austraLasia #2971
From killing to cultivation, computers....
YANGON --
In a powerfully worded message to those of
his flock and those not, Archbishop Charles Bo delivered an
extraordinary homily at the Vigil Mass for the Centenary
celebrations
of St Mary's Cathedral, 8 December 2011, Yangon.
Framing his thoughts with Readings from Genesis to
Revelations, the
Archbishop hammered away at contemporary human concerns, some
of the
'big' threats to peace and human well-being. His words would
have
resonated locally as he condemned the 'civil war' between the
Kachin
Independence Army and Government forces, thanked his President
for
stopping the Myit Sone Dam Project on the Irrawaddy River, and
warned
his country to interpret its fledgling democracy with care.
They would
have resonated equally with international representatives
present, and
others beyond, as he appealed for illegal logging and
deforestation to
cease immediately ("Myanmar is a green country, a pleasant
nation"),
and for people to heed climate change ("Global warming is
global
warning").
What impressed one, reading through the English version of his
homily,
and no doubt it was even more carefully woven together in
Burmese, was
the manner in which he had fashioned his dream of a New
Jerusalem by
recasting some of the most striking images of Scripture. "They
shall
beat their swords into plowshares" became killing instruments
turned
into cultivation, or computers; the crystal waters from
Revelations 22
became the beautiful Irrawaddy. And then the reminder that the
New
Jerusalem is where God lives, and is about the recovery of
God's
creation, the re-ordering of chaos (tsunamis that see boats on
land and
cars at sea!).
Beginning with the homely image of a small boy crying because
he has
dismantled his toy car and cannot put it back together again,
Archbishop Bo set the scene for the battle between destruction
and
restoration, where "if the restorer, however, is the creator,
then
restoration is easily done". This gave him opportunity to see
the
Immaculate, assumed into heaven, as the image of restored
humanity. The four 'enmities' introduced by human
sinfulness
(between ourselves, ourselves and the animal world, ourselves
and
creation, ourselves and God) are met by the four
'restorations' of the
omnipotent, good and ever-creating God: peace, the earth
giving life,
protection against evil, the primacy of Christ.
All in all a moving Advent message that would not have been
lost on any
of its hearers.