Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Is there no hope in a time of fierce division?

“The Lord shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war no more.”– Isaiah 2:4

Perceived destinies are neither surrender to fate nor excuses to do nothing, but rather destinies are the vectors of life’s course. “One day, some day” is not the mantra of those who do nothing, but rather the vow to pursue that worthy hope. Destinies are the ideals toward which we are re-forming reality.

e tend to skip over the first words of this visionary word from Isaiah, but those first words are most insightful about the ways of God. The Lord shall both judge what is right, fair, just, good between and among nations … and the Lord shall arbitrate or facilitate the just, fair, good and merciful resolution between and among people and nations. And the significance is that this Destiny for the relationship among people and with God should be shaping the present course of our human endeavor… to be homing in on the ideal still in its formation.

I have been blessed through the years for I have witnessed over and over the Presence of the Lord turning swords into plowshares in the human experience. These miraculous moments tend to come in times of crisis. Two people, two friends, two factions, two spouses, a parent and a child, they sit before me in a private place. The anguish begins to overwhelm the resentment, the Presence of the Lord begins to dissipate the resistance, and in a moment of tears, the swords are dropped, and the peace is restored.

I refer to it as the crisis of pride. It is an abandoning of a journey to nowhere so that they might take a course to Somewhere, that journey toward the Ideal, that journey to Divine destinies.

Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz