A Throw-Away Culture

We live in a throw-away culture where practically everything is disposable. When come thing breaks down, it is usually cheaper to throw it away and replace it with a new one rather than have it repaired. Most supposedly durable goods are designed to expire or become obsolete after a while so that they can be disposed of and replaced with newer and better models or versions.

Sadly, this throw-away culture finds another expression in what Popes in recent times have condemned as the culture of death. Unwanted babies are aborted. Broken people, like the terminally ill or the handicapped, are euthanized. Likewise, expired people, like the elderly and those who are considered threats to society, are disposed of.

Our God is a God who creates, who makes things right when things go wrong, who heals the broken and the sick, who makes something new and better out of the expired and the unwanted.

Today is the feast of St. Patrick, who as a youth was kidnaped into slavery. God used that unfortunate incident to make of him his apostle to the Irish. I make his prayer my own:

‘Christ as a light, illumine and guide me.
Christ as a shield, o’ershadow and cover me.
Christ be under me,
Christ be over me,
Christ be beside me, on left hand and right.
Christ be before me, behind me, around me.
Christ this day be within and without me. Amen.’ 

The Lord of hosts is with us; our stronghold is the God of Jacob.
~ Psalm 46

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.
In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.
One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him lying there
and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him,
“Do you want to be well?”
The sick man answered him,
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.”
Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.
John 5:1-16