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| Three cross Photo by Pixabay from Pexels |
Father John Jimenez, a catholic priest who grew up and has served in San Francisco, and also in Mexico, Ecuador and Sudan, in response to working with so many families and long time residents displaced from their homes and lands, spoke recently of the analogy with the Dragon in the Book of Revelation as a real entity that represents the tech driven accumulation of desire that crushes and displaces the innocent. Jesus teaches us how to overcome this destructive force through the lesson of the widow.
The poor widow that Jesus points to in Matthew's gospel, chapter 12, is the true disciple who gives all she can in reverence to God and all of God's creation. She is an example of how to combat the Dragon of History (shown in the Book of Revelation chapter 12), of whom is the continual expansion and destruction caused by the accumulation of all of human freedom, deceived by the desire for power, vanity, pleasure and greed. This becomes the Dragon that tries to devour the innocent Child, born of The Woman, forced to flee in the desert.
The way of the widow shows us that authentic worship of God will dispose us to God's revelation, to guide us to true freedom and cooperative service.
Consider the parallel of our own times to that of 100 years ago, the unintended forces, a simple skirmish, that rapidly became the uncontrollable, illogical logic of years of trench warfare for a field of mud and blood, innocent farm boys and civilians calling out for their mom in their final moments of suffocating breath.
The "War to End All Wars" began ina similar way to our own uncontrollable, tech driven forces today, groups projecting blame onto other groups, driven by envy, #metoo exploitation of the innocent, soft target mass shootings, disoplacement of peoples from their lands and homes, forced migrations, and objectification of the human person. The widow, then is the one victimized by this envy, vainglory, pleasure seeking desire for power.
Left with nothing except God's Spirit, she is sustained, and disposed to God's revelation, like the prophet Elijah, when he was sustained in a time of exile by the meager offerings of a widow, foreseeing that, "there will be enough for everyone if we live by poverty of spirit."
So, 100 years ago, what began as a simple chess game of geopolitical strategy, combined with the expanding bubble of desire, fueled by technology....the lesson of history that those with superior technology dominate, sword over stick, tank over horse....then became uncontrollable, like fires raging recently here in California or in Australia, burning with a life of their own.
Then it was arms and weapons. Today, it is social media, avarice, and concupiscence, combined with algorithmic investment calculations and Artificial Intelligience. This is the Dragon of our own times, the genocides, civil wars, and scandals of the 20th century, and multiple mass shootings of the 21st century. We look to the widow, the lesson of Fatima for response
