Franciscan at Home

En el número anterior de The Catechetical Review,[1] miramos la luz que da la Sagrada Escritura sobre el movimiento transgénero moderno, en particular los relatos de la Creación y de la Ley de Moisés. Ahora queremos ver específicamente algunos textos relevantes de los Evangelios y del Nuevo Testamento en general.

Las enseñanzas más claras de Jesús en cuanto a los asuntos sexuales se dan cuando los fariseos lo presionan sobre el divorcio en Mateo 19,3-6:

Y los fariseos lo pusieron a prueba,

“¿Es lícito al hombre divorciarse de su mujer por cualquier motivo? El respondió: ¿No han leído ustedes que el Creador, desde el principio, los hizo varón y mujer; y que dijo: ‘Por eso, el hombre dejará a su padre y a su madre para unirse a su mujer, y los dos no serán sino una sola carne’? De manera que ya no son dos, sino una sola carne. Que el hombre no separe lo que Dios ha unido.”

Jesús reconoce sólo dos géneros, masculino y femenino, y afirma que han sido creados por el mismo Dios. Además, Jesús afirma que la unión física / sexual entre hombre y mujer en el matrimonio es sagrada, habiendo sido establecida por Dios: “Que el hombre no separe lo que Dios ha unido”. ¿Cómo deriva esto desde Génesis 2,24, que describe a la unión de hombre y mujer utilizando la voz pasiva: “se une a su mujer… se hacen una sola carne”? Jesús interpreta esto de manera autoritativa como un pasivo divino, un recurso literario de la literatura bíblica y judía por el cual el escritor no nombra a Dios por reverencia religiosa, sino que pone en el pasivo a la acción de Dios. Por lo tanto, el significado verdadero de Génesis 2,24 es, “un hombre…es unido por Dios a su mujer… y los dos son hechos una sola carne por Dios”. En relación con la controversia moderna transgénero, por lo tanto, Jesús reconoce solamente dos géneros, e identifica a Dios – no a la sociedad, ni a una construcción social, ni a la psicología humana, etc. – como el Autor y Él que establece esos dos géneros, además de la institución del matrimonio.

La Ley judía, basada en la Ley de Moisés (Lev 18,1-23), rechazó a toda actividad sexual entre personas del mismo género, o entre personas en toda relación fuera del matrimonio entre un hombre y una mujer, y no existe la menor sugerencia que Jesús haya disputado esa enseñanza. Al contrario, Jesús avanza la enseñanza tradicional judía mucho más lejos, dándole una interiorización radical:

“Habéis oído que se dijo: ‘No cometerás adulterio.’ Pues yo os digo: Todo el que mira a una mujer deseándola, ya cometió adulterio con ella en su corazón. Si, pues, tu ojo derecho te es ocasión de pecado, sácatelo y arrójalo de ti; más te conviene que se pierda uno de tus miembros, que no que todo tu cuerpo sea arrojado a la gehena. Y si tu mano derecha te es ocasión de pecado, córtatela y arrójala de ti; más te conviene que se pierda uno de tus miembros, que no que todo tu cuerpo vaya a la gehena.” (Mateo 5, 27-30).

De acuerdo a la enseñanza de Jesús, entonces, las prohibiciones tradicionales de la inmoralidad sexual aplican también a actos interiores del corazón y de la imaginación. Tener fantasías acerca de actos malos ya de por sí es un acto malo, y el estándar ineludible de la santidad (“sed perfectos como es perfecto vuestro Padre celestial” Mateo 5,48) nos exige, si es necesario, tomar medidas radicales para evitar el pecado – lo cual se expresa de manera hiperbólica con “sácate el ojo” o “córtate la mano”.

Todo esto en realidad no deja espacio para que el discípulo de Cristo se imagine que él o ella tenga algún género distinto del de su sexo biológico. El sentimiento que uno sea de otro género distinto al de su sexo biológico quizás no sea algo que uno mismo elija, pero los discípulos de Cristo tienen que evaluar la verdad de sus sentimientos y sensaciones contra el estándar de la Revelación Divina y de la enseñanza de la Iglesia. La sensación de atracción erótica hacia su compañero de trabajo quizás tampoco sea elegida por uno mismo, y quizás sea “natural” en un sentido biológico. Sin embargo, no justifica que una persona casada actúe sobre esa sensación; más bien, el discipulado cristiano requiere que la persona casada reconozca ese sentido de atracción como un peligro que debe de ser rechazado y suprimido. Del mismo modo, una atracción física hacia un menor de edad quizás no sea algo que uno mismo haya elegido, y quizás sea “natural” biológicamente, sin embargo, el discipulado cristiano nos exige rechazar esos sentimientos y sensaciones, y ni sucumbir a ellos, ni actuar sobre ellos. Del mismo modo, el mero hecho de que tengamos sentimientos o sensaciones hacia el vestirnos, identificarnos o comportarnos de maneras asociados con el sexo opuesto, no justifica el consentir o actuar sobre esas sensaciones. Tenemos que actuar de acuerdo con lo que es verdad acerca de nuestros cuerpos y la verdad revelada en la Escritura.

Jesús enseñaba y llevó a cabo su ministerio entre el pueblo común de Judea a quienes les faltaba la riqueza y el tiempo libre como para consentir formas inusitadas o exóticas de comportamiento sexual. Sin embargo, San Pablo llevó el Evangelio a regiones de gran riqueza en el Imperio Romano, donde formas exóticas de actividad sexual extraconyugal eran comunes y populares. El emperador que condenó a muerte a Pedro y Pablo – Nerón – de hecho, practicaba una forma de transexualismo. Él y su amante de sexo masculino se vestían y se presentaban como jóvenes mujeres cuando mantenían relaciones sexuales juntos. Sin embargo, no era Roma, sino Corinto que tenía la mayor fama por el comportamiento sexual extravagante. El templo de Afrodita (alias Venus), la diosa del sexo, empleaba hasta mil prostitutas sagradas. No es coincidencia que las cartas de San Pablo a los corintos contengan su enseñanza más explícita sobre la sexualidad.

In the previous issue of The Catechetical Review,[1] we took a look at the light Scripture sheds on the modern transgender movement, especially the creation narratives and law of Moses. Now we wish to look specifically at relevant texts from the Gospels and New Testament generally.

Jesus’ clearest teachings on sexual matters arise when the Pharisees press him on divorce in Matthew 19:3-6:

"And Pharisees … tested him, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So, they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."

Jesus only recognizes two sexes, male and female, and asserts that these have been created by God himself. Further, Jesus asserts that the physical/sexual union between man and wife in marriage is sacred, being established by God: “What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” How does he derive this from Genesis 2:24, which describes the union of man and wife using the passive voice: “be united to his wife … the two shall become one flesh”? Jesus authoritatively interprets this as a divine passive, a literary device in biblical and Jewish literature in which the writer does not name God out of religious reverence, but phrases God’s action passively. Thus, the real meaning of Genesis 2:24 is, “a man … is joined by God to his wife … and the two are made one flesh by God.” In relation to modern transgender controversy, therefore, Jesus acknowledges only two sexes, and identifies God—not society, social construct, human psychology, etc.—as the author and establisher of those two sexes, as well as the institution of marriage.

Jewish law, based on the law of Moses (Lev 18:1-23), rejected sexual activity between persons of the same sex, or persons in any relationship outside of the husband-wife relationship, and there is not the slightest hint that Jesus disputed this teaching. On the contrary, Jesus pushes traditional Jewish teaching much farther, radically interiorizing it:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Mt 5:27-30)

According to Jesus’ teaching, then, the traditional prohibitions of sexual immorality apply also to interior acts of the heart and the imagination. Fantasizing about evil acts is already itself an evil act, and the inescapable standard of holiness (“You must be perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect” Mt 5:48) requires us, if necessary, to take radical measures to avoid sin—hyperbolically expressed as “plucking out the eye” or “cutting of the hand.”

All of this really leaves no room for the disciple of Christ to imagine that he or she is some other gender than his or her biological sex. The feeling that one is a different gender than one’s biological sex may not be self-chosen, but disciples of Christ have to evaluate the truth of their feelings and sensations against the standard of Divine Revelation and the Church’s teaching. The sensation of erotic attraction towards one’s co-worker may not be self-chosen and may in fact be “natural” in a biological sense. Nonetheless, it does not justify a married person acting on that sensation; rather, Christian discipleship requires the married person to recognize that sense of attraction as a danger that needs to be rejected and suppressed. Likewise, physical attraction toward a legal minor may not be self-chosen and may be biologically “natural”, but Christian discipleship requires us to reject those feelings and sensations, and neither indulge them nor act on them. In the same way, the mere fact that we have feelings or sensations toward dressing, identifying, or behaving in ways associated with the opposite sex, does not justify indulging and acting on those sensations. We have to act in accord with what is true about our bodies and the truth revealed in Scripture.

Jesus taught and ministered mostly among the common people of Judea who lacked the wealth and leisure to indulge in more unusual or exotic forms of sexual behavior. However, St. Paul brought the Gospel to areas of great wealth in the Roman Empire, where exotic forms of extramarital sexual activity were common and popular. The emperor who put Peter and Paul to death—Nero—did, in fact, practice a form of transgenderism. He and his male lover dressed and presented themselves as young women when engaging in sexual activity with each other. Yet it was not Rome but the city of Corinth that was most famed for extravagant sexual behavior. Corinth’s temple of Aphrodite (aka Venus), the goddess of sex, employed as many as a thousand sacred prostitutes. It is not coincidental that Paul’s letters to the Corinthians contain his most explicit teaching on sexuality.

What makes a school Catholic? Is a school Catholic because it exists with the permission of the bishop of the diocese, or it is a member of the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), or it is an extension or an outreach of a parish community, or it has a crucifix in every classroom and religious artwork throughout the building, or because its curriculum includes religious studies, or because the pattern of its practices align with the National Standards and Benchmarks of Effective Catholic Schools, or because Mass and the Sacrament of Reconciliation are celebrated for the student body during the school year?

For sure, each of these elements is a marker of a Catholic School. But I dare to say that the most decisive element of a Catholic school is the religious character of its personnel.

When the administrator(s) and a critical mass of faculty members embrace Jesus as their center (rather than mention him as an afterthought or an add-on), his spirit infuses the campus. It becomes evident to all that it is the primary purpose, consistent attitude, and intentional goal of the school to guide students to know, love, and serve God. When a Jesus-centered mindset drives every endeavor, action, decision, and response, self-disciplined students, who seek to develop their personal best, emerge. These hallmarks of a Catholic school (a Christ-centered environment, self-disciplined students, and academic achievement) are rooted in the religious character of its teachers.

“Back in the day” Catholic schools were predominately staffed by men or women religious whose distinctive garb was, itself, an outward reminder of God. It seemed as though these walking icons were everywhere, had eyes in the back of their veil-covered heads, and appeared where you least expected them! While students labored over final examinations, they observed their teachers fingering rosary beads suspended from their waists. At precisely the opportune moment, Scripture quotes seemed to slip from their lips effortlessly. Oftentimes, students could observe their teacher clutching the large crucifix that hung from the neck. Teacher body-posture, classroom decorations, routines, consistency in procedures, and high expectations set a tone. The school day was hemmed in with prayer or sacred ritual. At morning prayer students consecrated the day to God, and at dismissal they examined their consciences and made an act of contrition.

An intentional awareness of God punctuated the entire school day. For instance, long before marketers raised awareness of “WWJD?” via bracelets, posters, and such, these teachers motivated student decision-making by remarking, “What would Jesus do …or say…or desire?” “How will this choice contribute to the greater glory of God and the salvation of your soul?” “Live Jesus!” On every heading of student papers and copybook pages students drew a cross followed by “JMJ,” “JMJAT,” “AMDG” or an acronym-inscription related to the charism of the religious congregation. In my elementary school, every hour on the hour, a designated student rang a bell and intoned: “Pardon me, Sister. Pardon me, Class. It is time to bless the hour.” All activity ceased. The student then said, “Let us remember that we are in the holy presence of God.” The class responded: “Let us adore God’s divine majesty.” Together we prayed the “Glory be” and promptly the lesson continued wherever it had been interrupted. Wherever students happened to be at 12 noon, inside or outside the building, they stood still and prayed the Angelus formula while the Angelus bells rang in the distance. When emergency sirens were heard, the class prayed an aspiration or formula that asked God’s assistance for the unknown person in need. When Church bells tolled for a funeral, class stopped for a moment of silence and/or to pray for the deceased, “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.”

Additionally, religious instruction occurred daily, usually as the first session of the day. And, in many schools, the afternoon session began with a 15 minute period of story-telling that applied faith to action. Nothing else trumped Religion class! Some textbooks even referenced Catholic culture. Then, too, there were rituals of the liturgical seasons (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost), devotions to Mary (rosary, May Procession), Eucharistic devotion (frequent Mass, Forty Hours’ visits to the Blessed Sacrament, Benediction), Stations of the Cross, litanies and novenas, and regular participation in the Sacrament of Penance. The combination of all of these kinds of customs created a culture, an ambiance, a Godly reverence that pervaded every aspect of schooling. This culture underscored the sense that the institution was a divine enterprise and its teachers were the custodians of its spiritual nature and essential to its effectiveness.

The Catholic school was essentially an extension of convent or priory life. School practices, priorities, and order mirrored the lifestyle of the vowed religious. By 1970, the numbers of men and women religious in the schools declined tremendously. If their shoes were filled by lay counterparts, who had themselves been educated in the kind of Catholic school just described, the Catholic Identity or Catholic Culture continued in a similar fashion or adapted modern expressions that created the same end: a faith-infused environment; a divine, God-centered enterprise where activities reflected the spirituality of the teachers.

Over time, elements like a competitive market, certification requirements, and national standards impacted school design. Program demands increased; the length of the school day/year did not! Faith-related cultural customs were deleted. Simultaneously post-Vatican II faculty members—though faithful and faith-filled, well-educated, practicing Catholics—had no experience of schooling within “the Catholic bubble” and that style of spirituality was foreign to them. Consequently, maintaining or fostering Catholic identity or Catholic culture relied all the more on the religious character of school personnel.

We can take for granted the fact that the Catholic Church runs a large number of schools throughout the world. It is clear that the Church must offer religious education, but why does the Church teach math, gym class, science, literature, and history? Wouldn’t it just be easier if the Church focused more narrowly on the supernatural; why also teach about the material world and how to read and write? In the Great Commission, Jesus commanded his apostles to make disciples, (mathetes in Greek and discipli in Latin – both words for students) and to teach them (Mt 28:19-20). Jesus, the Word of God, by whom the universe was made, established a Church that from the beginning embraced instruction on the nature of reality as a whole.

The Liberal Arts and a Catholic Worldview
The Church embraced the liberal arts in order to help its members, especially religious, to understand and contemplate the Word of God, as well as to speak and write effectively to share this knowledge. From the teaching of the seven liberal arts at the cathedral and monasteries schools, the universities formed to teach philosophy and three terminal degrees in theology, law, and medicine. The Church’s mission of salvation grew to include the complete formation of the person, uniting faith and reason in the common mission of seeking how to live in the world and order all things to the glory of God.

Catholic education, drawing upon both the natural and supernatural, offers a complete vision of life: a Catholic worldview. Worldview, in a simple sense, describes the way in which we see reality and form our students to understand it and live within it. Teaching with a robust Catholic vision embraces the entire person: body, emotions, mind, and will. The human person, as a sacramental being (body-soul unity), requires development of its potential in all of its dimensions: strength and health of body; control of the emotions in accord with the good; conformity of the mind to reality and development of the mental habits that enable one to understand and express oneself clearly; the development of the virtues of will that lead to happiness; and the encounter with the living God that enlivens our soul and enables a life of holiness.

The Catholic school cannot simply offer the same instruction as a public education, with religious education and the Mass superadded onto the curriculum. Every subject must be taught in a distinctive fashion that reflects the unity of knowledge, having a common source in God—his creation and revelation—and ordered in a wisdom that communicates the ultimate purpose of all things. A Catholic school approaches every subject through the two wings of faith and reason, knowing that every truth conforms our minds to the mind of God. Simone Weil claims that every truth “is the image of something precious. Being a little fragment of particular truth, it is a pure image of the unique, eternal and living Truth which once in a human voice declared ‘I am the Truth.’ Every school exercise thought of in this way, is like a sacrament.”[1]

This is a paid advertisement in the October-December 2019 issue.

We are living through a remarkable social revolution in the area of gender and sexuality, one that would have been very difficult to foresee thirty years ago. In the 1980’s, it was taken for granted that in athletic competitions, men competed with men and women with women. Various communist regimes at the time were under continuous suspicion of entering biological males into international or even Olympic women’s competitions. There was a universal consensus that this was unethical. Now, thirty or more years later, three female high school athletes in Connecticut have filed a federal discrimination complaint against the state’s interscholastic athletic association, which allows biological males who “identify” as females to compete in female athletic competitions. Unsurprisingly, these males are winning competitions and ousting female athletes from awards and scholarship opportunities.

What are we to make of these ideas that one can be a “woman” trapped in a man’s body, that one’s gender identity is fluid and not necessarily attached to one’s biological reality? Philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology, and other disciplines all have a contribution to make to this discussion; but in this article, I will be exploring what light the Scriptures have to shed on the issue.

The Goodness of Difference
“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start,” in the words of Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Sexual difference is introduced into the biblical story line from the very first chapter. We read in Genesis 1:1-2: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” In Hebrew, the phrase translated “without form and void”, is tohu wabohu, a Hebrew phrase referring to a kind of chaotic state, where things are not distinguishable from one another, either through destruction or—in this case—because they have not yet been shaped. It is noteworthy that in what follows, God shapes the world typically by making distinctions and separating one thing from another. By doing so, different creatures and aspects of creation become identifiable. It is, after all, distinctions that create identity. If there are no distinctions between one thing and another, it is difficult to tell them apart, and if there were absolutely no distinctions, the two would necessarily be one and the same.

So, we read that God “separated the light from the darkness,” enabling both the light and the darkness to be identified, and then given the names of Day and Night.

Likewise, God makes a “firmament” to “separate the waters from the waters,” creating the sea, the sky, and the clouds. Later he makes the heavenly bodies to distinguish the passage of time, enabling the days, months, and years to be identified, and “separating the light from the darkness.” Finally, he makes man, and separates man into two sexes: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply …’” (Gen 1:27-28). Here we see that there is a certain unity between male and female in that both together make up “man” that is in the image of God. And yet there is a distinction between them too: they constitute a “them” in two parts. Finally, we see that the maleness and femaleness of man is directly related to the very first command God ever gives to humanity, “Be fruitful and multiply,” which can only happen when male and female unite as one. Many principles are entailed in these two verses: male and female are both good. They are integral to man’s imaging of God. Both are necessary for the fulfillment of the vocation that God has given humanity. The account of the creation of man concludes with the statement, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). This includes the distinction between male and female, as well as all the other distinctions God has introduced into creation in order to create different identifiable creatures: the distinction between light and dark, day and night, sea and sky, one kind of animal from another kind, man from the animals, male from female. All these distinctions are good and given by God, not by creatures themselves. Yet, we see throughout the Bible that the forces of evil—and the Evil One—are intent on undoing the God-given distinctions and returning the world to an undifferentiated chaos. Evil rejects the goodness of distinctions God has introduced, starting with the most fundamental distinction—that between Creator and creature—but continuing down the line with the other distinctions as well.

On March 25th, Pope Francis released Christus Vivit, “Christ is alive!” This post-synodal exhortation is addressed both to young people (16 to 30 year-olds) and the entire Church. Rich with inspirational quotes and practical suggestions, the document contains many insights about youth, for youth, and for those who minister to youth, while raising many important questions that need to be addressed.

About Youth
A young person stands on two feet as adults do, but unlike adults, whose feet are parallel, he always has one foot forward, ready to set out, to spring ahead. Always racing onward. (140)

Pope Francis begins the document by highlighting young people in the Bible as well as in Church history, figures such as Joseph (son of Jacob), Ruth, and David to St. Sebastian, St. Francis of Assisi and St.

Thérèse of Liseiux. Young people have always played an important role in salvation history. Particular attention is given to Mary, who as a young woman said “yes” to Gabriel, and to Jesus himself: “It is important to recognize that Jesus was a young person. He gave his life when he was, in today’s terms, a young adult” (23).

“Youth is more than simply a period of time; it is a state of mind” (34). This is why the Church, over two thousand years old, can be considered “young”—and needs the help of young people to keep her that way. Francis compares the shallow and superficial ways culture can manipulate youth to the true happiness that only Christ can offer. “Dear young friends, do not let them exploit your youth to promote a shallow life that confuses beauty with appearances” (183). Young people are in danger of being isolated and exploited which makes relationships with older people a great benefit. The young generation needs older generations, and the older generations need them. “When young and old alike are open to the Holy Spirit, they make a wonderful combination” (192).

“La evangelización es la misión fundamental de la Iglesia. Es también un proceso continuo de encuentro con Cristo, un proceso que los católicos hispanos han hecho muy suyo en su planeación pastoral. Este proceso genera una mística (teología mística) y una espiritualidad que conduce a la conversión, comunión y solidaridad, tocando cada dimensión de la vida cristiana y transformando cada situación humana.”[1] 

“Evangelization is the fundamental mission of the Church. It is also an ongoing process of encountering Christ, a process that Hispanic Catholics have taken to heart in their pastoral planning. This process generates a mística (mystical theology) and a spirituality that lead to conversion, communion, and solidarity, touching every dimension of Christian life and transforming every human situation.”[1]

On the occasion of this important milestone marking the publication of the USCCB’s seminal document on adult faith formation, Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us (hereafter “the document”), issued on the cusp of the new millennium, it is worth reflecting on its impact and influence on Hispanic ministry in this country. Much has taken place since that time, while significant ongoing challenges remain.

Some Pertinent Principles
Although the document does not explicitly address the Hispanic or other specific cultural communities, a number of its organizing principles do speak to some noteworthy realities. These principles will be the touchstones for this reflection. First, persons will always prefer to worship where they feel comfortable and at home. Second, faith as it relates to the family is a critical factor in any religious tradition. And lastly, social customs and popular devotion in harmony with the Gospel are to be respected, affirmed, and celebrated.

First Things First - Welcoming and Hospitality
While data are generally lacking regarding the number of Hispanics who have left the Catholic Church, current information suggests that a significant number of Hispanics who were baptized as Catholics join other Christian denominations and religious traditions every year; including fundamentalist groups and “storefront” churches—many of which maintain Hispanic cultural traditions that might otherwise be considered to be “Catholic,” including quinceañeras (fifteenth birthday blessings) and Epiphany celebrations. New arrivals often find the structure of the parish and the style of worship to be very different from what they experienced in their native country. In this unfamiliar environment, they are frequently targeted for what could be considered aggressive proselytizing by non-Catholic groups, and are offered transportation, many kinds of assistance, skillful scriptural preaching, as well as a friendly community to which to belong.

All this highlights the compelling need for Catholic parishes to provide a welcoming and hospitable atmosphere to newcomers, including Spanish-language and/or bilingual worship, ministries, parish pastoral leaders, and personnel whenever possible. In addition, Catholic parishes must be aware of several factors that can make Hispanics feel unwelcomed in the Catholic Church and make them more open to seeking a home in other faith traditions. Among these factors are: an unspoken attitude from parish staff or parishioners that they are “undesirable”; excessive or overwhelming administrative rules and forms; and being required to produce evidence of contribution envelopes before they can receive the sacraments.[2]

Head buried in her screen, she was more concerned with live-tweeting the event than listening to the speaker. She was so busy scrolling through social media, she didn’t realize she had walked past a friend she hadn’t seen in years.