beating heart' of the Church

"God's love is the 'beating heart' of the Church," said Pope Francis. 

Charity causes confusion mainly because we like to live within  the securities of boundaries. Charity, at the root is about accepting, and being open, and being transparent. Charity cannot be there without justice, compassion, truth and goodwill. 

For the church to have heart of charity, what we need is Jesus. He was not confused about love. It is to that vision we have the process of the synod. "A synod is an ecclesial gathering with the goal of discerning what the Holy Spirit is asking of the church at the time." Speaking voices may be diverse, but they are not challenges and confusions. Every human cry has also a voice that Spirit speaks to us. We cannot condemn that.

Does our holiness condemn the Holy?

The scribes knew the scriptures and the law. Their knowledge gave them power over the people to dictate how to live, behave, and worship. According to their interpretation, Jesus was mad, and possessed by the devil.

God made a covenant with humanity, ensuring God’s constant presence that we may live with him. The powerful who got access to interpret the law and the scriptures made the covenant a binding demand. According to them God demanded innumerous sacrifices to free humanity from their sins.

The scribes condemned them under curses and clutches of the devil. The good news Jesus opened before us through his attitudes, words, and actions was of justice, freedom, and peace that all the children of God deserve.

The scribes rejected this covenant, the covenant of God’s unconditional love, because it was against their manipulative ways. Jesus, though in the form of God, emptied himself and entered the curse, condemnation, and death of humanity. God dwells there. The man-made sanctuaries are only a representation of God’s dwelling place. God dwells, not in heavens above, but amidst God’s people. When Jesus destroyed the separation between the holy of holies and the condemned world, the sinless and the sinners he too was condemned to be possessed by the devil, an easy way of treating an unacceptable truth. In the very name of God, according to the laws and customs, they condemned love, compassion, kindness, and reconciliation.

Jesus invites us today to have the light of the Holy Spirit that we may not condemn love and justice. May the Holy Spirit guide us to see the dwelling of God among us, especially among the poor and the weak, among those condemned to be sinners.

Constant Conversions

It is not necessary that gospel may be there in preaching and articles. Only through an openness to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, we can hear the gospel. Since gospel is life, and creative, we need to have constant conversions.

 
Powerful preachings and mesmerizing miracles may not necessarily contain the gospel. Gospel ensures justice, which is the true fruit of conversion. Only those preaching and healings that bring forth justice carry the gospel.

Uncertainties

Only if the Christian spirituality or theology rediscover Christ the Word of God, not Christ the High Priest and King, it can contribute to the world with uncertainties (intellectual, social, political). The Word is ever creative, source of life. Readiness to trust in that, will let us be quiet amidst uncertainties. The comfort of certainties may not carry the light of truth. Such comfort may be intellectually satisfying but far from reality.

Sabbath: Celebration of Life

These days the readings invite us to have a close experience of Jesus to see him, hear him and touch him. All these are made possible because he is compassionate, merciful, and tender. He is able to sympathise with us in our weaknesses because he became one like any of us. That humanness comforts us, consoles us and heals us. We are taken one step deeper into the heart of Jesus.

Being part of Jesus is a joyous experience, a celebration. Just as the Spirit guided Jesus, the same Spirit guides us also in our lives. It is an experience of freedom and liberation. Sabbath, for Jesus, was this reality of liberation. He did not confine to the customary observance of Sabbath as a day of rest. Jesus would say, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." So Sabbath was to live the freedom of the children of God. It is in his humanity people found freedom, consolation and healing.

Salvation is an integral experience. It touches different dimensions of our lives, spiritual, physical, and social dimensions. It is also for us to ensure for one another this experience of liberation and freedom. Some key words we can pick up from the readings are righteousness and peace as an interpretation of the name 'Melchizedek.' People who have experienced salvation, or who have the freedom of Sabbath will surely be ministers of righteousness and peace.

Freedom was not a favourable option for many. So they twisted the meaning of Sabbath. Jesus places his question to our preferences between freedom of the Holy Spirit and the binding customs, ‘Is it against the law on the sabbath day to do good, or to do evil; to save life, or to kill?’If we choose for the freedom of the Holy Spirit, to do good, to save life, we can surely be ministers of life too, saying to the weary and withered, "stretch out your hands."

anointed with truth

John the Baptist was very much appealing to the people as a prophet or as the Messiah. He was not a hermit who lived in silence and solitude. John said of himself as the voice crying out in the wilderness. A voice is prophetic when it is anointed with truth. He did not hesitate to point out to Christ as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. John proclaimed that Jesus was the one who is to baptise them with fire.

We are anointed with truth that sets us free. Even before becoming visible, this truth, the wisdom of God existed. He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him. While speaking to the people who were waiting to be baptised John says, the one here stands among you – but unknown to you. Again, “He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.” This presence, sure, yet unknown to us, is a call to realise, recognise, welcome, be convinced and to believe in the constant guidance of the Word lives in and among us. The anointing of the truth enliven our hearts to see the Word in the creation, experiencing as the baptism of fire, and transforming ourselves into an instrument of redemptive acts of Christ.

So, for us who follow him, St John writes, “live in Christ, my children.” It is to walk the path that Jesus walked. He is truly the anointed one, so the path is also a path of anointing. What this anointing does actively in our lives can be seen in what Jesus told the disciples of John the Baptist when they came with the question whether he was the Messiah. The blind see, the deaf hear, and the good news is preached to the poor. If they do not happen our proclamation seem to be a lie. If they do happen, we have known him, and have made him known. It is the power, and sign of the presence of the truth of the Gospel in us.

Live in Christ cannot be true simply by grouping as believers. It is becoming like him. Christ took upon himself our humanity, that we have a deeper touch with him. He has not abandoned his humanity, but continues to be united with his humanity. It is not that he has taken it to a transcendental super-spiritual world. He continues to be united with us in whom humanness is real and true, making it his body. So, live in Christ is to be united as one body of Christ.