6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. [Deuteronomy 6:6-7, NRSV]
Christ Crucified with Toledo in the background, by El Greco, 1604-1614.
Two things Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his book, The Social Contract, inspire our reflection.
The first is his famous dictum: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Applied to Christian reflection, this dictum points us equally to the idols that individuals erect for themselves by which their life energies are chained, as well as to the rules and doctrines erected, legitimately or otherwise, by official religious institutions as these seek to regulate how members of the faith community are to worship, think and live. Unless these rules and doctrines are in line with the heart of Jesus, they may also operate as idol-enslavement, instead of being authentically freedom-enabling and empowering.
The second thing of interest from Rousseau is his insistence that born free, humanity is kept free only by compassion.
While the specific recommendations Rousseau made in his book do not resonate very well with the Christian thoughts, his basic inspiration on these two points of chained human freedom and human compassion can generate helpful discussions.
In the first place, we are reminded of the analysis by Gerard O’Collins, SJ, in Interpreting Jesus, of the human condition that cries out for salvation. He presents a humanity that is oppressed, contaminated, and wounded. The endless list of ills all seems to come down to sin, suffering and death from which humanity longs to be liberated. Truly, humanity needs to be set free from the shackles of this death-bound condition. Christians accept Jesus Christ as the Saviour sent from God.
In all that Jesus of Nazareth taught and did in his work of salvation, his singular goal was to liberate God for humanity and humanity for God.
To show us that this evangelical ideal is achievable, Jesus’ preaching of God’s Kingdom-message throughout his active ministry, was fully attested by his living out God’s Kingdom-values right to the very end. For this work of Kingdom-advancement for which he was sent according to the Johannine language, Jesus willingly paid the ultimate price. That is obedience to the will of God in its pristine sense, before other man-made senses developed generations after him were introduced to adulterate it – senses that are interest-laden and designed to enforce rules, systems, and human-authority.
Today, with Pope Francis at the helm, we really ought to join him to courageously reject the false detours of religion wherever and whenever we see that “human politics” get into play to control people, and to promote and dictate what is really not of Christ. Instead of attempting to “buy” God by exclusionary purity and system of “sacrifices”, the Holy Father draws our attention in this Jubilee Year of Mercy to the need to return to Jesus of the Gospels and practise basic mercy and compassion.
“Mercy is the Lord’s most powerful message!” With these words at the inception of his pontificate three years ago, Pope Francis indicated that, like his namesake, Saint Francis of Assisi, divine compassion and mercy would be at the heart of his ministry as Bishop of Rome and pastor of the universal Church.
There is a long history of frequently divisive debate over what ought to be at the heart of the Church.
- Some, quoting from the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, would say the heart is the liturgy, since it is the “source and summit of the life and mission of the Church”.
- Others, instead, would turn to Matthew 25 upon the belief that the Final Judgment is at the heart of the Church and is decisive for the evaluation of our life practices.
- For Pope Francis, however, the heart of the Church is, quite simply, the heart. That is, the human heart and its transformative relationship with God’s heart.
The heart enjoys a long history in Jesuit conceptuality and spirituality. First to popularise the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus around the world, the Jesuits were initially accused of heresy for promoting the concept that the human heart of Jesus was a permanent living source of mercy, as revealed by God to St. Marguerite Marie Alacoque in the 17th century.
Far from reducing the heart to the locale for human experience of feelings, the Jesuit tradition places the heart at the core of the human person, the place of the soul, where human encounter with God takes place. Formed in this Jesuit tradition, Pope Francis’ concept of the heart firmly holds that not only does the heart reside in the most inner sanctum of the human person, but that it actually lies at the very root of the human will. The heart is, for him, the source of human action and endurance. Therefore, personal conversion begins at and with the human heart. With conversion, authenticity understood as real human freedom is matched by solidarity understood as co-humanity. Freedom and solidarity should be the paired values that top a Christian scale of values, for they manifest the depth of love. And God is love.
Much has been said about Pope Francis’ call for a Church “of the poor and for the poor”, or about his liturgical decisions, such as not wearing the papal cape and stole during his first appearance, his choice of the third Eucharistic Prayer for his first solemn Mass, his celebrating Holy Thursday Mass at a Rome juvenile detention center and kissing the feet of two females during the washing of the feet, and his decision not to wear red shoes or to wear a silver pectoral cross and ring rather than those made of gold. But, there is a serious danger of misreading and over-reading all this. Like the Deuteronomic call to always remember the Lord and His commandments, so that we shall not be too fascinated with all manners of idols which could lead to a weakening of the memory of God and worse, a forgetfulness of God, what he is doing is to challenge us all to assume personal responsibility:
- This is the Lord’s commandment: Surrender our hearts. Open them and believe in the Gospel of truth; not in the Gospel we’ve concocted, not in a light Gospel, not in a distilled Gospel, but in the Gospel of truth.
The truth is, to do any work of genuine liberation in the name of Christ, suffering and hardship are expected, just as a measure of sacrifice is inevitable. This is affirmed by Henri Nouwen who wrote in Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and Spirit:
- It is important for us to realize that when Jesus says, ‘It is accomplished’ (John 19:30), he does not simply mean, ‘I have done all the things I wanted to do.’ He also means, ‘I have allowed things to be done to me that needed to be done to me in order for me to fulfill my vocation.’ Jesus does not fulfill his vocation in action only, but also in passion.
Pope Francis calls for the courage to assume the responsibility of forming Christian hearts, hearts that know they have encountered Jesus Christ.
As a young woman told the Italian state-run TV in the very early days after Pope Francis’ election:
- What I saw in Pope Francis’ person is totally consistent with what I read in the Gospels. … I think I now need to go back to the Church.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, April 2016. All rights reserved.
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