FAST FOOD (AD 2019): Twenty-Third Helping
The Ripple Effect of Gospel Nonviolence
Day in and day out, we live by the invisible ripples that come to us over time and space that would never thought when they were started that they were going to be working and controlling the moment. This is the way normal life works. The invisible side of existence is real. It is real. In fact most, spiritually speaking, most of what is most important in life happens on the invisible side, where no one can see it.
Fidelity to Christ means fidelity to the means of Christ here and now, and the reason we’re faithful is because each of our individual actions sends out ripples over time and space that we can’t imagine. We have a responsibility to those around us in the history, which means Jesus, which means God.
So the monk Thomas Merton sums this up in one beautiful sentence, a really beautiful sentence — Merton says: the first and most important thing to be a good Christian, the first and most important thing to be a good Christian is to be willing to be your own good person here and now, love as Christ loved here and now, and then be willing to let everything else fall in its own good time, good place, and good way. The first and most important thing to be a good Christian is to be willing to be your own good person here and now. Love as Christ loved in the only place where you have any control over existence — right now, here and now, and then be willing to let everything else fall in its own good time, good place, good way.
Mother Theresa says, my business is fidelity, God’s business is success. The church and so many Christians have literally reversed that, figuring their business is success and God’s business is fidelity. It’s not so, and its causing chaos in the individual life and in the Christian communities. The issue is to love as Christ loved here and now because those are the only Christ like means that can build a Christ like life, a Christ like home, a Christ like convent, a Christ like parish, a Christ like diocese, a Christ like church, a Christ like world. The only means. We are to be faithful and loving as Christ loved. And then let the ripples go out and leave the rest in the hands of God. For fidelity is our business and success is God’s.
Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
