Dear Friends,
Each time June 29 falls on Sunday, the liturgical calendar sets aside the readings of Ordinary Time and invites us to celebrate two giants of Christianity, Peter and Paul.
Peter and Paul were both Jews by birth. Peter was a fisherman by trade, Paul, a tentmaker. Peter fed people and lived under the sky. Paul created shelters for people to take refuge from the elements and the creatures that inhabited it.
Jesus came upon Peter at his boat and called Peter right then and there. Peter followed Jesus immediately. Paul did not walk the roads of the Galilee and Judea with Jesus and Peter. Paul only came to know Jesus after the resurrection, but nonetheless as intimately.
Paul and Peter received new names from Jesus. Simon became Peter, the Rock. Saul became Paul, the missionary. With them, as with us, new names meant a new call, a new future.
Paul, the fiery, fearless preacher, and Peter, the acknowledged leader of the early Church, were not without faults. Paul hunted down the early Christians and sent them to prison. Some of those who stoned Stephen left their cloaks at Saul’s feet. Peter ran away as Jesus was arrested. A short time later, Peter denied that he knew Jesus. Peter and Paul were leaders who knew what it meant to be human, fragile.
It’s good to keep this fragility in mind in our times since the sexual abuse scandal broke in 2002. Then, the weaknesses of our current Church leaders came to the fore. The pain and humiliation touched us all.
I suspect that, even today, the anger, bitterness, and cynicism about the church lingers in many of us. It makes us lose our taste for Church and all it offers. Some of us leave.
But let’s stay the course. Let’s suffer with the abused. Compassion means precisely that, “to suffer with,” and let’s hold them in prayer, that they might experience a healing of memories and restored hope, dignity and joy in their lives. That is compassion to which we are called.
But we are also called to be with the perpetrators, the abusers, and the bishops as well. This is hard to hear. This is the real test of our compassion. Can we stand with another when it doesn’t feel good or look good?
From the example of Jesus, we find the courage to attempt this way of being. Jesus was crucified between two thieves. There wasn’t one cross, but three. To bystanders, Jesus was painted with the same brush as the other two: tainted and guilty. Jesus carried everything without protesting his innocence, though he was.
Can we help carry one of the darker sides of our Church’s history without protesting its unfairness or distancing ourselves from it?
This is the challenge of living compassionately in this community of God’s people.
May Peter and Paul, who knew fully what it meant to be human, be with us on the way.
~ Sister Joan Sobala
