Preserving life

Je m'exuse que j'écris cette piece en français, mais ma petite fille est en train d'insister qu'on parle en français, et je ne suis pas capable de penser dans les deux langues toute a la meme fois!

OK, she's reading in English again.

During Lent, we begin our Fridays by going to Mass. It makes Fridays about a little more than simply skipping meat. Two of the readings today were about how Jacob's sons planned to murder Joseph the dreamer, but motivated by something else, fear or guilt - or maybe something more, decide to throw him down a hole, and then sell him into slavery.

Of course, Joseph would have a hard-luck life for a time, pulling himself up to a certain dignity and then losing it again over false accusations by the wife of Potiphar (the captain of Pharaohs guard.)

But Joseph was a dreamer, and his skill with dreams saved him, for he was able to interpret the dreams of his fellow prisoners in jail. His prophetic skill would eventually be put to use saving the entire Kingdom of Egypt from famineand then his family as well.

He was angry with his brothers; there's no doubt. When they came to see him, not knowing who he was, he accused them of being spies and tossed Simon in jail, only to be released if they brought back Benjamin.

But he could not keep up the anger forever. Moved by the story of his father's suffering, he revealed himself to his brothers, saying "God sent me before you to preserve life."

There comes a time when genuine humanity transcends anger. Anger can be useful to us - it helps us understand when injustices are done, and gives us motivation to fix it. But it is too a kind of jealousy, a resentment that things are not what they should be for either ourselves or others who matter to us. And anger can often lead us down the wrong road for reasons that seem right enough.

Transcending anger means passing by injustice and confronting suffering directly. "God sent me before you to preserve life," Joseph tells his brothers.

How do we do that? The answer is different every time. But it is the most important question we can ask ourselves: how do we preserve life?