RBWords - Volume 24 - Number 2: February 2011
Something to Think About
“Globalization” is one of those “buzz words” that make an appearance in certain conversations, mostly in business circles. However, it occasionally occurs in ordinary conversation when the price of gasoline or plane tickets increases dramatically because of nervousness on the part of petroleum markets bidding on future deliveries of crude oil to refineries on the other side of the planet! It certainly comes to my mind because I am an itinerant preacher and when I drive or fly to my destination the cost of gasoline or a plane ticket is quite relevant to me and to those who invite me to come to their parish or retreat facility! The widespread unrest in certain oil-producing Middle-Eastern countries is causing the price at the pump to go up. (It doesn’t matter that we get very little of our oil imports from Libya!)It won’t be just the pump, either. Anything that uses petroleum in its manufacture will be more expensive to produce!
“Globalization” also plays a role in that Middle-Eastern political unrest because of the almost instant availability of sounds and images and events by way of cell phone transmission! The internet reaches easily countries we in America consider exotic but are now closer neighbors than we ever dreamed: China and India are the two most prominent! Those less than beautiful transmission towers that dot our landscape now are putting us in touch with almost any place on the planet! (The parish at which I’m preaching at the moment has a tower disguised as a tall tree!)
“Globalization” means that we may be more aware of what is happening in the Church around the world. This can be a challenge to our cultural and religious assumptions. Our American way of parochial life is not necessarily the “model” for the world. We may have to learn new models to preach to a more “global consciousness.” A recent parish mission in the Los Angeles had me thinking about Anglo, Hispanic and Asian cultural understandings all in one Sunday’s preaching! The blessing of diversity carries its own challenge to think outside our cultural “boxes” and see how national and ethnic boundaries can enrich the way we live our faith! IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.
It Has Been Said
“The world of grace, the source of our communion with God, is a distinct, original domain, never completely homogeneous with the world itself. Grace is forced to appropriate suitable signs, whether it borrows natural symbols that touch the human heart and adapts them in fitting ways or creates a sacred world of its own, with both descending and ascending mediations in the form of actions, words of revelation, sacraments, institutions, even church law, liturgy, and the rest.”
From “Where Does the ‘Sacred’ Fit into a Christian Worldview?” by Fr. Yves Congar, O.P., (edited and translated by Fr. Paul Philibert, O.P. in AT THE HEART OF CHRISTIAN WORSHIP – LITURGICAL ESSAYS OF YVES CONGAR - Pueblo Books, Liturgical Press, 2010)