Openness to Reality

Dear Companions in the Lord Jesus:

Confusion abounds in our world, politics, economy, poverty, war, immigration, etc., and we could ask, where am I? Often, in the course of time, we can easily wonder where we are going and for many, they are sincerely lost and afraid. Recently, I participated in a retreat and the speaker offered some wonderful insight about these questions.
Father Mauro Lepori is the General Abbot of the Cistercian order, and he states:

“When do we use reason as reason and not as madness? When it embraces and recognizes all of reality, when it remains open to all of reality. Reason that closes itself upon an idea, a restricted concept, reason that rejects being an open gaze upon the whole of reality and understanding it, does not embrace the infinite (and the infinite is part of reality!).

Revelation reveals to us that all of reality is God who makes it out of the love that He is, and revelation proposes that we verify this. Thus, my reason, my “I,” exists if it is open to this, if it verifies this. Revelation enables and fully exalts the “I” of the human person inasmuch as it is capable of opening itself to all of reality. Understanding that my humanity is made for verifying this, for verifying that it is made for welcoming an infinite love, makes all of humanity like a field that faith causes to bear fruit by opening it to all of reality, thereby broadening my humanity.

Where am I? I am there where I am open to all of reality. I am not there where I hide (like Adam and Eve among the bushes) as God comes toward me, the God who proposes to me His companionship and friendship, who proposes that I live all of reality at the source of His friendship for everything, the God who comes to stroll in the garden he created and made beautiful, that He gave to Adam and Eve to make them see that everything is gift. And yet they hid from this, they closed themselves against this! If my “I” closes to this, it closes to itself; that is, it mortifies itself and no longer knows where it is. When God asked, “Adam, where are you?”, Adam could not tell Him because he no longer knew
where his “I” was, because the true place, the true position of our “I” is the You. It is saying “You” to God, to the You who makes you. Only if we are found do we know where we are.”

Reason that closes itself upon an idea in contrast to being open to all the factors loses the possibility to say “You” and to experience the Infinite. Our shallowness in grasping for the idea to fix everything or for only a few to have all the wealth, is a form of hiding.

Pope Francis is not hiding. Time and again, he confronts the leaders of the world in their smallness and begs that we open ourselves to the whole of reality and shed the ideas that close us up into an isolated posture of having all the answers. At the end of August, he will travel to Mongolia, which sits on top of China and under Russia, as you know. A
priest from Italy went there twenty years ago to evangelize after centuries of persecution of religion by communism in which so many Buddhists were killed. Father Marengo started slowly using reason and the totality of reality. He had to learn the language and stay open to the culture and the peoples. No ideology was going to bring new life, but only a “You”, Christ. Now, the total Catholic population in Mongolia is 1450. Roughly 40% of
Mongolia’s population remains atheist or without religion. Pope Francis appointed Fr. Marengo a Cardinal at 49 years old and will visit this country where all the Catholics will gather in one setting. The people began to understand that their humanity was made for welcoming an infinite love, which “makes all of humanity like a field that faith causes to bear fruit by opening it to all of reality,” as Father Lepori states.

Cardinal Marengo, (google him), recently stated: “It is quite evident that in the Mongolian contest, special importance is given to whisper and, more generally, to speak at a low tone of voice, not only as a part of etiquette but even as a distinct way of transmitting values and imagine how difficult for an Italian to speak with a lower tone of voice and not using his hands.” He joked!

Send your Spirit, Lord, to help us embrace reality and not go into hiding,

Father Jerry Mahon
Rector/Pastor