Many are the sounds we hear: rustling of leaves, birds, insects, music, sound of people playing Baduk (Go), and many other sounds but nothing compares "to the sound of a person reading a book". Quoting a poem from the past and the different sounds heard, and at times only seen, a Benedictine priest writing in With Bible wants us to follow him in this meditation.
People know the joy of walking, and it is not always to arrive at some point. The walking in itself has meaning and its own end. A wise man once said that 'Road' and 'Way' doesn't have the same meaning; reading is not always used as a tool for knowledge and information, and 'interest' has no limit.
One of the greatest pleasures in life, for the writer, and for which he is grateful, is to run across some worthwhile reading material. "Is it not a pleasure to study, and to practice what you have learned?" (Confucius)
He
brings us back to the days when reading was not done in silence as we
do today but it was voicing each word, and listening with the ear and
the whole body. The reading material would often be a sheepskin, a
codex, and the scent would enter the nose. The finger would follow the
words in the sentence, and the upper part of the body would sway
slightly while reading. All the senses were used it was an action of
the whole person and not only of the eyes and the mind. It was work.
This
was the way the monks of the past did the Lectio Divina. The East was
not different; he remembers his grandfather who when writing a
letter or reading the newspapers would be voicing very quietly all the
words. They were remembering with the muscles of the body and making
what they read a part of themselves.
They were also forming a community: relating with one another in the process. The ability to read and understand was increasing. The monasteries were schools where people were learning to read well. They were making books, and the books were making the person. Happily we find this in many places of our present society.
We have moved from the oral, to the written to the digital culture: from reading to the seeing where the screen becomes the book. We think that we are in control but the images are working on our feelings, desires and judgments. They produce or transform our desires. Financial cliques and the mass media make public opinion and often fabricate it. Where God was thought to be we have the financial logic, politics, education and morality, where the false and true are often interchanged.
We need a reading and thinking citizenry. Not thinking like we live but living like we think. Readers will be counter cultural. In the past with the reading of Scripture, we had the making of prophets; he hopes that we will feel the responsibility of this calling and not leave it to the false prophets of our society.
A recent symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the II Vatican Council was on the direction the church of Korea should go during this third millennium. Both Catholic papers reported on the event. The keywords were solidarity, scripture and evangelization.
During the introductory speech, a bishop of Seoul mentioned the Church's mission to work for peaceful unification of the North and South. This effort has to be with the young people and the need for concern with the evangelization of China and Asia.
Our work, said one of the three participants, is to bring life to others: evangelization that is both integral and collaborative and using words different than those used in the past. He also stressed we have to customize our teaching to a one and one basis both in the confessional and in counseling. We have to study the way the Spirit has been leading us as a Church.
Another participant mentioned how after the Council, there was a new interest in scripture, with translations and a growing interest in the reading of scripture. We saw the fostering of scripture groups, organizations for its study, use of the scriptures in parish teaching. We have a course in the seminaries as a master's degree course approved by Rome, which is preparing teachers of scripture.
Another made clear that evangelization is not just increasing the numbers of our Christians but to evangelize the culture, values, and the way we live, in harmony with Gospel values.
Korean Catholics have been very passive in their vision for evangelization. In a recent Gallup poll, Catholics showed a lack of conviction of the four truths of faith: Existence of God, Incarnation, Trinity and Good and Evil. The priest feels a lack of knowledge is the reason there is so much dissatisfaction with established religion, and people are looking in other directions: new age and 'kispirit training movements' and the like.
What is necessary is a correct understanding of God and Man, reconciliation with nature, a mature value system, extending the community of love, strengthening the image of Catholicism, service to society, and fostering a mission spirit.
A priest who is working in the country with a small farming community writes about a recent experience in With Bible.
He had just returned from the city after taking care of a problem with
his neck. Some of the members of the community had returned from
picking wild blue berries in the mountains behind their village. They
were attacked by a swarm of ground digger wasps once they are on the
person it is almost impossible to chase them off even with a towel.
The catechist was bitten 50 to 70 times and the manager about 50
times.
After the attack, the catechist tried to run away and lost his glasses. They were taken to the public health center; the catechist's blood pressure dropped and was in shock and as white as a sheet. They called the ambulance to take him to the emergency room of a nearby hospital.
The priest went looking for the glasses in the area in which they were picking wild blue berries with his dog but no sign of the glasses, and he was even bitten by one of the wasps on the back of his hand. He received a call from the manager that the catechist's blood pressure had returned to normal, and the body coldness disappeared. If the catechist had died, it would have been the end of his experiment in community living.
He quickly drove his truck to the hospital, and on the way was bitten on the ankle by another wasp he had brought along with him in his shoe. He showed the catechist the bite on the hand and easily commiserated with the catechist who had 50 of these bites.
The next day
they went to a nearby Catholic church to hear the talk of a Buddhist
monk who had graduated from the college seminary. The models he praised were Mother Theresa, Dalai Lama, Pope Francis, and Charles de
Foucauld. The theme of the monk's talk was understanding comes
from experience.
"... My greatest interest is in the spiritual world. Without experience of pain, we will not have understanding. I did all the Buddhist meditations, but I felt a dryness that did not leave me.
I decided to go to a country that was poor and undergo some of their trials at which time I met the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa. What kind of life is necessary to experience an opening to the spiritual? It is not speaking well but giving happiness to others. Mother Theresa is a good example of this life... Another example is the Dalai Lama with whom I spent time. The emptier a person's interior life is the more embellishment in the talk and exterior. We are in a period, sadly, in which we package up the exterior gorgeously.
I remember talking to Thomas Merton while with the Dalai Lama: one holy man meeting another. Dalai Lama canceled all his appointments for four days. He was fighting for the independence of Tibet, and Merton was against the Vietnam War. They were both pacifists. Merton was electrocuted in a hotel in Bangkok and there was talk it was an assassination by the American CIA.
Often I get telephone calls from Korea asking me why is life so dry? They all have to do with the loss of meaning. I answered: they should fast for three days. In India, they only have one side dish. In Korea were not happy because we eat too well. Who are the Saints today? It's the farmers."
Both the farmers and the doctors give life to people, but doctors make thousands of dollars and the farmers hundreds. The farmers give life to the doctors and are not understood by our upside-down society. Farmers are saints because they give life to others with their sacrifice.
How to be motivated by the repetitive in our lives is the subject of an article in Bible & Life.
A priest writing in the magazine recounts a senior priest telling him
that he enjoys dramas but not watching a number of different dramas
but the same drama over and over-again. This surprised him for once he has seen a movie he has no desire to see it again.
The older priest explained that it was not the story line that interested him but the performers' facial expressions, voice tones, and bodily movements in their role. Whether their words and the way they express them fit the atmosphere in which they were in. This, the older priest said, is what separates performers into levels of excellence. He finds this an extremely enjoyable past time. The same word uttered with a person's total energy makes a big difference.
Yes, that's true! Even though the same words are used, the way they are said can make a great difference; he had no trouble understanding this. With this mind cast, listening and watching, you will not be bored was his own conclusion.
He quickly thought of his saying Mass with only the readings and prayers that change: the ordinary of the Mass stays the same. And for many, this is a reason the Mass becomes tedious. Was this not the reason they have guitar Masses and the like for the young people?
He thought about his own way of saying Mass and whether his words are said with the appropriate ardor and sincerity. Does he feel the way Jesus felt on the night that he uttered those word: "This is my body this is my blood?"
Each Mass is a repetition of Jesus' death and resurrection: a rebroadcast. One way of looking at the Mass is to see the monotony which is natural. However, when we remember what it is renewing for us: the love that Jesus is confessing with these words than no matter how many times we hear those words of love we never tire. "I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you" (John 13:15).
However, the priest is not a performer with a phony expression and emotion but is called to live in the way Jesus has shown us and when this is the case, the Mass will be real. When the priest is living like Jesus, the Mass will have the authentic feelings and expressions.
He
concludes the article with the thought of St.Therese of Lisieux whose
spirituality was to even in the smallest of acts to do it with the greatest of love. He wants to leave us with her spiritually to do all with great love. This is the way the priest should approach every Mass, and every act and word during the Mass, and should also be the mind of each person who attends Mass.
October is World Mission Month. Mission Sunday was last Sunday, reminding us of the mission we all received. All are missioners. At each Mass, we are sent out into the world by Jesus: Go forth the Mass is ended ( Ite missa est).
A column in the Catholic Times wants us to remember what we are meant to do when sent into the world. Without an understanding of the social gospel, we will not be armed with the tools for our mission. We are called to carry out the teachings of Jesus, which comes with our mission call and what we call the social gospel.
The columnist gives us an example of a person who prepares for the future by saving two thousand dollars every month: 24 thousand dollars in one year, two hundred 40 thousand in 10 years. A house in the metropolitan area of Seoul with that money would be difficult to find, and few who could save 2,000 dollars a month.
Difficulty in buying a house and educating a family continues to increase. Many find it difficult to get out of debt. Young people in their twenties and thirties on average are not making two thousand a month, and when they look at the future, there is little hope, and give up working for the future, and instead 'let us enjoy ourselves' is the results. Those in the business world are figuring out ways of captivating these young people to buy and search for pleasure, all helping to produce the culture of death.
Family debt increases and we have a breakdown of communication giving rise to conflicts in the family. The ones who should be sharing are not, and they want the ordinary folk to do the sharing with the' wage peak system' where retirement-age workers continue to work with a smaller salary to allow the young to enter the labor force. The columnist does not see this as the answer. He wants a more substantial approach to the problem.
We have little knowledge of the structural evil in society that influences us daily without our knowledge: "Sins give rise to social situations and institutions that are contrary to the divine goodness. 'Structures of sin' are the expression and effect of personal sins. They lead their victims to do evil in their turn. In an analogous sense, they constitute a "social sin" (From the Catechism of the Church).
"But evangelization would not be complete if it did not take account of the unceasing interplay of the Gospel and of man's concrete life, both personal and social. This is why evangelization involves an explicit message, adapted to the different situations constantly being realized, about the rights and duties of every human being, about family life without which personal growth and development are hardly possible, about life in society, about international life, peace, justice and development- a message, especially energetic today about liberation" Evangelii Nuntiandi #29.
Twenty-five years ago on Oct. 3rd, East and West Germany were united as the one nation of Germany. Ceremonies were held even in Korea to commemorate the reuniting of the division. After one-quarter of a century has passed, the celebrations have been instrumental in bringing enthusiastic interest to our own efforts at unification.
A professor whose specialty is working for Korean unification writes in his column in the Catholic Times of his expectations. On August 25th, the North and South agreed to stop acts of hostility, and begin ways of cooperating with one another. President Park on the plane back from China said that she would begin immediately to discuss peaceful unification of the country.
For the past seven and eight years, we have almost completely stopped contact with North Korea except for the Kaesong Industrial Park, which is a collaborative effort between the North and South. It is only a one-hour ride from Seoul, and the South Korean companies employ North Korean cheap labor, which helps the North with foreign currency. Now that they have agreed to open the road to cooperation, and the president wants to begin immediately to discuss unification the columnist calls this a paradox of paradoxes.
Contact between the East and West Germany existed for a long period of time, in many different ways: social, financial, cultural, so that when the time came to vote, it made the unification possible. The professor calls the making of the one Germany not an absorption but a joining. He asks what made the East join the West? He finds this very easy to answer. It was Billy Brandt, who with his 'change through rapprochement' paved the way for eventual unification.
West Germany stationed a resident correspondent in East Germany. They could exchange letters, notifying each other on what was going on in each other's Germany. Chancellor Helmet Kohl made the official exchange rate between the East and West as a one to one, and a reason the East voted for unification. His efforts for unification can't be overlooked.
Germany's road to unification was long, and the professor closes with his observation on Korea's unification. Without Brandt putting in the railroad tracks, and Kohl putting the train on the tracks, nothing would have happened. When are we going to start laying the tracks down for future
unification?
Father, how do you cut your fingernails? An elementary school altar boy asked this question of the pastor after Mass. In the View from the Ark in the Catholic Times, the writer uses this incident to mull over an important attitude, often forgotten.
The
priest writer was taken aback by the question, trying to figure out what
was behind the question. Was there a method of cutting fingernails?
"My mother cuts my fingernails, I can see you cutting your left hand
fingernails but how do you do the right hand? Our school teacher drew
blood when he cut his fingernails." He wanted to know who was cutting
the priest's fingernails.
A fingernail clipper makes
the cutting a very precise and easy job. Some clippers when they cut, make no noise. He noticed with age the cutting of the
finger nails was not like it was. At the beginning he thought it
was the dull blade but one day the thought came that like all of
nature, age brings a toughness and brittleness to his
body and fingernails.
As children we remember that scars and
broken bones healed quickly. Our bodies were soft and pliable, our
spirit was supple, we didn't have any preconceptions, we accepted
freely and easily what was given. We were open to bold adventure. With
age we saw much of this disappear because we needed the toughness of
the body to withstand threats from outside, and to protect others.
Softness
is necessary but we can't make a flexible branch into a pole.
Hardness is necessary if we want to stand up to the stormy world in
which we live. However, softness is a distinguishing mark of life; death
is stiffness. Life is open to change and growth, and why we need to be pliable and soft. He acknowledges the possibility that hardness of the body may be for future
ages and for the good of other parts of our body.
However,
there is no need for our hearts to become hard. Often the way we
live not only does the body become hardened but our souls take on this
quality. Experience, knowledge, wisdom and courage, that comes with
age doesn't make us stronger, but the flattery, self-righteousness,
judging of others, our greed, and fear are hardening the muscles and tying our hands and feet.
The world we live in is
making us hard. Christians know that God's love is always being poured
into us which should make us soft and allow us to recover the suppleness of youth.
Isn't this why Jesus wants us to become like children. He concludes with
the wish that we all become like the child who wanted to know who cut
the priest's fingernails.
