The basic premise behind “Intentional Catholic” is that we should examine everything we encounter–every gut reaction, every human encounter, every decision, every news story, every moral question and political issue–through the lens of our faith.
Many of the songs we love and sing robustly at church are about justice: Canticle of the Turning; Send Down the Fire; All That Is Hidden; Anthem; Christ Be Our Light; We Are Called; City of God; We Will Serve the Lord; Lift Up Your Hearts, to name a few.
These songs stir us because they awaken in us a connection between a real, tangible world and “Thy kingdom come ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.”
They stir us, in other words, because they underscore that justice is *supposed* to be something to be something we work toward on earth. That’s literally what we’re praying for in every Our Father we recite.
This presupposes that we have a role to play in that, because as Teresa of Avila famously said, we are now God’s hands and feet on the earth. They stir us to desire that just, peaceful world.
But when it comes to putting in the effort to make that happen, we crash into our own idols. We start fussing about what actually constitutes “justice,” because we start to realize seeking it is going to threaten some of our own worldly priorities and political philosophies. At some level, we begin to recognize how our idols might have to give way in order to truly see the Kingdom made reality on earth as it is in Heaven. We start feeling threatened by how much we might be asked to give up.
And in the end, we’re stirred by the music, and we talk the talk, but we don’t walk the walk.
And so justice remains a far away dream. People who have experienced oppression protest. Some among us look for reasons to justify dismissing them, while others with the best of intentions react so strongly to such dismissals that they end up perpetrating a whole other kind of injustice.
I’m really struggling with the world right now, if you can’t tell. Toss some hope my direction.
Intentional Catholic 