Fourth in Ordinary Time

Lessons learned

A few months ago, when people heard that I was going to accompany a pilgrimage to South Africa, many wanted to know what kind of pilgrimage this was.  After all, South Africa is not known as the place of life or death of any of the saints and there are no Catholic shrines in the southernmost country of the African continent, so what was I (what were we) setting out to see?  I wondered myself about this question, but as the aircraft was streaking across the sky, high above Algeria, Niger and Chad, I took a look out the window and what I saw was an amazing sight: the sands of the Sahara, whipped by wind and baked by the sun stretched like a perfectly formed army for as far as the eye could see.  At moments such as those, I for one feel very small and powerless indeed on this planet earth, and yet it was to the young boy Jeremiah that the creator of the sand spoke: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you, I appointed you a Prophet to the nations.  I’m sure that every one of us strives every day to live our lives justly, fairly, equitably and lovingly, but how many of us are conscious every day that God has known us before we were born, or that we have been chosen, consecrated and appointed to be prophets?

The sight of the Saharan sands was a reminder to me of this truth, yet it was only the first such reminder that was to be made known.  By the time the plane was circling above Johannesburg, the sunlight that had played across the sand dunes had given way to night, and had been replaced by what appeared to be a sea of lights which also stretched as far as the eye could see.  I had read somewhere that the population of that city is something like 15 million, so there was little wonder that the lights were no numerous.  It turns out that the official population count of Johannesburg and its surroundings is about 10 million, but there are many illegal residents in that city: people who have come from many of the other African nations in search of a life, so in reality the population is indeed about 15 million. Such a massive influx of people most definitely puts a strain on the established infrastructures.  In addition to established neighbourhoods, there are also many settlements, mostly made up of very simple accommodations, mostly made out of corrugated steel.  In many of these settlements, there may be electricity poles and wires, but whether they are hooked up is another question. 

The city is working at creating more stable housing for all these people, but it takes time, and in the meanwhile, there is massive unemployment.  Even though Johannesburg exists because of gold mining, there are not enough jobs for this many people.  On the second day of the journey, there was yet another lesson for me to remember.  If I speak in the tongues of human beings and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong.  Jesus commands us first and foremost to love.  Love is at the heart of faith, so everything we do and say must be guided by love.  If the city of Johannesburg can make room for so many millions of destitute, should we not be willing to make room in our hearts for those the Lord puts on our path?

We only spent one full day in Johannesburg before continuing our travel to the Eastern and the Western Cape.  This is a very different part of the country, and as it turns out there were other lessons to be learned there too.  Travelling through the Cape region, we experience nature at its very best.  There are primal forests, and there are cultivated gardens; there are two oceans and there are savannahs.  In some parts of the Cape, there is lush vegetation because of abundant rainfall, and in other parts, irrigation is a challenge because there is only an average of 4 inches of rain per year.   

There is beauty to be discovered there, a beauty that until now I had not discovered, and there is beauty here in our midst to be discovered too.  When Jesus returned to his hometown and spoke in the synagogue, his listeners were proud of who he had become, but they were blinded by selfish motives. He was quick to point out that God’s love is offered for all people.  In fact, the work of proclaiming God’s love calls us all to be prophets, and challenges us to leave ourselves open and vulnerable to the truths of the gospel so that our complacency with life can be replaced with newfound appreciation for the beauty of all that surrounds us.