http://ncronline.org/blogs/young-voices/occupy-our-hearts
Occupy our hearts
By Jocelyn A. Sideco
Created Oct 06, 2011
"...Recent days have proven that Wall Street and corporate greed have pushed Americans to their limit. And now, many are protesting saying, “We are the 99 percent who will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent...
....Occupy Wall Street is for today’s generation what School of Americas was for folks 10 and 20 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I am not denying that School of the America’s is still a big issue. I would just suggest that there are formative first experiences we all have. And for the Millennials, Occupy Wall Street may be just that. For others, perhaps the Invisible Children (http://www.invisiblechildren.com/ [3]) campaign has moved them to act in an effort to improve the quality of life for all people.
In its third week, Occupy Wall St. called for a college walk-out and got thousands of people to protest. This exponential growth from the handful who pitched tents on Sept.17 tells us something: our quality of life is no longer acceptable.
This growing movement addresses a desire to build community and begs the question: how do we, as people of faith, approach the atrocities that affect us and others in a way that pleads for justice and stands with the least of these?
The United States Catholic Bishops published “Economic Justice for All: A Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy” in 1986. Now 25 years later, their message still rings clear:
“As Catholics, we are heirs of a long tradition of thought and action on the moral dimensions of economic activity. The life and words of Jesus and the teaching of his Church call us to serve those in need and to work actively for social and economic justice. As a community of believers, we know that our faith is tested by the quality of justice among us, that we can best measure our life together by how the poor and the vulnerable are treated. This is not a new concern for us. It is as old as the Hebrew prophets, as compelling as the Sermon on the Mount, and as current as the powerful voice of Pope John Paul II defending the dignity of the human person.” (#8)
The bishops continue to say,
"The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of workers over the maximization of profits; the preservation of the environment over uncontrolled industrial expansion; the production to meet social needs over production for military purposes". (#94)
Our community of faith calls us to internalize these words, values, and moral stance so that we can be a life-giving expression of God’s love and care to others today.
For me, I awoke to the needs of the poor when I crossed the line at Fort Benning. For others, they awoke when family members got laid off and could not pay medical bills. Let our hearts and minds be occupied with the needs of the least of these so that our faith can cross the line into acts of justice and solidarity with firmness, confidence, and compassion."
[Jocelyn A. Sideco is a founding member of Contemplatives in Action, an urban ministry and retreat experience that began as a response to the needs in post-Katrina New Orleans and now continues as an online ministry offering spirituality resources for those working for justice throughout the world. Visit http://www.contemplativesinaction.org/ [4] for more information.]
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