COMMUNION OF SAINTS --- BRINGING GOD TO AURORA, COLORADO

This is not child's play

Communion of Saints -- Reach out

Today we were reminded of the meaning of the Communion of Saints.  Even the president of the United States tried in his own strained way to bring it into the sober remarks he made early in the morning to a crowd expecting to hear a campaign speech.  He mentioned that the families of the victims out the shooting in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado will not have the opportunity to hug them tightly tonight.  We, on the other hand will be able to put an extra little ooomph into our hugs of one another today.  He also said, and I paraphrase, that in these hugs to one another today we should somehow be aware that the victims and survivors of the monstrously immoral act in Colorado need us to be by them and need us to be ready to help them as a nation.

No, it's not the Communion of Saints, but for a secular leader in a secular nation, that's all we get.  Now it is up to us to take the "Nation" concept and run with it.  We have the spiritual tradition to support us in our conviction that all of us are one "Nation, under God..,"  We are told that from the first pages of the Bible when God is forming His nation through the miraculous birth of Isaac.  We are told that when we consider the miraculous escape of God's people from Egypt. We are told that when we see Jesus reaching out to everyone, Greeks, Syrophoenicians, Romans, Gadarenes, Samaritans, Tax collectors and centurions, Pharisees and Sadducees and yes, even lepers and adulteresses.

God knows His creatures.  God knows us all.  He knows the Good Guys and the Bad Guys.  Yes, He does know them and bringing them into the fold is a constant work in progress.  If it is good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for us.  He did not promise us an easy life.  He told us that to follow Him is to suffer the way He did.  Just as He suffered at the hands [and the mouths and minds] of His very own people, as well as from the strangers, so do we.  We reach out when we turn the spiritual energy of Divine Love toward the victims rather than the energy of vengeance.  In a case like the one that confronts us this weekend, it is not difficult to find victims.  This act was so monstrous and so calamitous that there are many victims of it across the world, even here among us.  Yes, even we are, to some degree, victims of this ambush by Lucifer and his gang.

Listen closely to the readings at Mass this Sunday.  The Communion of Saints is the key spiritual concept.  Let us soak it in.  Once we understand that, then we will understand the spirituality of the author of this blog, "No Crying at My Funeral."  Let's not forget to Love, not to resent.   Love through the hurt so that we can take on a share of the hurt of the afflicted families.  Love will bring us life and life to the suffering families.  Vengeance and resentment will only suck God's life out of our being.  It would be a sad state of affairs to thus weaken the vigor of the Communion of Saints.


Paul Dion, STL, ParishWorld.net Theology Editor
Lay Associate Community, La Salette Missionaries