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by Kevin Dance, C.P.
"The wound is the place where God breaks through
..and may be the place of great creativity."
Marian Woodman.
  St.
Paul reminds us the Cross is a stumbling block for those who do not
understand.
I'd wager
you could spend a year at the United Nations and hear not a single mention
of "the Cross". On second thoughts, make it 100 years.
But actions
speak louder...Jesus' experience of the Cross is a resounding NO to
all that stifles, crushes or snuffs out life. He puts his life where
his words are. In today's phrase, Jesus 'walked the talk'. I suggest
that, at its best, what the UN tries to do is a faint echo of what lies
at the heart of the Cross. right: Chagall stained glass at the United
Nations
In 2000 the
Nations of the world met in New York to plan better third millennium
for us all. UN member States have pledged, by 2015, to halve:
- people surviving on less than a dollar a day...if you did it
to one of the least you did it to me!
- people who suffer hunger...Don't send them away, feed them yourselves!
- people with no access to safe drinking water. ....I thirst
- the mortality rate among children under five....Let the little
children come.
- halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS...Of course I want to,
be healed!
The Cross
challenges us to put faces to the tragic statistics. They are our sisters
and brothers. In people's struggles that find a voice at the UN, we
hear an echo of Jesus wrestling with evil - hunger, poverty, filthy
water, others' greed, disease. NO! Not one of my dear sisters or brothers
should live this way.
Nothing genuinely
human fails to find an echo in our hearts....Gaudium et Spes.
The Mystery
of the Cross? Jesus takes on himself the evil of the world that we might
all be free. Consciously or not, we are each invited, in our own time
and place, to make real this declaration of freedom for today's globalising
world.
 Kevin
Dance, C.P. right
Passionists International
777 UN Plaza # 6H
New York, NY 10017, USA
Tel: (718) 739-5661
Fax: (646) 227-1879
Email: kdanceun@cpprov.org
also in this issue:
When the towers fell | Gemma Galgani
Calling on the Laity
| The Cross at the U.N.
Passionist Television Mass
Act
with Compassion
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2004 - all rights reserved - Passionist Missionaries of Union City,
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