Because of excessive drinking, smoking, and the internet, many of our
Korean youths are finding it difficult to adapt to
society, and are knocking
on the doors of counseling services. The ever present smart phone has
also created problems for them. The View from the Ark columnist of the
Catholic Times, who has been working in mass media for over 30 years,
points out that drinking and smoking increased two-fold over what
it was two years ago, and in Seoul, internet addiction is the primary reason for seeking the help of counseling services.
The
advances that Korea has made in internet and smart phone
accessibility has facilitated the addiction. The greatest number of
those using the internet are the youth; consequently, this age group has
the most problems. One out of three find it more enjoyable to relate to
the internet than with others. Twenty to thirty percent of them find the
internet interfering with their work; their studies and relationship not only suffer but there is
the failure to distinguish the real from virtual reality. At present, video games are shut down at midnight, and plans
are being worked out to have a cooling-off period of 10 minutes after two hours of
games--a strategy not accepted by all.
The
smart phone is now more of a problem than the internet. Within two
years of its introduction, there were over 20 million
users. And like the internet addiction, the young are the ones who have the greatest problem with this addiction.
Those who have studied the issue of addiction say depression
is a big reason for these addictive behaviors. Not that the addiction
brings about depression but because of depression there is a tendency to
become attracted to one or more addictive activities. It has been suggested that sports would be a good activity to overcome the addictive activities and relieve the stress most of the young experience in making it in our competitive society, but their studies do not allow for much leisure time. And family and friends are not sufficiently involved in the life of the young to help them overcome their addictions.
The columnist says
the government, schools, churches, and social organizations are trying to
help but emphasizes that once addiction takes hold, it's very
difficult to overcome. Doing what is necessary before
the addiction takes hold would be the approach with the best chance of success. If help is directed to helping our young deal with their stresses and worries they routinely encounter, there will be less need to keep them away from addictive activities.
In this Year of Faith, it's a good
time, says the columnist, to see not so much our own level of faith but
also to be more concerned about our families and the young people
around us. If we can help our young people accept a proper value system and life-nurturing habits, this approach will go a long way to solving the problem of addiction.
None of us goes through life
without irritations and scars. St. Hildegard of Bingen, recently raised
to the status of doctor of the Church, is quoted as saying, "To become a
person is to have our irritant turned into a pearl." The scars that
have been inflicted, when accepted and healed, can make us more mature,
more understanding and more peaceful, a person who has turned adversity
into an opportunity to grow. Another example, where the crooked is made
straight; for a Christian, it's all the work of grace.
A Catholic Times columnist writes that after finishing one of her motivational lectures a father of a third year high school girl asked if she would
be able to talk with his daughter, who was depressed and found no meaning in life.
It was impossible to plan an interview but she gave the father her
e-mail and telephone number and said that if the daughter was interested, she could contact her.
Shortly
after, she did receive a message from the daughter, and since then they
have talked on the telephone a number of times. Last year, she was
accepted at a college, and communication between them stopped, until
recently when she called, wanting to know, "What do I have to do to find
confidence?" Since the columnist prefers having persons with problems find the answers to their own questions, she ask her what was happening in her life.
She told the columnist that one day, one of her teachers, after a lecture, asked the students to give a three-minute report on what they had just heard. When it was her turn to give the report, her face turned red, her breathing became constricted, and she was unable to answer. After that, whenever she was asked a question or was asked for comments, she would turn red and be confused.
The columnist now knew it was the classroom that was the problem and told her repeatedly that it was all right. It's the wounded child in us that is responding, she told the girl. When happy and all goes well, the wounded child hides. When we are not well or facing some difficulty, the child appears and troubles us.
Many do not want to face this child and hesitate to probe into the possible causes of the pain they are feeling. When we have a physical wound, we bandage it to keep it from becoming infected, and the same tends to be true with psychic wounds. We should face head on what is bothering us; it is a necessary part of the treatment.Most of the irritants and wounds we receive, whether self-inflicted or from others, we are able to handle and are often made
stronger because of them. What is important is that we face them head on, and if necessary with help from others but always, as people of faith, with the knowledge that we are not alone in the effort.
We all have different ways of looking at the world, at others and at ourselves.
Which means that we look upon the same incidents and see things
differently. This is well known to all of us, and a professor of
Scripture in his article in the Catholic Times wants us to reflect on what it means to have a Catholic world view.
This world view, formed by our various ways of looking at the world, is then called upon to help us interpret
what we see, and how we judge ourselves. The whole of us, our
personality, influences the way we see reality, influencing not only how
we see others and our own lives, but what we accept or reject of world history. Our resulting world view largely determines whether we see the world as an optimist or as a pessimist. And it all hinges on what we choose to see.
Jesus
made much of our ability to see, "The eye is the body's lamp"
(Matt.6:22). What does Jesus mean by this? the professor asks. He
explains that the ancients in the time of Jesus considered the eye to be like a lamp or a light that enabled one to see and dispel the darkness surrounding us.
Jesus
also said, "If your eyes are good, your body will be filled with light;
if your eyes are bad, your body will be in darkness." The professor
wants us to understand that Jesus is not talking about good or bad eyes
but is using a metaphor to make his point clear.
We are dealing here with an attitude, with the character of a person.
The healthy eye is kind, magnanimous, upright; the unhealthy eye harbors
resentment, greed, jealously. The healthy eye will be filled with light
and the unhealthy eye will be filled with darkness.
The life of a Christian should be a way of seeing the whole of life, says the professor. Seeing life and others through
the eyes of faith is an expression we often use. This is nothing else
but seeing everything through the eyes of Jesus. Everything that Jesus
did was to have God at the center. How do we discover, the professor asks,
what Jesus came to give us?
By his words Jesus has taught us how to see the world and how to live in this world. It is not just doing what we have always done, following
the ways of the past and of traditional beliefs. He invites us to see
things with different eyes. The professor calls this a subversive wisdom, an alternative wisdom that overturns everything we had come to expect from life. This Christian way of seeing life from a new perspective springs from the uniqueness of our faith
life.
"Preventing a stolen future by a counterattack against the destruction
of the natural" headlined, in big black type, an article on the education page
of the Peace Weekly. The article went on to state that the endocrine system of the human body, which releases hormones into the
organs of our body, is being disrupted by the pollution
of the environment, harming the normal function of the body.
At puberty, as we know, estrogen is released in the bodies of females and testosterone
in the bodies of males. We have tried to improve on some of these
natural processes, and in the 1970s, synthetic estrogen was made available. After much elation, it was soon realized that there were serious side effects to its uncontrolled use.
Today, we
have surrounded ourselves with about 100 thousand man-made chemicals. About forty thousand are used in daily life: ceiling materials,
paints, surface coatings on furniture, synthetic
clothing material, gasoline, pesticides and herbicides, fertilizers, electrical insulators,
disposable products of all kinds, the list is nearly endless.
In 1940 the number of sperm has been gradually decreasing. At the present time, it is estimated we have have less sperm (well under two thirds less) than in 1940),
which makes it close to infertility. The columnist introduces us to the
book Our Stolen Future by Dr. Theo Colborn, who talks about the
disruption and pollution of our endocrine system and the effect this
will have on future generations.
Because of widespread infertility, ovum now sells for
4 to 5 thousand dollars. With this money, a
college student can help take care of tuition and living expenses. This
shows an insensitivity to life, and a loss of meaning, which the
columnist feels is worse than the injustices of slavery.
Using
the pretext of curing incurable diseases, they are opening the
Pandora box of cloning. The Christian fear of what is involved in this process, and a
desire to have this discussed as an ethical problem, has been ignored.
The columnist imagines a time when a DNA-constructed person, and the cyber-spaced person, will conform to the theme of the movie, The Matrix. It is, he believes our possible future, a future controlled by
forces outside of ourselves, sometimes called a biocracy or ecocracy. The Church, he says, is
still not ready for what is happening. If we are to be the salt and light of the world,
we need to read the sign of the times and be out in front of the changes that will be coming. In 1980s the
Buddhist already had a monk responsible for keeping up on ecological problems and
printed a book on the subject.
He concludes that
there are many Catholics who misunderstand what is involved in dealing with environmental problems. Many think it's
sufficient to demonstrate in opposition to projects that are not
sensitive to the environment, such as the Four River Project. This is being concerned only about peripheral matters, he says. We have to change the way we see the problems. We have to fight to respond in the
way God made us, and help to change the world with the truths of our Christian world view.
Writing in the Kyeongyang
magazine, a seminary professor tells us of getting a present from a
parishioner who had just come from a party. He handed the rice cake box
with the word 'Blessing' on top to the priest and rushed off. The
priest put the box in the fridge, planning to eat the rice cakes after Mass on Sunday, but when he opened the box he found only a towel inside; he was stunned.
Catholicism
has always tried to give direction and purpose to our lives. The
teaching has acted as a compass needle, which points out to us that we are the glory of God. When we live in harmony with this teaching, conscious of this
dignity, we are giving glory to God. However, when the outside of
things is not the same as the inside as we expect, confusion and disharmony usually result. the priest mentions that when he prepares sesame seed oil, he always pours it into a plastic cider bottle, but the oil is always pure
sesame seed oil. When the information on the outside is not the same as
the content, we are momentarily stunned, as he was when he opened the
rice cake box. His sesame oil is in a plastic soft drink bottle, but he
knows it is pure sesame oil.
Life is full of the genuine and the fake. To help discern the difference, we need to distinguish what exists from what doesn't exist not from the outside, but from the inside of things, the true content that often requires close observation to verify its existence, as shown by his two example. We have been born as people of God, and if we are to give glory to God we have to live the 'inside' of this life we have been given.
The world is governed, it seems, with a perceived need for living a fast-paced life, though we have a hard time saying why we feel the need to live in such a manner. We
don't know where we are going, but still feel we must do all we can to
get there quickly. We don't take the time to trouble ourselves with the
reason for all this 'hurry-up' activity. Getting there, looking for results above everything else, is what is important, not the process of getting to where we want to go. Our
humanity is turned into a commodity, just another consumer item in our
society. Materialism surrounds us, and unknowingly we go with the flow.
We
have the highest number of suicides among the developed countries, and
we continue to think that all is well. We are living in a culture of
death and do not realize the harm that is being done. Why are we living this way? It's a question most of us have stopped asking ourselves when we entered the culture of death.
Education (from the Latin 'educare,' to lead out) can help us answer such questions. In
other words, we are to uncover what God has put in us, which is the
primary reason for education. We are to resonate to God's frequency like
the vibrations from a tuning folk. In the encyclical the Gospel of
Life, we are told how this should begin in the family, "It is above all
in raising children that the family fulfills its mission to proclaim
the Gospel of life. By word and example, in the daily round of relations
and choices, and through concrete actions and signs, parents lead their
children to authentic freedom, actualized in the sincere gift of self, cultivating in them
respect for others, a sense of justice, cordial openness, dialogue,
generous service, solidarity and all the other values which help people
to live life as a gift (#92).
There are many in the Church today
who are conflicted by what the church teaches and the values of our
society. Will things change if I change? they ask incredulously. They don't believe what they do will have any meaning. This
way of thinking is prevalent. That is precisely why we have to continue to trust and give ourselves to the work we have been given as disciples.
The article ends with the words of a cardinal who spoke to a group of Christians, "We must remember the words of Jesus to Peter, 'Master, we have been hard at it all night long and have caught nothing; but if you say so, I will lower the net'"(Luke 5:5). Following Peter's example, we must "lower the net," trust in the power of our faith and learn the law of obedience."
"Thanksgiving and promise is the theme for the 100th anniversary celebration of the Maryknoll Sisters. Looking back on a history of suffering endured by the Korean people, we
can be thankful that so many Maryknoll Sisters have walked with those
in pain, and have experienced the love of God. We look forward to
embracing the future with hope."
These are the words introducing an
interview in the Peace Weekly with Sister Janice McLaughlin, superior of the Maryknoll Sisters, who is here to celebrate their 100 years as a
congregation and 88 years in Korea. Sister Janice worked in Africa for
40 years and has written, Ostriches, Dung Beetles, and Other Spiritual Masters,
now translated into Korean.The book is a compilation of the wisdom she has
gained from the animal and plant life she found in Africa, and from her meditations on life.
Sister
thanks all those who have been part of the work of the sisters during
the past 88 years in Korea. From Pyongyang in North Korea to many areas of the country here in the South, there have been many who have participated in the work. To all she expresses her thanks, and hopes that many will discover the love of God in this journey of the sisters.
The
Korean Church, which has grown in maturity so that they no longer need
the help of foreign missionary sisters, is now sending the sisters to
Africa and South America. A group of lay people with the charism of the Sisters, the Maryknoll Affiliates, will continue their work in Korea. Sister Janice gives thanks for the love shown the sisters over the many years they have been in Korea.
The
Maryknoll Sisters were instrumental in starting the first Korean
congregation of sisters: Our Lady of Perpetual Help Sisters, now grown
into a community larger than the Maryknoll Sisters, for which the Maryknollers are very proud. She also visited the older sisters of the community who worked in the North, and thanked them.
Sister
Janice met with the Maryknoll Sisters recently planning for their
next chapter in 2014, at which time they will be meeting to plan for the future. This will include, she says, working with environment issues, further efforts for peace, helping immigrants adapt to the new culture, and relieving the suffering of women
in the sex trade.
The sisters have left behind many who have been touched by their work. Maryknoll Affiliates have been influenced by the sisters and will continue the work with the alienated in society. The Korean Maryknoll sisters who are now working in other parts of the world are bringing the love of Christ to people not as fortunate in having the maturity in the faith that Korea has achieved. This attraction to the Maryknoll charism and the Maryknoll Sisters will continue in the years ahead.
The media these days do not carry many uplifting stories that give us a feel for the good life. Instead, we are usually left with a distaste for what is
going on in the world around us, particularly when we learn that our country leads the other developed countries in the number of suicides and divorces.
The desk columnist of the Catholic Times believes the cause can be found within a society that has lost its moral foundation, and a loss of meaning for many who are living only out of necessity. Does this mean we have
lost the dream of what life could be? the columnist asks.
He
gives us an example of what the shape of this dream might be like by
showing how a potentially disruptive situation was handled by putting into practice what we have been told is the greatest commandment: to love one another. A daughter-in-law in a farming family burnt the rice she was
preparing for her mother-in-law and father-in-law. Being very upset for having spoiled the dinner, she told her mother-in-law about the burned rice. She replied that the daughter-in-law should not blame herself; the pot she had given her was too small to hold all the water necessary to make rice for all four of them--the blame was hers. The father-in-law then spoke up and said it was his fault; he had put too much wood in the fuel hole which raised the heat too much. Here was a situation, the columnist said, that could easily have resulted in everyone becoming upset and angry, but
because of their concern for each other, the ruined meal became the occasion for a good laugh.
Though we are surrounded by a challenging and sometimes stressful world,
we want to live in a life-giving environment, in a life-giving family,
in a life-giving workplace, in a life-giving Christian community. To
live in such a community and society, we have to change from our present selfish concern with the self to sharing with others not only material possessions. We have to share also our concern about their total well being, as was done, the columnist makes clear, in the story about the burned rice. The Korean proverb says it well: one word can repay a debt of
1000 nyang ( an old Korean coin).
Jesus wants us to be the salt and light of the world; without salt, food is
insipid and without light, we live in darkness. There are a number of
ways we can respond to a salt-less and light-less world: go with the flow, giving-in to a feeling
of helplessness, or fight against this feeling and do all we can to
bring life and joy to the world we are in.
When we fail to live up to our call as people of faith, we are living
as worldly people and forgetting the words of Jesus. We sin like
everybody else, tied to material goods, fighting and refusing to
forgive. We are no longer salt or light. We have to go in a different
direction from that of society, most often relying on words to begin the process, words such as thank you, sorry, I wish you well, good job, and the like.
Protecting only my situation, without concern
for the other and not willing to see where the other person is coming
from, is not going to be helpful in bringing about a new and better world. We
are to share the dreams and hopes we have. We are to be concerned for the
other and to gather all the strength and motivation we can muster to
be the light and salt we have been asked to be in order to bring about a better world. And we need to begin this life-giving activity now.
