The Love of Christ Urges Us On
December is always a busy month as we prepare for the celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This busyness tends to produce more than the usual tension in our lives as the Church asks us to engage in a spiritual preparation that involves prayer and silence while the rest of the world is anything but silent. As I grow older, I find it even more difficult to balance the two aspects of December. As I wrote a little while back, I am dealing with a pinched nerve in my back that necessitates regular physical therapy, just one more thing to do! Then last Friday, I took a fall – three of them, in fact – and ended up in the emergency room of the local hospital. The mystery of "why" still remains, but I am hoping that the doctors will figure it out eventually. I offer this news as an explanation for why I have been absent from my regular blogging. Today, however, I want to offer some more thoughts on Evangelii Gaudium.
Goodness always tends to spread. Every authentic experience of truth and goodness seeks by its very nature to grow within us, and any person who has experienced a profound liberation becomes more sensitive to the needs of others. As it expands, goodness takes root and develops. If we wish to lead a dignified and fulfilling life, we have to reach out to others and seek their good. In this sense, several sayings of Saint Paul will not surprise us: The love of Christ urges us on (2 Cor 5:14); Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel (1 Cor 9:16). [# 9, Evangelii Gaudium]
Reaching out to others and seeking their good may seem outside of the realm of possibility for people who are struggling with chronic illness or disability. A good part of our lives is taken up with taking care of ourselves and, in many instances, being taken care of by others. Perhaps it goes without saying, but it needs to be said, that the responsibilities of our baptismal profession are not necessarily mitigated by illness or disability. All of us are "urged on" by the love of Christ.
This is, in fact, one of the great motivations for CUSA and our support of one another through correspondence. When Mrs. Brunner founded CUSA in 1947, she was bedridden by congestive heart failure. She longed for the companionship of others. However, what may have started as a desire for human contact grew into a desire to reach out to others and to impress upon others that we can turn our situations into very positive engines for preaching the Good News, especially Good News that suffering can be redemptive if we use this opportunity to unite ourselves with the sufferings of our Savior. As I was reading this paragraph, I was reminded of that fact by something one of our members once wrote about her favorite Scripture verse from the writings of St. Paul, the very verse that Pope Francis includes towards the end of this paragraph from St. Paul's 2nd Letter to the Corinthians: The love of Christ urges us on (2 Corinthians 5:14). Despite pinched nerves and incidents of falling, despite whatever situation is plaguing us right now, Jesus urges us forward and asks us to be bearers of the Good News, the Joy of the Gospel.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator
1881