what saves us is each other, and that realization is life-changing.
In this Lenten and Easter season, a similar realization confronts us on a spiritual level. The ongoing liturgy reinforces the theme of dying, rising and then going forth to serve and evangelize. Our Bishop’s letter this month, and our cover story, speak particularly to the ways the economy has brought this realization home to so many. In these times, it’s almost certain that you know someone -- a friend or family member or even yourself – who has lost a job or worries daily about losing one. Of course the financial effects can be devastating. But the psychological and spiritual effects, and their impact on families, can be even more painful. At the same time, laws are being changed in ways which contradict the very foundations of our faith, such as our respect for the dignity of human life.
It can seem at times as if we are powerless to affect world events. As Catholics, however, we realize that our hope is in the Lord, who understands our trouble and whose saving love we must embody (as did the men in the play) for one another. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, S.J., Archbishop Emeritus of Milan, wrote a reflection in which he considered a quotation from Dostoevsky, “Beauty will save the world.” The Cardinal wondered what kind of beauty that would be, and offered a suggestion that seems especially resonant in this season of dying and rising: “The beauty that will save the world is love that shares pain.”
Story ideas? New features you’d like to see in NCC? Write me at 715 Nazareth Street, Raleigh, NC 27606 or reece@raldioc.org.
- Rich Reece