Category: Ordinary Time Year C

Carlo Carretto (1910 -1988) was a charismatic figure in post-World War II Italy, the leader of the Italian youth movement known as Catholic Action.
He led the movement for 20 years.

In 1954, Carlo resigned from his position and joined the recently founded Little Brothers of Jesus, a Roman Catholic religious congregation founded in 1933 by René Voillaume, inspired by the life of Charles de Foucauld.

For many years, Carretto lived as a hermit in the Sahara Desert, translated the scriptures into the Tuareg language, and from the solitude of the desert wrote some extraordinary spiritual books. His writings and his faith were exceptional in that they had a rare capacity to combine an almost childlike piety with (when needed) a blistering iconoclasm. He loved the church deeply, but he wasn’t blind to its faults and failures, and he wasn’t afraid to point out the shortcomings.

In 1964, Carretto published a book with the title “Letters from the Desert.”
Late in life, when his health forced him to leave the desert, he retired to a religious community in his native Italy.

Carretto wrote, quite profoundly, “I am old enough to know I am no better than others.”
Obviously, the Pharisee in our Gospel today (Lk. 18” 9 -14) had not met and had a coffee with Carlo Carretto. Pity!

The image is taken from Vie de Jesus Mafa (Life of Jesus Mafa), ‘The Life of Jesus Mafa’ is a set of 63 pictures from the life and teaching of Jesus, viewed by the artist as if the events had taken place in a village in Cameroon
The set of 63 may be accessed at the Divinity Library, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Today, in our Church, is known as World Mission Sunday.

Where were you in December 1975?

What were you doing?

That was fifty years ago so remembering may take some time!

On December 8th of 1975 the then Pope, Paul VI issued a document with Latin title “Evangelii Nuntiandi” The English title reads, ‘Evangelization in the Modern World.’

It is available on the Vatican website, www.vatican.va

In my opinion, the document has been one of the most radical documents to ever come from the Vatican.

Again, in my opinion, it is one of the least read and least attended to.

No. 21 of the document reminds us that the primary importance in evangelization is not proclamation but rather witness.

We do not primarily talk about the person of Jesus, rather we live the person of Jesus.
Evangelization, I suggest is not about proclamation but, rather imitation.
No 21 reads:

I would like to suggest that giving witness to Christ today requires precisely that we build communities that are wide enough to hold our differences.

What we need is not a new technique, rather a new sanctity; not a cooler dress, rather a more inclusive embrace; not some updating of the gospel to make it more acceptable to the world, rather a more courageous radiating of its wide compassion; not some new secret that catches peoples’ curiosity, rather a way of following Christ that can hold more of the tensions of our world in proper balance so that everyone, irrespective of temperament and ideology, will find themselves better understood and embraced by what we hold most dear.

Thanks to the book Schindler’s Ark, written by the Australian author, Thomas Keneally, and the subsequent film, Schindler’s List, directed by Stephen Spielberg, the name Oskar Schindler became known to millions of people around the world.

Schindler was a German industrialist. During World War II he saved over a thousand Polish Jews from the concentration camps. As the war ended the Germans pulled out of Poland, and the people awaited the arrival of the Russians.

Just before the Russians arrived, Schindler too decided to flee westwards.

When his Jewish workers, now free, heard he was leaving they got together to see how they could express their gratitude to him. All that was to hand to make a gift was base metal.

Then one of them suggested something better.

He opened his mouth to show his gold bridgework and said for his fellow workers to take the bridgework.

At first, they refused the man’s offer but he insisted.

So, he had his bridgework extracted by a prisoner who had once been a dentist in Cracow.

A jeweller among them melted the gold down and fashioned a ring out of it.

On the inner circle of the ring, they inscribed these words from central text of Rabbinic Judaism, the Talmud: “The one who saves a single life, saves the entire world.”

It was a deeply moving gesture of gratitude. That is one of the marvellous things about gratitude – it makes us want to give something back.

There is a French proverb,
“La reconnaissance est la memoire du coeur” – ‘Gratitude is the memory of the heart’.

But then someone might say that it was the least they could do since they owed their lives to Schindler.

The ten lepers in the Gospel also owed their lives to Jesus; yet only one of them came back to thank him!

Baal Shem Tov (1698 – 1760) was a legendry Hassidic spiritual leader.

One day a person came to him and said, “I think I’m losing my faith.”

“What makes you think that?” asked Baal Shem Tov.

“When I was young, God seemed very near to me. Now God seems distant.

“Such a distance is natural,” Baal Shem Tov replied.

“When children are young, we teach them to walk by standing beside them and holding their hand. As they grow, however, we gradually distance ourselves so they can walk to us. God has moved away from you, so that you might learn how to walk on your own towards God.”

Nikos Kazantzakis, the great Greek writer, tells a story of an elderly monk he once met on Mount Athos.

Kazantzakis, still young and full of curiosity, was questioning this monk and asked him: “Do you still wrestle with the devil?”

“No,” replied the old monk, “I used to, when I was younger, but now I’ve grown old and tired, and the devil has grown old and tired with me.”

“So,” Kazantzakis said, “your life is easy then? No more big struggles.”

“Oh, no!” replied the old man, “now it’s worse. Now I wrestle with God!”

“You wrestle with God,” replied Kazantzakis, rather surprised, “and you hope to win?” “No,” said the old monk, “I wrestle with God, and I hope to lose!”