Truth Bearers – Being pilgrims of Hope in a time of shifting social paralysis
by Dr. Toni Pyke
I feel like I’m living out the Groundhog day movie – when you wake up and everything that happened before is happening again in the same way, and you feel that you have no power to change it. There have been warning signs for years and for those of us interested in historical realities, we should not be surprised by the series of events that have taken place over the last 30 days. I just didn’t believe that they would actually happen – at least not in the context of a ‘super-power’ that has spent decades convincing us of their democracy, democratic values and global security. What troubles me the most, is that the US were pivotal in ensuring that systems were in place (or so we were led to believe) that would ensure the world would never again experience the horrors of a centralised autocracy. But here we are.
In a previous blog, I talked of feelings of anger and numbness. Today like others, I’m feeling a sense of paralysis – my head is aware, but my body won’t move. I know that I need to do something, but I am not sure what that something is.
I wake up each morning, fearful of what conspiring may have taken place while I slept. I can no longer keep up with the Palestinian death toll or the shameless proposals for an oligarch riviera to be constructed on the graveyard of those massacred on it. I sit in disbelief at the ferocity at which the foundations of freedom, justice and peace in our world are being obliterated. I despair at the erosion of our collective humanity taking place before our eyes. The reality that every day words in public texts might trigger a reaction that may cost you your reputation and your livelihood. Or the implications of the forced removal of ‘trigger’ words such as ‘women’ in medical research journals that will cost ‘women’ their lives. While we are talking about lives – spare a thought for the millions of individuals and their families across the world in the most marginalised communities who will pay with their lives for the draconian overnight decision to stop critical survival commitments. But that is an ‘over there’ problem, as we are told. If we look at ‘America First’ then we see the brutal disregard for the years of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that enabled those most marginalised in US society a chance to exist. And don’t get me started on ‘mass deportations’ and the US administration’s distorted theology used to justify it, which necessitated a letter from Pope Francis to the Bishops of the United States of America highlighting the centrality of the “true common good is promoted when society and government [that] … welcomes, protects, promotes, and integrates the most fragile, unprotected, and vulnerable.” This truth was also pleaded by the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C. in her inauguration sermon during a national prayer service held at the Washington National Cathedral.
There are so many more Executive Orders that have serious national and global repercussions on the lives of individuals, families and communities – and more scheduled for signature today. It is no wonder that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) moved the Doomsday Clock forward by one second to 89 seconds before midnight, informing us that we are “closer than ever” towards a heightened risk of global catastrophe.
Zoe Williams, in a recent article in The Guardian, highlights a ‘new world order’ (that looks a little like the old world order we have spent years rebuilding from), but that we are afraid, or ‘paralysed’, to ‘name it’ for what it is – “fascism”. She says, “[f]rozen feels preferable to adapting to a new reality”. However, she warns that “[s]ometimes you don’t have to look for it – trouble will find you anyway.” So where does this leave us?
On 24 December 2024, Pope Francis opened the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and for the first time, opened the Holy Door at a prison, heralding a Jubilee Year of Hope. During this Jubilee Year, Pope Francis is asking us to journey together as Pilgrims of Hope, to not only have hope, but to “radiate hope, be a sower of hope” (Pope Francis, Dec 11 2024). He also explains that the “Holy Spirit, bearer of hope, ‘is the strength given to those who have no strength…” So perhaps that ‘something’ I’m looking for lies in the shared journey as pilgrims of hope, raising our collective voices and actions to “refuse to turn a blind eye to the tragedy of rampant poverty that prevents millions of men, women, young people and children from living in a manner worthy of our human dignity” and to care for our common home (Pope Francis).
We can continue to be paralysed by at the ugly unfolding of events around the world, or we can journey with others as active agents of hope, committed to the core Gospel values that guides our humanity. We can take stock and reorient ourselves in the spirit of the Jubilee: “May your grace transform us into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel” (from the Prayer for Jubilee 2025).
