Grapes and not Thorns

 

In Bible and Life magazine the writer gives the reader a meditation on common sense (truth) that will make us free.

Matthew's Gospel 7:15-20 states that we pick grapes from grape vines and not from thorn bushes. If people see grapes and still call it a thorn bush we have a problem. We can simply call it lying or worse—  bribed or threatened to see other than what is. We can see it as violence or evil. This situation seen by some in society is similar to what Jesus experienced 2000 years ago.

Let us look at John's Gospel 9:1-41. Jesus one day seeing a man born blind made some mud with his saliva from the earth and smeared the man's eyes with the mud and told him to go to the pool of Siloam and wash. He returns able to see. This showed who Jesus was. He gave life and rescued others. He was doing God's work.  A grapevine was producing grapes.

Pharisees were from the beginning seeing a sinner. He had to be a sinner. They saw the society in which Jesus moved as an enemy of the kind of society they espoused, no matter what he was able to do he was a sinner. To prove the point they had to attack and distort the reality of the person who was blind from birth and is now able to see.

They asked many times how was it that he now was able to see. They questioned the parents of the blind man to see if he was blind from birth to prove that Jesus was a fraud if that was not the case, the parents made it clear he was born blind.

But this not prevent the Pharisees to continue their assault on the blind man, they now changed from asking how he was now able to see to what does he think of Jesus. They were looking for reasons to expel him from the synagogue, but the once-blind man continued to speak well of Jesus. "I do not know if he is a sinner or not, one thing I do know: I was blind and now I see." He was expelled from the Synagogue.

This is a situation we are often familiar with in our society. Irrationality is quite common. Absurd investigations, confinements, using the media to advance the views of those in authority,  arresting the innocent, and freeing the guilty. Truth is not important but authority rules make life difficult.

The blind man not only began to see with his bodily eyes but also with the eyes of the heart. The truth is often no big issue but rather seeing grapes where there are grapes and thorns where there are thorns. Our faith life is very much the same: living according to our consciences. We begin with common sense. "The truth will make us free." John 8:21.

God's Time

The Peace Column of the Catholic Peace Weekly  gives the readers  a mediation on God's time. 

Korean Catholics celebrate the New Year three times each year.  The first comes at the beginning of the liturgical year,  the  first Sunday of Advent. The second is the solar New Year on January 1 with the change of the calendar year and the third and final is Jan. 22nd of the Lunar New Year (Word of God Sunday). The Word of God contained in the Bible is the mirror and compass of our daily life. Celebrating, reflecting on, and disseminating that word is God's blessing to us.

The last of the new years contains the desire to expect changes through introspection. Advent is a new year for believers who are waiting for Jesus, and it is a time to dream of hope for the future. The Gregorian New Year and the Lunar New Year are times to renew our daily lives and design new lives and challenges. At the time of the new year, everyone has a question to ask themselves. Who am I and where did I come from and where am I going? There is life and time is given, but the path to take is always a worry.

Time is invisible. It just flows without stopping with the second, minute, and hour hand. However, this is a set calendar time. Chronos is physical time measured as a quantity. The relative time we feel as quality is Kairos. If Chronos is objective time that applies to everyone, Kairos is subjective time that has different meanings to people. In the end, we entrust ourselves to the flow of time, divide it into the past, present, and future, and always stay awake and prepared according to the word of the Lord. The place where the past flows and the future begins is 'today' the 'now' moment.

Human beings divide time according to its flow, and they are created and end their earthly life regardless of their will, but God, the Creator, has neither creation nor extinction, neither the past nor the future. His own time neither comes nor goes, but exists only in the eternal present, always now. A moment is also an eternity, and eternity is also a moment. "For a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday, now that it is past, or as a watch of the night" (Psalm 90:4). "All our days have passed away in your indignation; we have spent our  years like a sigh" (Psalm 90:9). "Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong. And most of them  are fruitless toil, for they pass quickly and we drift away" (Psalm 90:10). 

The time given to us always accompanies space. In the exhortation 「The Joy of the Gospel」, Pope Francis defines time as "the expression of the horizon that is always open before us", but space as "the limits of living in a limited reality (space)". "Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need, then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events." (223), so the Pope says "time is greater than space". 

We are always busy. Tired of this and that, and moaning over achievements and goals. The lunar New Year was the third New Year. You don't have to be impatient, torture yourself, or give up because your resolutions that you made before the Lord didn't last a month or even three days. Save the memories of the past, but don't cling to them, and there is no need to be afraid of the uncertain future. Let's hope again, promise again, and challenge again. God's time is always 'today'. You have to live today. To live faithfully today getting up after your falls and recovering. It is the way to repay the grace of the Lord who gave  us 'today'.

Lessons From the Past—Hippocratic Oath

We have said good bye to the Solar New Year but we will usher in the Lunar New year on the 22nd of  this month. In the Diagnosis of the Times column of the Catholic Times the writer has some thoughts for the readers.

The new year has dawned, and the time train has left the station on the first day of the solar New Year.

He recalls  how  many people were sick due to the Itaewon disaster last year, and everyone was thinking about what keywords to choose for the new year after the sad year-end and the New Year holidays.  

His back hurt a little bit, and saw it as a gift of New Year and his aging, and probably the  onset of some kind of disease. He searched for a suitable hospital and pondered the ancient Hippocratic oath, praying that the doctor's ability would heal him. Then, he realized that this oath is a universal declaration that applies not only to physical pain, but also to psychological and social pain.  

Has human suffering decreased and happiness increased in modern society compared to the historical past? Last year, the top 10 news items included a change of government, conflicts in the National Assembly, spacecraft launches, North Korean provocations, outbreaks of global war, domestic disasters, protests for the rights of the disabled, World Cup, high prices and high interest rates, and labor reform or deterioration. Most of them are related to unhappiness. These issues are not someone else's problems, but are directly related to our lives, our suffering, or our happiness. So, we must fight social pain, the source of that pain, just like a doctor trying to protect physical pain, fundamentally, life. Now, let us excerpt the  lines from the Classic Hippocratic Oath{https://mccolloughscholars.as.ua.edu/hippocratic-oath-classic/}

“I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment. 

I will reverence my master who taught me the art. Equally with my parents, will I allow him things necessary for his support, and will consider his sons as brothers. I will teach them my art without reward or agreement; and I will impart all my acquirement, instructions, and whatever I know, to my master’s children, as to my own; and likewise to all my pupils, who shall bind and tie themselves by a professional oath, but to none else.
 

With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage. (Everything has to be done for the patient. Two pitfalls to avoid: over treatment and therapeutic nihilism. I will remember that there is an art in medicine as well as in science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may be greater than a surgeon's knife or  medicine).

Nor shall any man’s entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so. Moreover, I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.  Further, I will comport myself and use my knowledge in a godly manner.I will not cut for the stone, but will commit that affair entirely to the surgeons. 

(It is an important story that the response to social pain should be applied accurately, neither excessive nor insufficient, and should be based on humanity, not bureaucracy or mechanical application of functions).

Whatsoever house I may enter, my visit shall be for the convenience and advantage of the patient; and I will willingly refrain from doing any injury or wrong from falsehood, and (in an especial manner) from acts of an amorous nature, whatever may be the rank of those who it may be my duty to cure, whether mistress or servant, bond or free.
 

Whatever, in the course of my practice, I may see or hear (even when not invited), whatever I may happen to obtain knowledge of, if it be not proper to repeat it, I will keep sacred and secret within my own breast.
If I faithfully observe this oath, may I thrive and prosper in my fortune and profession, and live in the estimation of posterity; or on breach thereof, may the reverse be my fate!”

Even today, we hear a little knowledge in the medical world is a dangerous thing. Social efforts are not for individual achievement, so we must expect collective intelligence and cooperation where our limits are revealed. It is desirable to start with solidarity from the beginning.  

Exposing personal information that the victim does not want without consent, invasion of privacy, is now called secondary harm. Considering that such problems were present even in ancient times, how many times in history have these  evil habits and the lessons been repeated?

Happy Lunar New Year!

 

 

 

 

North and South Koreans Living Together

 

The recent Catholic Times in its North South Reconciliation Column has an article on a village in England where  the North and South Koreans are speaking to each other. 

The author Lee Hyang-gyu, Theodora, is a principal of the  Hankyoreh School in London. She has written a number of books and compiled A Missionary Journey,  a biography of Father Gerald Hammond a Maryknoll Missioner in Korea who has spent over 60 years in the country.

The parents and teachers of the London Hankyoreh School, have all left their hometowns in Korea. She lists the different provinces from which they came. Most of the children were born in England and can speak Korean but not very well so every Saturday they study Korean at the Hankyoreh School in London.

 

The London Hankyoreh School was established in 2016, by her North Korean parents who settled in the UK as refugees. Her father was from Chongjin and took the lead, her mother was from Pyongyang and became the principal. Theodora became  the principal in 2021, she is from Seoul. They now have about 90 students. She  doesn't  know exactly where the parents are from because she never asked them, but  would say they are half South Korean and half North Korean. 

  

This school is very special. She has occasionally seen a small number of North Korean defectors attend gatherings made by South Koreans in both Korea and England, but this is the first time she has seen a space where South Koreans join a place created by North Korean defectors, where one side does not overwhelm the other and  are able to create something together.  

 

The reason this is possible is that this place is outside the divided Korean Peninsula, and there are about 1,000 North Korean defectors living in this town called New Malden, located on the outskirts of London. Both South Koreans and North Koreans are a small minority among immigrants in the  mainstream British society.   

 

The parents both have the same desire to teach their children the Korean language and the culture of the Korean people. The fact that British society basically respects cultural diversity and has laws that prohibit discrimination, such as the Equality Act, makes it easy  for North and South Koreans to form a community. 

 

On the Korean Peninsula, we still have a long way to go for ordinary citizens of South and North Korea to meet each other freely. The few North Korean defectors living in South Korea are intimidated in their activities, but the setting in England is different. Perhaps, it may help us imagine life on the Korean Peninsula, where the division has been lifted, some time in the future.

 

The important thing in living together is an equal relationship and respect. Constant contact and exchange rounds off the sharp edges that have appeared in relating with each other over the years. She hopes they will begin talking to one another.

Solo And Marriage Hell

 

These days, people use the religious term 'hell' without hesitation. The self-deprecating word "Hell Joseon" ( a satirical South Korean expression used to criticize the socioeconomic situation in South Korea), Indirectly points to the harsh reality of the young people of the 'N-po' generation (giving up numerous things in South Korea). A pastor in the Eyes of the Believer column of the Catholic Times gives us a look at this present situation as seen in Korean Reality TV dramas. 

The difficulties of life that all generations must face are replaced with 'hell'. In particular, while monitoring popular broadcasting programs such as 'Solo Hell' and 'Marriage Hell', the situation of the times is reflected as it is, and viewers sympathize with it, but it exposes unethical and non-evangelical values. 

'Solo Hell' and 'Marriage Hell' are both entertainment programs, but there is a difference. 'Solo Hell' aims to create couples, and 'Marriage Hell' aims to recreate couples. The hell referred to in 'Solo Hell' is simply a place where you are a solo person and survive on your own without anyone’s help, but in 'Marriage Hell', hell is a miserable state with no escape, suffering, despair, and pain. According to Christian doctrine, a hell is a place where people go as a result of their sins and are punished endlessly. Even in marriage itself, the word hell is used symbolically in the sense of foreshadowing such an experience.

In 'Solo Hell', single men and women are confined to an uninhabited island, and when they become a couple, they escape from Hell and go to 'Heaven Island'. This reality show is gaining popularity not only in Korea but globally.

There are many 'solo people' in our society who have not been paired up. Recent statistical surveys show that most of them are unable to marry due to financial difficulties or unable to find a suitable spouse. In that respect, these mating programs can have a good effect in attracting young people from single-person households to marriage.

However, it is also necessary to be aware of problems that arise. The rules presented by 'Solo Hell' are based on the dichotomous thinking that couples are desirable and singles are not. As if shouting 'couples heaven', 'solo hell'. However, single-person households are the trend in Korean society these days and will become even more so in the future.

 

Of course, some people are voluntarily single, but there are quite a few people who live alone involuntarily. Therefore, this program subtly reveals the discrimination that living alone is not right. Careful consideration is needed so that this program can make use of the advantage of inducing solos into couples but not discriminate against singles.

 

Even if you manage to succeed in becoming a couple, go to heaven, have a good relationship, and achieve your final goal of marriage, there are many cases where the fantasy that was like heaven after marriage is broken. The reason why an entertainment program called 'Marriage Hell' has a huge viewership rating is that it provides a solution to escape from a hellish marriage life.

 

In 'Marriage Hell', many viewers sympathize with the various marital conflicts that are seen without filtering and have a positive effect in eliciting vicarious satisfaction. However, due to the nature of broadcasting, which is tied to viewership ratings, several critics point out that there are limits to a system that relies on a single professional counselor, even though problems such as child molestation and domestic violence are raised. 

Also, the word 'marriage hell' in the program title imprints a negative image of marriage as hell in the era of low birth, and the danger of making 'living alone', attractive, and raising concerns of hitting a steep demographic cliff. 

 

In Dante's 'Divine Comedy', he takes himself as the main character and travels through heaven, purgatory, and hell. A place without hope is hell. If you think about it, it means that the moment you have hope, anyone can head to heaven. Whether you are living alone or married, you can have a fresh start when you acknowledge your own and the other person's shortcomings and accept the hope of change.

Victims Of War

 

 

The director of the Bishops' National Reconciliation Committee gives the readers of the Catholic Times his thoughts on victims of war.
 

He introduces us to George M. Carroll (1906-1981) a Maryknoll missioner who experienced the war as a military chaplain.

George M. Carroll (1906–1981) was ordained a Maryknoll priest in February 1931. He came to Korea in August of the same year, and began his mission life in Anju, Unhyang, and Seopo, in the Pyongyang Province of North Korea.

When the Pacific War broke out in 1941, Monsignor Carroll was arrested by Japanese authorities and deported to the United States in June 1942. After re-entering Korea after liberation, he led the establishment of a military service system in the early stages of the Korean War.

The war he experienced as a military chaplain was indescribably harrowing. The following is a diary he wrote on December 12, 1950, describing the miserable situation of Seodaemun Prison, which was filled with "suspected servicemen" after the South Korean military restored Seoul.

"I visited the prison this morning with the representative of the International Red Cross. The situation was horrible. About 30 people would die every day starved to death packed together in small quarters. The hospital was the worst. The building was actually falling apart. I looked in the morgue where 12 bodies were thrown, piled one on another. Women were nursing babies in small cells. Two babies died in two cells a while ago, and the small bodies were still there. We talked to people awaiting execution. Many men and many women, most of the prisoners, were guilty of cooperating with the Communist Party. Many people have not yet been tried, and have been waiting for a trial for many months. The Red Cross representative was very angry. This is because there was a clear attempt by the prison authorities to cover up the facts."

The Ukraine war, which has no signs of ending, is still showing the bare face of a harsher war towards the poor in this 21st century. In last week's Christmas Eve Mass, Pope Francis condemned the endless war and said, "I think of all the children swallowed up by war, poverty, and injustice before all else."

Recently, several experts are concerned about military tensions on the Korean Peninsula. This is because the repeated "Tit for Tat" strategy in a situation where dialogue is cut off could lead to a larger military conflict. No matter how difficult it is, we cannot give up the path to peace. In the new year of 2023, the writer sincerely hopes that dialogue for peace can begin anew wherever there is a conflict.

The Art of Conversation

The Church in Korea for many years tried with great effort to establish Basic Christian Communities (BCC), or Small Christian Communities( SCC) (the concepts are basically the same). They are small groups of Christians who live in similar geographical areas of a parish and who get together usually monthly within the territorial parishes to share their faith and life with others. In Korea, they have not been successful for the most part, and not only because of the Covid pandemic.

The efforts in the different dioceses to begin these small groups began at different times and with different rates of success. Some of the bishops have considered this one of their most important efforts in the diocese.

Today we are concerned with the preparation for the Synod in 2024 and the Synodalitas way of being Church. The word listening is used prominently but speaking with the help of the Spirit is also a requisite. Listening and speaking with the heart.

This is no longer something that comes naturally, is desired, or is found useful. Conversations about matters that are important, without pretense that come from the heart are rare but the exchange of words has no doubt increased.

And yet sitting down together and talking to one another about important matters seems to be a wise pursuit in this very confusing world in which we live. However, many see the art of conversation disappearing for a multitude of reasons.

Individualism is one of the values that society has succeeded in imposing on us in recent years. The sense and need for community that was necessary are no longer present.

Social Media has been introduced and is greatly used; the eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart encounters have greatly diminished. Technology in its many forms has become ever-present. Secularism, consumerism, competition, and success are values that motivate society, and what was considered common sense has become ambivalent.

Voices in society have been saying these same things for years but they no longer have an audience and life continues the course of least resistance, our default status.

For Christians, the test should be the results of what we have chosen as a people. St. Paul in 2nd Corinthian chapter 13:5 says: "Put yourselves to the test and judge yourselves, to find out whether you are living in faith. Surely you know that Christ Jesus is in you?—unless you have completely failed." Once one knows that Christ is living within us, joy can't help but follow and we have a lot to learn and a lot to communicate.

It is surprising how we have lost the importance of conversation for growth in wisdom. When one has a deep conversation, not afraid of difficult subjects, where we speak from the heart and listen with the heart we will come away from the encounter as different persons.