This Isn't Who We Are

Dear Friends,

"This isn't who we are" is a refrain I've heard throughout the last couple of days. I know where the sentiment comes from. Not too many people believe that the events that occurred in Washington D.C. on the Feast of the Epiphany really represent the best of what it is to be a citizen of our amazing nation. Because that's the case, we find it easy to declare something like, "This isn't who we are."

But there's a world of trouble in that statement.

Specifically, it allows us to absolve ourselves without being honest about who we are. Worse, actually, it allows us to believe that we really need no absolution. The Christian life is, of course, about the grace of forgiveness. But in order really to meet forgiveness, we must really know of our need for grace. In a powerful section of his work Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us of this:

The grace of the gospel, which is so hard for the pious to comprehend, confronts us with the truth. It says to us, you are a sinner, a great, unholy sinner. Now come, as the sinner that you are, to your God who loves you.

The gospel of grace is only for real sinners. That's us.

So, to distance ourselves from the wrongs of this world so quickly actually subverts our ability to find grace. To declare, in the wake of awful acts like the ones we witnessed this week, "This isn't who we are," is to ignore the role we have played in our public life and to miss the grace available in meeting God's forgiveness.

Of course, to my knowledge, no members of the St. Peter's community were in the crowd rushing the Capitol on Wednesday—that's not what I mean. I'm talking about the way we build our common life through the words we say for good and ill, the love we share or withhold, the relationships we enter or leave.

I'm not a political scientist, a lawyer, or an activist. I'm interested in those lenses, but it's just not the primary way I've been trained to think about things. I have some thoughts on the politics of this week and how we should move forward, but at the end of the day those thoughts are not the best gifts I can offer our community. My primary lens isn't even the one you might think it is—that of a Priest.

Rather, the main way I've been trained in my life to think about things is the same as you—I'm a baptized person, a disciple of Jesus, one who is learning to walk the way of the cross. And Jesus wants us to be honest about our faults and failures because Jesus desires nothing more than to embrace us with love and forgiveness.

I invite you to consider all this in light of what's happened this week—and this isn't homework for any one political perspective or side of the aisle. My absolute conviction is that it is work every single one of us has to do:

How am I contributing to a common life that made the events of this week possible?
How can I know the grace of God's forgiving embrace in light of that?
How can I work with all that I am to build a different world?

God bless,
Fr. Quinn+