Help us create a Charter for Compassion

People of all nations, all faiths, all backgrounds, are invited to contribute.

By recognizing that the Golden Rule is fundamental to all world religions, the Charter for Compassion can inspire people to think differently about religion. This Charter is being created in a collaborative project by people from all over the world. It will be completed in 2009. Use this site to offer language you'd like to see included. Or inspire others by sharing your own story of compassion.

SILENCE...
If there is no silence beyond and within the words of doctrine, there is no religion, only religious ideology. For religion goes beyond words and actions, and attains to the ultimate truth in silence. When this silence is lacking, where there are only the "many words" and not the One Word, then there is much bustle and activity, but no peace, no deep thought, no understanding, no inner quiet. Where there is no peace, there is no light. The mind that is hyper-active seems to itself to be awake and productive, but it is dreaming. Only in silence and solitude, in the quiet of worship, the reverent peace of prayer, the adoration in which the entire ego-self silences and abases itself in the presence of the Invisible God, only in these "activities" which are "non-actions" does the spirit truly awake from the dream of a multifarious and confused existence.

Thomas Merton. Honorable Reader: Reflections on My Work. Edited by Robert E. Daggy (New York: Crossroad, 1989): 115.]
Thought for the Day

If you want a spiritual life, you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1958): 56.

Called to be Mystics

In last week’s Catholic Sentinel Fr. Ron Rolheiser wrote an article on the need for every Catholic to develop a mystical spirituality. We often relegate mysticism to the isolation of a mountain monastery or to a very few saint-like people who have the time and energy to climb, let alone read, Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain. Quoting Karl Rahner he made the point that “there would soon come a time when each of us will either be a mystic or a non-believer.”

Those of us who grew up in the 1950’s, and maybe early 1960’s make up the last generation who’s faith was supported by family, neighborhood and the local parish church and school. We can all hearken back, remembering our favorite aspect of that era of our faith lives. There are a few diehards who muse that we can somehow turn back the clock to the ‘good old days,” or at least pretend by resuscitating old rites, sodalities and other once flourishing parish groups. The reality is that our society, as we know it today, will not and cannot support such wishful -- whimsical thinking.

There is a game going on whose goal is to try and fit our faith into our society, to fit our faith values into the values of our society; to demand that our culture exhibit our faith values. The truth is that our society, as complex and complicated as it is, is far too small to contain the Wisdom of the Scriptures, and the traditions of our faith communities. Truth is we cannot legislate morality, justice, equality, peace, justice or care for the environment. Society at large, and especially society at the local and individual level, must be converted toward and into these qualities that will insure a future for us all.

This does not mean that we should not work, labor and pray for legislative justice for all or work to reform and renew institutions, governmental and Church policies that simply don’t work or are unjust and injurious to our life on this planet; it means that something much more transformative is needed. Each and everyone one of us must be converted from the inside out, we must anchor our lives in God’s divine and unbounded love for us so that we can love others, even those who wish us harm. In other words we each need to have a mystical conversion, steeped in prayer, the ingestion of the Holy Wisdom of Scripture, and grounded in communities of faith whose aim in nothing less than the renewal of the face of the earth and the implementation of the living Realm of God in our midst.

We can no long afford to simply go through the motions, say our prayers or satisfy ourselves with perfectly executed liturgies and feel good about ourselves. Our prayer must come from a deep inner groaning that results in a new birth of active involvement in what needs to be done to transform the face of the earth. It means that we need to take inventory; to cease participating in unjust institutions, cease doing harm to planet earth or any person or creature under Heaven in thought word or deed. We need to cease reading the Scriptures and begin living them, to cease just going to Mass and become what we celebrate – bread for the world in thought, word and deed. Nothing less than the Gospel is required of us.

For this task we need each other more than ever before we need to become mystics, we need to pray and be transfigured -- converted together into the very Realm of God alive in our midst.
Peace, Michael E. Evernden, CSP

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Welcoming Others

Who are being neglected?  This is the primary question for the Paulist ministry of evangelization and reconciliation, locally and nationally.  This is the primary question for any parish concerned with bearing and sharing the Gospel and message of Jesus the Christ.  When we think of a parish community we need to think of it as a circle, it needs to be in a formation facing outward not inward.  We need to be a circle facing outward in welcome to the needs beyond walls and official parish boundaries.   In old western movies there was always to call to “circle the wagons” a formation of defense against those “others” whatever form of unwanted “others” they may be.  We can name those others in our lives, in our families, workplace, nation and world; they come in all sizes, shapes, sexual orientation, nationalities and religious or non-religious groups and individuals.  Who ever they may be for us our call is to welcome, evangelize and reconcile; we are called not to “circle the wagons” but to reach out in welcome.

The formation of an outward facing circle is uncomfortable, probably the reason why it is so rarely formed.  It means that we need to trust what is in the middle, the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in our midst, the nourishment of the Eucharist, the support of a forgiving community; believe that all of that is behind our efforts to reach out in welcome.  This does not come easily.

The history of the early Christian community, which we hear so much about in our Easter readings, portrays how difficult facing outward was for them and is for us.  Yet our early history is a series of breaking outs, a series of discoveries that there are always more to be welcomed in.  Jesus broke out of the confines of the tomb.  The disciples broke out from the safety of their Upper Room, Peter and Paul constantly call the early communities of faith to breakout from their familiar friends and community members to reach out and welcome those “others,” be they Gentiles, Hellenists, widows, lepers and orphans – all the neglected. 

We Paulists celebrate 150 years of Gospel care for the neglected; we can celebrate as a Paulist community only in so far as we have met the Gospel requirement of reaching out beyond our walls and official offices and parish boundaries. Evangelization and Reconciliation must be the milieu, the backdrop, and the ambiance of all that we do.

Peace, Fr. Michael