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I love when anyone writes about Jesus and mentions Mother Teresa, Rumi, St. Francis and other deeply sensitive people weeping over the condition of the world as did Bruce Morris in "Jesus Weeps." He is so right. I know that Jesus and they weep for the women who are living, if you can call it that, under the oppressive hands of arrogant men who feel that they are gods and can do anything to them as they please. How can any man look on his wife or another woman and consider them inferior? I know that Jesus and
they weep over this as well as for the hungry and starving of the world --especially the little children with bloated stomachs and sad eyes.
I remember seeing in the 80's a picture of a mother in some part of Africa holding a bony child and somehow that picture made me feel her pain and I probably wept too. That picture haunted me for a long time. It made me turn to Bread for the World shortly thereafter.
As for us who weep over the famished of the world -- what are we doing about it? For one very big thing we should start changing our diet. Eating meat 3 times a day is taking grain out of their mouths to feed cattle. Anyone who is a meat eater will take offense at this, but it is true. The wealthy countries use too much of the earth's grain resources to feed their
livestock so they can enjoy their steaks, their hamburgers, their foie gras.
And then for me there is another haunting picture that made me cry at liturgy this morning. I saw the downed cows of Chino, CA being prodded. pushed, and poked so that greedy owners would squeeze the last ounce of their service to mankind. One cow hobbled on her knees. This picture will always haunt me as does the starving child of Biafra in the 80's.
Aren't some of us as arrogant towards the animals as the men who mistreat their wives and consider them unworthy of respect? Do they deserve respect? In my humble opinion anything which God has made deserves respect. I want to shout to the silent churches including my own Catholic church - look at what probably Christian men did to those poor mother cows
who gave of themselves for years in less than comfortable conditions - giving you milk, butter, and cheese and even now -instead of finally allowing them to retire to a grassy meadow - you force them on their knees to go through the slaughter line. I am angry at the churches because they have not taught compassion for the animals. Have you ever heard it in your
church? Maybe the Episcopalians - I don't know?
Of course, I believe that Jesus weeps for his animal creatures as well as St. Francis and Rumi. I read that this Muslim teacher who taught restraint and penance was observed once of taking a tray of food to an undisclosed place. His followers began to think he was a hypocrite until they followed him to a cave where he brought food for a nursing mother dog. This also made me cry - though with tears of joy at his great compassion to a "lesser" being. How sad that we categorize. There are no lesser beings because we are all fashioned by the hand of God.
