What Have We Become?

There is a story of a king who built an egalitarian and utopian community where people of all races, backgrounds, classes, and financial means could live, thrive, and build families. Everything was available for anyone. Folks didn’t have to lock their doors for fear of another. There was no police station in that town, and folks didn’t have to struggle at all to meet their needs and wants.

One morning, a family woke up to the horror that someone had broken into their chicken coop and stolen three chickens.

When the king heard it, he was mortified. He couldn’t believe that such a thing would occur in the city that he had built on a clear promise of everything being available for anyone.

As he mourned his utter disappointment over what had happened, he asked this important but sobering question: “What have we become?"

The king’s question resonates so much with me because it tells of a shift or a misalignment between his vision for the city and its people, and the thievery that has occurred in the city. The interesting thing about the question is that the king doesn’t ask what others have become; he includes himself, suggesting that whether he played a direct role or not, he was part of the problem. What have we become? doesn’t only mean we are not where we need to be, but that we have become a people who are not what we needed to be.

The question is a kind of indictment that sums up the challenges of our disposition - our character flaws not only create disappointment but also heartbreak, and some of these heartbreaks can be devastating and crippling.

Imagine offering yourself in love and then realizing that the life you planned to live is slipping through your fingers like the sand at the shore. Imagine the joy of raising and nurturing children into adulthood, only to realize those same children don't feel the same sense of obligation you felt for them. Imagine that deep disappointment with your friend, neighbor, or colleague that has destroyed your relationship. Imagine the regret of feeling betrayed, not only by our country or our faith, but by people we believed knew better.

When we ask, “What have we become?” I am reminded of this story. 

In 1941, a Franciscan Friar was arrested for housing 3000 Polish Jews. When they got to Auschwitz, he realized that the conditions in the prison were not only hellish, but the prison guards had no sense of human compassion. One night, a man was caught trying to escape. For his punishment, ten prisoners were randomly selected for death by starvation. One man, Franciszek Gajowniczek, among the ten randomly selected, pleaded to be spared because he was a father.

One man raised his hand and said, "I will go in his place." The guards took the men into a starvation tank where they deprived them of food and water. For weeks, the prisoners lived on just a small ration of water - just enough to keep them alive. The guards checked on the prisoners, hoping their dire circumstances would make them turn on each other. But to their utter surprise, these prisoners, sitting naked on the floor, glowed with joy, sang hymns, and laughed and smiled.

Weeks passed, and the guards realized that although the others had died, Maximillian wasn’t dead. He was still naked in his cell, smiling and singing. They later injected him with carbolic acid, which killed him.

Years later, Franciszek Gajowniczek will attend Maximilian Kolbe's canonization.

The profound nature of the question What have we become? is what I believe undergirded the life and witness of Maximilian in that dark hole. It is the same question which undergirds our life of faith and witness as disciples of Christ.

You and I can only imagine the countless times he may have asked himself that same question as he sat naked on a cold floor with dead prisoners surrounding him. Deep down within him was this disappointment, the same as the disappointment of the king-he knew that human beings like you and me, the soldiers and the prisoners, were all made for a purpose.

But “What have we become?” that we take people from their homes and kill them for reasons of their humanity? What have we become that we look on others' suffering with callous indifference? What have we become that we cannot hold civil conversations with our neighbors, colleagues, and friends? What have we become that we allow thousands upon thousands of our poor neighbors and friends to lose health benefits? What have we become that we cannot be gracious to each other? What have we become that we cannot forgive ourselves and each other? What have we become that we cannot hold each other in prayer?

Listen to St. Paul, who had spent so much time in Corinth doing the difficult work of teaching, nurturing, and leading a congregation. St. Paul had taught the faith in the God of our Lord Jesus Christ at the peril of his life. But upon his departure from Corinth, he learned that the church he had labored so hard to nurture was rife with quarreling, infighting, dissension, and division.

As part of his appeal to the church, he writes this: “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.”

Paul’s main point is this: remember who you were when you were called, and what you were called to be. That wasn’t who we were called to be. We were called to be different; we were called to be disciples. We were called to be a light amidst the world’s darkness. We were called to be unifiers. We were called to be selfless givers. We were called to boast only in the Lord Jesus Christ. But we have replaced our boast in the Lord with a boast in people and personalities.

We tend to ask ourselves that same question because, like it or not, we expect that a particular experience will produce a particular outcome. We ask the same question because disappointments not only break the human spirit, but they often create this sense of hopelessness and waste. We ask this question because our faith invites us to cultivate high expectations of each other - especially those of us who hold high the banner of Christ’s love.

The fact is that we may not be able to go back and undo some of the things we have done in the past. But we can always become the people we were once called to be or the people we are meant to become. I believe the human story is that disappointments, whether personal or communal, can lead to the kind of transformation we want to see, if we can express them.

We are not perfect and are far from where we need to be and who we need to become. We have yet to understand our sense of the sacred, embrace it, and extol it.

If there’s ever one thing that fills me with a deep sense of gratitude, even in my brokenness, it is the grace of knowing that my sense of the sacred creates not just an expectation but an invitation to always walk, however difficult it may be, on the path of loyalty to the gospel of selfless and self-giving love. I have found that it is only through this sense of loyalty that we can offer an honest and faithful response to the question.

I pray that this gift of grace may be yours as well.

Blessed fall,

Manny+