QUOTATIONS FROM PRESENTATION TO APM

APRIL 14, 2010—DALE KOROGI

Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche, faith communities where people with and without developmental disabilities live together, writes that,

Community can be a terrible place, because it is a place of relationship; it is the revelation of our wounded emotions and of how painful it can be to live with others, especially with some people... As we live with people, all the anger, hatred, jealousies and fear of others, also the need to dominate, to run away or to hide, seem to rise up from (our) wounds.

"It is finished." With those three words, the compelling vision, the exhilarating hopes, the noble struggle, the whole thing, comes to an end, collapsing on a cross. But, writes Stanley Hauerwas,

"It is finished," is not a death gurgle. "It is finished" is not "I am done for." "It is finished" is a cry of victory. "It is finished" is the triumphant cry that what I came to do has been done. "It is finished." But it is not over. It is not over because God made us, the Church, the "not over."

Regarding the current crisis that the Church is experiencing, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes what he would like to say to the Pope, his friend, later this month when he meets with him:

Face the people and tell them that you never wished for any children to be harmed and that it breaks your heart to see how your inaction and obstruction may have led to more kids being violated; that you made the colossal error of moving slowly and cautiously because you feared what public exposure and the defrocking of criminal priests would do to the reputation of the Church; and that you erred hugely in putting the needs of an institution ahead of the safety of the individuals that that institution is meant to protect. Explain that you further erred by accepting the prevailing psychiatric opinion of the time—that pedophiles could be reformed through counseling—and that you thought that after extreme therapy, these priests were cured. Admit that you screwed up, and ask forgiveness for your failures. Human beings forgive the flaws of other human beings, but they don't forgive gods. Pledge the remainder of your days to helping heal the victims and making reasonable restitution, and declare unequivocally that henceforth the Church will hand over all priests guilty of molestation to the authorities for prosecution.

Mark Searle writes,

If we were to learn from the celebration of the paschal mystery to surrender our lives totally to God in Christ, the death of the Christian would be but the further and final rehearsal of a pattern learned in life and practiced over and over again in a lifetime of liturgical participation...For those who have learned from the prayers and rituals of the Christian liturgy how to let go of all that we cling to to save ourselves from the void, the final surrender of death will be a familiar and joyous sacrifice.

In his epic poem, "The Wreck of the Deutschland," Gerard Manley Hopkins writes,

Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east...

In his message for World Mission Sunday in 2004, Pope John Paul II says that,

Gathered around the altar, the Church understands better her origin and her missionary mandate...'Eucharist and Mission' are inseparable.

Liturgical theologian, Aidan Kavanagh agrees when he writes,

The Sunday liturgy is not the Church assembled to address itself. The liturgy does not cater to the assembly. It summons the assembly to enact itself publicly for the life of the world.

Inspired by the Apostle James' familiar admonition, the Reverend Bernice King , daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes,

It's easy for those of us who say we are saved to come to church to hear a good word to satisfy our religious appetite. We cannot just be hearers of the words but must be doers also. It's okay to come to church to sing and dance and shout, but when Jesus comes back, he will not care how high we jumped, but what we did when our feet hit the floor...Jesus didn't say, "Will you go?" He didn't say, "Can you go?" He just said, "Go."