Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, Oct 28, 2009

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our
lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life
to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say.
Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only
so many tomorrows.

- Paul VI, bishop of Rome, who, on this date, 1965,
issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for
the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.


What strange, amazing creatures we human beings are, regardless of the “status” we have achieved in Life! Paul VI is reported to have once said: “Failing to be there when a man wants her is a woman's greatest sin, except to be there when he doesn't want her.” Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, this is in my opinion a pretty stupid thing to say theologically if one is supposed to be centered in Gospel and not in one’s limited social culture. This is a huge problem with Religion: so often religious rules do not reflect their core principles or “founders”, but the manipulation of human beings with power in that Religion. The Hadith in Islam is a good example – a collection of sayings not in the Qur’an which various people “remember” the Prophet saying, and then used to control people.

Paul VI is also reported as saying: “No more war! Never again war! If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons.” And yet, what has the papacy really done to live that truth over the millennia? Very little.

And as to issuing a decree “absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ” – if he was attempting to eradicate the hate that his Church had shown and engendered falsely against the Jews, he might have just said plainly they were wrong. But if he was saying that the Jews were indeed collectively to blame for the death of Jesus Christ and were now being magnanimously “forgiven”, he deserves to be shamed for his ignorance and arrogance.

However, we humans are a mystery. We have so many contradictory facets! I agree wholeheartedly with Paul’s words about being told we are dying right at the beginning of our lives. So much about Life and society and religion tends not to support Life and the living of it. But certainly the Gospel is all about Life and not “death”. Paul is right: anything that reminds us that Life is fleeting, that there are only so many tomorrows, that we should do what we want to do now, is on the proverbial money.

“There are only so many tomorrows.” Love extravagantly, now.

Brian+