It is very interesting how we a human beings like to "lump" or "categorize" or "aggregate" individual souls into groups by virtue of one or two or even a few variables in their behavior, some good and some bad. Unfortunately, "aggregation" also has the effect of depersonalizing individuals to the point that eventually they end up in one of two camps like the 99% or the 1% or even making a "collective" of the "rich" and "the poor." I say, if you are able to name them, then it would be easier to unmask our sense of hidden dislike or like and then make decisions accordingly regarding how to relate to them.
But how does one relate to a group of "the poor"? or "the rich"? I have friends who are wealthy and successful from an economic standpoint and conversely friends who are not so successful or prosperous from an economic perspective. I think "aggregation" is something to be left to God. When I aggregate, I separate. When I congregate, I join. Aggregation is one of my most innocuous of sins. In the end, it is a Godly privilege to make such judgments as He will one day when He decides who will be to His right and who will be to His left. He knows who the sheep are and who the goats are.
That I may not be presumptuous regarding the things of God, my focus must rather be on my relationship with the individual heart and to relate to the individual heart as an opportunity to reflect the beauty of God. When I aggregate such individuals with distinct faces, hearts, minds, and inimitable uniqueness into "the rich" and into "the poor" I strip the unique qualities of each soul and form a vague composite that conveniently fits a particular polemic or argument. From that point of the polemic, it is a matter of winning the argument or defeating the opposition. How can peace come about from such a dead end? It can't.
I, for one, need to be wary that an underlying sense of resentment is not present against the composite person for which I look for a representative as what Rene Gerard calls the "scapegoat." That does no good for those whom I encounter, and certainly does no good for myself. It is that masked sense of envy, frustration, and even anger playing into the polemic, the winning, and the defeat of the phantom enemy, the composite we reject. Our anger might even have shades of a righteous foundation, but nevertheless, where it leads is to destruction of others and ultimately self-destruction. Such tendencies must be breathed away into the hands of God.
It is in my life alone that I can make the decisions that keep me on the critical path to heaven. I attempt to triangulate with God, with the other persons I encounter under the guidance of Holy Mother Church, and it will be that much easier for me to navigate away from pride, calumny, detraction and a kind of "group-think sinfulness" for which I will undoubtedly be held responsible for my reckless participation. The force of this "group-think" might even be fun as the base and pleasurable concupiscence causes me to delight in the destruction of an effigy which I might burn to rid myself anger. And those who observe and do nothing are fooled that they rid themselves of their own anger by a kind of "catharsis." that only works in drama, on the stage, in art, but not in life. Gerard sees this "group-think-aggregate" attitude as transformative from what begins as a verbal critique to the violent burning of an effigy and to the extreme the taking of a life. This is the phenomenon that we have seen tragically in schools wherein students attempt to rid themselves of "themselves" by scapegoating the composite of their hatred in someone else.
Words are powerful. Internalized words are even more powerful. The mystery of evil lies within our self constructed truths which are really lies. Words transform ultimately into action (i.e. the group think activity of the Pharisees wanting to stone the prostitute) as "scapegoating." Please note that it is a kind of "group-think" that operates so readily within the political arena by the incessant mantra of the 1% vs.. the 99%. You hear aggregations that people on food stamps are lazy and are mooching off the system. The very idea of food stamps retains a negative imprint on our minds and we forget that many (not all) are in great need of this tool so as not to starve in a down economy. We lump people who are surviving by their wit alone to keep from becoming homeless into a group of undefinable unidentifiable faces in the "madding crowd." But when you consider the individual soul experiencing the humiliation of having to be looked at by others as "pitiable", then it becomes harder when that face is indeed someone you know. I don't think so.
I myself have to be careful not to "scapegoat," "aggregate", and "compositize" (made up word) the souls in a world that is subject to what some call the inevitability of "entropy" and "devolution". Rather it should be termed "devilution". While these so called "tendencies" characterize a fallen world, they do not characterize the witness of the recreated world through the resurrection of Christ and what that action means for us, more importantly, what He means to us. We are to be witnesses of that event, a personal event, not a composite or some vague repeatable phenomenon. The Resurrection which is the fulfillment of Christmas continues to be that game changing event unequaled in human experience and history. We must employ a "go tell it on the mountain...." kind of witnessing of something spectacular, and that has been handed down based upon a real life witness to an incarnated God who was born in a "feeding trough" and who was persecuted by his own, abandoned by his friends, and who died and rose from the dead so we too could bring along as many as we could to join in the individual significance of that resurrection, not on an aggregate, but on a "Body" a "mystical body" wherein we are not assimilated but individually "communicated" as individual "words" in a sentence to the "whole of the meaning" of that sentence. It is a paradox that in our oneness with Christ we maintain our individuality.
We are not assimilations to but "communications" with the person of Jesus, and the person of Jesus communicates Himself to us. If one person, male or female, sees no face, no hands, no fingers, no mouth, no eyes, it is easier to aggregate this faceless mass along with the tumor which we have convinced ourselves must be eliminated. Therein begins the culture of death. Jesus demands and will take account of this ultimate aggregation called abortion for the sake of "my rights" "my body" "my choice". That freedom has not been given any woman or created being. Our selfishness has numbed us to have grasped for that forbidden right the way one woman once grasped for a "delight" that was not her right to take. Grasping is indeed the mechanism of action that leads to interposing ourselves in place of another for the sake of "my" "my" "my". There is no such a thing as "my anything" except "my will", the only thing which God gave us ownership of. It is the exercise of "my will" which has been at the root of deterioration, disaster and war from the beginning. Our way of talking has allowed us to be so "possessive" of that which we have been charged to steward.
In the meantime, I want to wish you and all of your families a Merry but Reflective Christmas. I say “reflective” since it is the act of reflecting upon the nature of God’s incarnation that refocuses our inner selves into a world of alleviating suffering and poverty. Don’t let Christmas be too noisy. The words “Silent Night, Holy Night” have special meaning in the contemplation of the reality of the cold damp air after freshly fallen snow in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the “hill country of Judea.” This uncommon occurrence in the Holy Land recently brings to mind how it all might have actually taken place 2000 years ago. The birth of a child into stinging cold wet air. The child born, cheeks flushed red. The child born, arms extended accepting of (not grasping for) and breathing-in a future that will at once be holy, blessed, joyful, and to the very sorrow of His mother, “will be the cause of the rise and fall of many,” – even so the glories of the angelic singing, the shepherds and the magi would be early hints that the world’s “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (as Shakespeare once wrote) would in the end not be victorious. Rather, the child’s very nature would re-craft for us a future of transfiguration, renewal and resurrection. This would be His gift to us.
So in that cave of life we encounter in this Christmas remembrance, remember you are the blankets that wrap this marvelous child, and give Him warmth; you are the straw that softened the “feeding trough” of a crib that is His place of rest; in so doing, we most resemble His rosy flesh, transfiguring our baseness into the creation He once made and said “It was good.” “Behold, I make all things new,” as John the Evangelist writes in the Book of Revelation, even so, still not being able to see but as through a looking glass darkly the wonders which He has in store for those who love Him.
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