THINGS FALL APART

As we move further into the sacred Season of Advent 2023, the world in which we live seems to be falling apart. Globally, there are wars and violent conflicts, rise of dictators, and impacts of climate crisis denied by some scientists and religious leaders. In this country, there are deep divisions in politics, in families, and in the Church. Personally, some of us are coping with illness and death of loved ones or with other concerns in families, communities, or places of employment. Lines from Irish poet W.B. Yeats’ 1920 poem, “The Second Coming” keep winding their way into my prayer: “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. . .”

Yeats wrote this poem after seeing the losses of WWI and experiencing the sweeping flu epidemic in his own family. If things were falling apart in 1920, what can we say about 2023? My question to ponder in Advent is, “What is my center? What is our center?” With many institutions and systems crumbling around us, with increasing damage inflicted by humans to our Sister Mother Earth, if my center, our center as Christians, is not Emmanuel, God-with-us, God Incarnate Jesus the Christ, the center will not hold.

Advent offers a number of virtues to ponder: humility, reverence, trust, hope, and more. I wish to focus on courage. Its Latin root is “cor,” heart, the beating heart essential for life. Courage means acknowledging and facing our fears. Recently I read a quote about courage in an article about Sinead O’Connor, who died in July of this year at age 56: “What is courage if not a sustained effort to make yourself bigger than the cruelty of the world?” Alone, I cannot make myself bigger, but if my center is Emmanuel, God will empower me to be bigger than the cruelty, violence, indifference of the world. My center will hold.

Sr. Marie Lucey OSF
Associate Director
Franciscan Action Network