UNISINOS -RESIDÊNCIA CONCEIÇÃO

R. Aloysio Sehnem, 186                                       16 August, 2010           XL:2

UNISINOS

Cx. P. 101

93.001-970 São Leopoldo, RS

BRASIL                                                           e-mail:  [email protected]

Dear Friends, Colleagues, Benefactors and Family:

Messengers take risks. As carriers of information they tend to be perceived as the origin of that information. Many times news within a message is disquieting or perturbing and the messenger can be the first to suffer persecution. At times news can be most agreeable, calming and even a relief especially if one has been following a delicate situation with interest, focus and attention. Messages of the birth of a child, resolution of a dispute, solution of a problem, are generally agreeable. A message of congratulations, recognition or simple comradery is usually most welcome. Yet the adage that “no news is good news” implies that any news of a situation or entity will be disquieting to the one who receives that news. Many people do not like surprises. Thus arises the original aversion toward messages. Humans tend to prefer a quiet, predictable flow to and of events.

Still, messages are essential to communication among us, between us, through us and for us. This last essential (“for us”) can be most perturbing especially if Almighty God is the Author of a message. His messengers have to be complete in their preparation and dedication so that the message be exact in its delivery. Holy angels serve this task perfectly. Spiritual messengers, the term “angel” means “messenger”. When not discharging the messenger function, these spirits are something else. At times one hears the lamentation that if we were angels our problems would be minimal and our personal interactions optimal. Such thinking tends to ignore or forget that angels can be holy or evil, and the evil angels are demonic.

Yet at times God calls an individual to a benevolent angelic function. This we call prophesy and true prophesy always originates from Almighty God. It is a necessary function to the time-space situation in which we plod. God then discharges that function through anyone He wants. Prophetic messages tend to call for change, a shift in our predictable flow or action. Safe, secure and tranquil as the prophetic function may seem, it is stocked with hazards for the basic reason of our general dislike of surprises. The bible is replete with holy prophets, messengers who paid with their lives. We like to think that we are “good”, when, as Jesus Christ declared that there is only One Eternal Good.

I make these jottings in gratitude to God for messages received especially over the past 26 years of presbyteral ordination, some messages directly from Almighty God, but many through people like yourselves who read these lines; messages of question, doubt, orientation, disagreement, or confirmation, support; messages that help in the vocation and ministries to which I am called. Some messages put in beautiful prose, others in simple jargon. Yet contributing to a single message of Hope that maintains and directs this itinerant minister in a vocation that is beyond his human capacities and thus challenges him to be

Most sincerely in Jesus Christ

Pe. Ed Benya, S.J.