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Pastoral Message From Fr. Michael For the week of April 24, 2011
U 2?
“I have climbed the highest
mountain, I have run through the fields,
only to be with you. I have run, I have
crawled, I have scaled these city walls,
only to be with you. But I still haven’t
found what I’m looking for.”
So starts one of the best known
songs by a music group that’s been
around for a while now, U2. They
started as a kind of Christian-Rock group in Ireland, but since
the band members were both Catholic and Protestant, the
religious overtones of their music became more engaged with
the social reality around them — namely, the religious war
between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. They
eventually became not only critics of the conflict, but also
builders of the alternative, mostly by gathering young fans from
both camps into a common love of one music.
Call it romantic if you will, or maybe even naïve, but the song title “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” can fit into the part of the Easter gospel when the angel asked the women at the tomb, “What have you come looking for?” In another part of the gospel, Jesus promises us, “Seek, and you shall find.” So, what are we looking for? Because what we eventually find will be determined by what we had been seeking in the first place. When I was younger, my mother would listen to the news, or look out at the stormy weather, and see the hand of God in all of it. Of course, that hand was not benevolent. It was vengeful. “That Old-Man-Upstairs is mad about something!” she’d say. Even today, many people look at events in the world and ascribe a meaning to them that only ends up with an angry God getting even. I guess if this is what you are looking for, then this is what you will find. But what about the other signs? Can we dare to imagine that God has forgiven us? That life prevails over death? That the cross is an instrument of victory? That healing is possible for every wound? That light is stronger than darkness? That goodness resides in the order of being? That the image of God, in which we have all been created, is not lost to our own sin? In other words, can we really and truly believe in Easter? How easy it is to finds signs of doom everywhere we look. But that kind of sight can lead to a spiritual blindness. We need the kind of sight that leads us to see even more clearly. We need eyes purged of darkness by the blinding light of the Resurrection. We needs God’s help to lead us to the many other signs all around us — signs of life, of goodness, of light, of God. These signs are also all around us, even more abundantly than the signs that distract us from that final, redemptive reality. But there are some people who seem to find a dark cloud behind every silver lining. These are not Easter people. These have a hard time finding an Alleluia in their hearts. Towards the end of their song, U2 ends up with these lines: “I believe in the kingdom come, then all the colors will bleed into one. Well, yes, I’m still running. You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains, carried the cross and my shame, all my shame. You know I believe it.” I believe it. Do U 2? |
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