Disturb Us, O Lord

Disturb us, Lord, when

We are too pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when

with the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wilder seas

Where storms will show Your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push back the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,

Who is Jesus Christ.

               

--oOo--

Reflection:

Father Jerry Orbos, SVD recalled his "Gamu-gamo" experience. While preparing for comprehensive exams in Theology, he saw a gamu-gamo (winged ant) crawling at his table. He noticed that each time the little creature would reach the edge of the table, it would stop, move backward, and crawl in another direction, until it reached the end of the table again. Father Jerry wrote: "The gamu-gamo did the same thing twice, thrice. However, on the fourth time, it did something different. It spread its wings and flew away, free." 

Fears and insecurities hinder us to explore further away from the shore. We are often afraid to sail into the unknown seas. We tend to limit our movements, our engagement, our involvement within our comfort zone, where we feel secure because we are in control of the situation. We are afraid to cross the threshold because the moment we do it, we feel that we become defenseless, vulnerable, and weak. What makes us feel weak?

When Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II in 1978, he faced the crowd in St. Peter's Square with a message: "Be not afraid!". In the book, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he explained: "I could not fully know how far they would take me and the entire Church. Their meaning came more from the Holy Spirit, the Consoler promise by the Lord Jesus to His disciples, than from the man who spoke them." For Pope John II, these exhortation "Be not afraid!" could be addressed to all people in the modern world: "Have no fear of that which you yourselves have created, have no fear of all that man has produced, and that everyday is becoming more dangerous for him! Finally, have no fear of yourselves!"

What is the most dangerous thing that man has created? The story was retold by Msgr. Ruperto Santos, in "Jesus Serves and Saves Us!--Reflections and Prayers for Lent and Holy Week" about the man who saw his name in the obituary pages of the newspaper. It said, "Dynamite king dies." Msgr. Santos went on saying, "he was identified as a merchant of death. He was the inventor of dynamite. With his invention of mass destruction, he acquired a great fortune. He was moved and conversion came. He changed his whole life and devoted his treasure to the betterment of life. He committed his talents to peace and the advancement of human life. Now, he is remembered as the founder of the Nobel Peace Prize. He is Alfred Nobel."

The potent power of nuclear holocaust was first demonstrated during World War II, when the United States of America used nuclear bomb to Japan. The US dropped the "Little Boy" on Hirosima and the "Fat Man" on Nagasaki which killed thousands of people living in those highly populated cities of Japan. At first, General Douglas McArthur attempted to justify the mass destruction as a necessary evil to avert more casualties of war and by censoring news, particularly documentary photos, coming from Japan for the American people to see the horror of nuclear holocaust. Was it necessary for the US to use the nuclear bomb to attain peace? Was there an option to avert the horrendous mass destruction of the nuclear weapons? General Dwight Eisenhower talked to President Truman, he said: "It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing... to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime." Yet, President Truman proceeded in the detonation. Why? At what cost? It was truly a sheer display of absolute power to dominate. (see for details)

Before those atomic bombs exploded in the Japanese soil, there was a different explosion in the 17th century when Francis Bacon proclaimed: "Knowledge is power!" It means, according to philosopher Leonardo Estioko on "The Idea of Progress", "knowledge serves technology and science which are the chief instrument for man's acquisition of power and wealth." This was a paradigm shift where reason is no longer viewed in terms of service to religion. Bacon insisted in reeducating reason along scientific lines. Scientific investigation of natural phenomena, through inductive method, was intended "to promote the improvement of material conditions of life and make men better and happier." This demonstrates our capacity to transform nature according to what we think is useful to us and our community.

This new awareness of the human beings as tool makers, breaks our dependency on nature. Instead of total reliance on its bounty, like what our nomad ancestors did by constantly moving from one abundant place to another, we learned to use tools to cultivate the soil to produce goods for our own consumption. We learned to live in a community and our community relates to other communities through exchanges of goods. Like the gamu-gamo,  through agriculture and commerce we we were afraid to spread our wings and jump into a new phase of consciousness. Something was holding us like a chain in our legs. (to be continued...)