She is one of the Taliban’s most feared enemies, standing for everything the Taliban believes is evil, godless, immoral, and obscene, thus they feel she must be destroyed. Their enemy is a 15 year old girl. Her crime: she wants to go to school.
You probably have heard the story of Malala Yousufzai. She defied the Taliban in her native Pakistan by speaking out for education for young women and her dream of one day becoming a doctor. Last October, masked gunmen responded by shooting her in front of her classmates on their school bus.
Malala began her crusade three years ago with a blog that documented her experiences of being intimidated by Taliban extremists. Despite repeated threats from them, she refused to back down, showing more courage than her country’s government and military. Now recovering in a hospital in England, she continues to share her story to let the world and the Taliban know that she will not back down.
Regarded as the “daughter of their nation,” many Pakistanis have reacted with outrage to the attack, demanding that the government take action to end the terror. When asked why the Taliban was so determined to kill a teen aged student, one teacher replied, because she is not afraid of them.
I think of Malala as a contemporary prophet in the spirit of the great prophets of scripture like John the Baptist and the prophets of our times who have given their lives for the sake of what is right and just, like Archbishop Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King, jr. Being baptized, each one of us is called by God to be a prophet…to be the one who proclaims his Word of justice and reconciliation here and now, along our own Jordan. God calls us to look beyond our own needs and interests to embrace what is good, thus giving voice to the good news that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, has come.
Some people are saying that the world will end on December 21, others wonder if it will happen this Wednesday, December 12; the twelfth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year of new millennium. Looking at current events such as the unrest in the Middle East or the consequences of global warming, or the pending fiscal crisis, they project an air of gloom, reminding me of the image of mourning and misery that Baruch speaks of.
This prophet is encouraging us to “put on the splendor of glory from God forever.” In their cries, both Baruch and John the Baptist are calling on us to accept the challenge to make the bleak desert bloom. We can make a difference in our world, just as Malala is daring to, by confronting the evil in our midst.
The first step would be to confront our own evils. We just finished celebrating the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which heralds our belief that unlike the rest of humanity, Mary was conceived without sin. The rest of us, saints included, have struggled with sin. That is why John went out into the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
The Greek word for repentance literally means, “a change of mind.” The word is used 22 times in the New Testament for a conversion of one’s life toward God. We are being challenged to turn away from sin and turn toward God in this season of anticipation and hope. Reprogram your thinking. You can change your ways. You can repent.
The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible notes, “Because repentance is a gradual process of transformation, God is patient with sinners struggling to make amends and redirect their lives toward holiness.” God can afford to be patient since he has all eternity. You and I, however, have deadlines. The time to repent is not December 21 or even this Wednesday; the time is now.
You might be thinking, “I’m going to confession this Tuesday, so I can slack off until then. I’ve already committed one mortal sin, so what if I commit another?” Well, do you recall that the Act of Contrition speaks of our resolve with God’s help to amend our lives and avoid the occasions that lead us to sin? As my confessor pointed out to me just a few days ago, when the temptation to sin arises, turn to prayer and ask God’s help to resist that sin. Each time we resist the urge to sin, we have taken another step toward confronting the evil in our midst.
The sin that Jesus delivers us from is not just the guilt of our personal acts. He also delivers us from the distorted attitudes and values that set us up to sin. He frees us from the programming of our cultural conditioning. The baptism of repentance that John speaks of is not just one of regret; this is a call to set our feet on a new path, to follow a radically new direction in life, one that leads not to destruction, distortion, and mediocrity but to the fullness of life made possible in the Kingdom of God. Making straight his path, we can indeed confront the evils of our time and prepare the way of the Lord.
In the creed, we profess that for our salvation, Jesus came down from heaven, becoming man so that we could be saved from the grip of sin. He calls us to prayerful vigilance, repentance and conversion, that is, a change of heart and mind. With his help, we can overcome our personal obstacles to holiness such as an unwillingness to forgive, pride, dishonesty in our dealings with others, a bullying attitude, lust, persistent fault finding, envy, gluttony, avarice or anger. Our journey toward holiness may be tedious and the obstacles we encounter on the way may seem impossible to overcome, but Jesus is there to lead us, just as God led the Israelites. Our faith assures us of this. As Paul noted in his letter, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it.”