Maravi

We turn to our priests for inspiration and hope

We turn to our priests for inspiration and hope
By The Post
Tue 28 Sep. 2010, 04:00 CAT

Priests are today playing a very important role in the lives of our people.
More and more of our people are looking to priests to give them hope and inspiration at a time when they feel neglected. The Church has both the right and duty to participate fully in building a just and fair society with all the means at its disposal.

And moreover, it’s only by doing so that the Church will be fully rooted among its people. A church is not fully rooted among its people if it does not try to establish justice, fairness, humanness. We are told in James 2:14-17: “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but he has not works?

Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
Our way of life is the result of what we believe. Our way of being the church is a reflection of our concept of God.

In order to know a church, the best question to ask is “What do your faithful think about God?” It is a mistake to think that all believers believe in the same God. We often ask ourselves if there is any similarity between the God Bishop Paul Duffy believes in and the one in whom Frederick Chiluba and his friends believe in.

We forget that in the Old Testament, the prophets were worried by idolatry, the gods created in accord with human interests. There is still much idolatry. In the name of God, they are abusing public institutions like the judiciary to allow them to steal public funds and keep their loot with impunity.

We see that Jesus’ spirituality was life in the spirit, within the historical conflict, in a communion of love with the Father and the people.

This spirituality was the result of his opening to the Father’s gift and of his liberating commitment to the life aspirations of the oppressed. For Jesus the world wasn’t divided between the pure and the impure, as the Pharisees wished; it was divided between those who favoured life and those who supported death.

Everything that generates more life – from a gesture of love to social revolution – is in line with God’s scheme of things, in line with the construction of the kingdom, for life is the greatest gift given to us by God. Whoever is born is born in God to enter the sphere of life. At the same time, Jesus’ spirituality contradicted that of the Pharisees, which consisted of rites, duties and asceticisms, and the observance of discipline.

Fidelity is the centre of life for the Pharisees; the Father was the centre of life for Jesus. The Pharisees measured spirituality by the practice of cultural rules; Jesus measured it by the filial opening to God’s love and compassion. For the Pharisees, sanctity is a human conquest; for Jesus it was a gift of the Father for those who opened up to his grace. Jesus’ spiritual vigour stemmed from his intimacy with God, whom he familiarly called Abba – that is, Father (Mark 14:36).

Like all of us who believe, Jesus had faith and spent hours in prayer to nourish it. Luke recorded those hours in which Jesus allowed his spirit to be replenished by the Father’s Spirit: “But he withdrew to the wilderness and prayed” (Luke 5:16); “In these days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12); and “Now it happened that as he was praying alone” (Luke 9:18).

In that communion with the Father, he found strength for struggling for the scheme of life, challenging the forces of death, represented particularly by the Pharisees, against whom the gospels present two violent manifestos (Matthew 23 and Luke 11:37-57).

And in this sense, all who struggle for life are included in God’s scheme, even if they lack faith. “Then the righteous will answer him ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And the king will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:37-40).

It is your fellow man, and especially the one who lacks life and needs justice, in whom God wishes to be served and loved. They are the one with whom Jesus identified. Therefore, there is no contradiction between the struggle for justice and the fulfillment of God’s will. One demands the other.

All who work along that line of God’s scheme for life are considered Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Mark 3:31-35). This is the best way to follow Jesus, especially in Zambia’s present situation. We prefer to say that Jesus had a spirituality of the conflict – that is, a vigour in his commitment to the poor and to the Father who granted him immense eternal peace.

Clearly, true faith touches our beliefs, feelings and actions, our head, heart and hand. And as Pope John Paul II once observed, a faith and a life which are authentically Christian cannot fail to blossom in a love which constitutes truth and promotes justice.

As for the poor, they deserve preferential attention, because in them the image of God is obscured and violated. For this reason, God becomes their defender, loving them.

Today, we face very complex situations such as corruption, massive abuses of power and human rights, HIV and AIDS, poverty, misrule and so on and so forth.

And the Church, guided by the Holy Scripture and the reflections of both early and contemporary Christian scholars, has analysed these situations and offered appropriate responses and fundamental guidelines for all its faithful within and beyond the confines of the church.

And central to this analysis and response is the human person. Today our priests are giving us a collection of social wisdom, touching both the head and the heart. For example, they are teaching us that the love of God and love of neighbour are one. Love of neighbour is an absolute demand for justice.

They are also teaching us that whatever our station in life and wherever we find ourselves, we are all created equal in God’s image. Therefore everyone has equal rights and responsibilities in society. They are encouraging us to have standards, norms, principles and values because just societies have just laws that promote the common good of everyone – the fullness of life is everyone’s right.

But they emphasise to us that social justice and concern for the poor is central to our Bible. All this is developed through the reading of the signs of the times, a faith-filled attention to changing situations and emerging needs of people. The future is already appearing in the present. We must keep our eyes open to new challenges, new opportunities, new responsibilities.

Clearly, the Church values the democratic system in as much as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility of a electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate.

As it has been said, if the proclamation of justice and peace is an integral part of evangelisation, it follows that the promotion of these values should be a part of the pastoral programme of each priest. Therefore, the work for justice, fairness, humaneness is the work of true evangelisation, sharing the good news by promoting the reign of God.

And since it is said that justice begins at home, our priests must be the first to give witness. They cannot call others to virtues which they themselves do not make an effort to practice; they have to be exemplary in their daily lives by engaging, without fear, in our people’s struggles that promote life. And this is much more so in our country today where the majority of our people are not able to meet the basic needs necessary for a decent life.

It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental needs to remain unsatisfied. And this being the case, it is not surprising that our priests are today in the forefront advocating for just government policies. Every person, whether rich or poor, has an equal right to the basic needs of life.

This is what we think Fr Alexander Ngosa meant when he urged Fr John Lesa and other young priests to share with the people their daily sorrows and happy moments in what he called times of confusion. Truly, “The joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the women and men of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the followers of Jesus Christ”.

Labels: CATHOLIC CHURCH, POVERTY

posted by MrK @ 12:38 PM