In the encyclical “Saved by Hope” which Pope Benedict issued close to a year ago, he asks some disturbing questions. “How could the idea have developed that Jesus’ message is narrowly individualistic and aimed only at each person singly?” It’s as though the Pope were saying, “Where in the world did that idea come from?” And he goes on in the same vein as though in exasperation at such a distortion of what the message of Jesus is: “How did we arrive at this interpretation of the salvation of the soul as a flight from responsibility for the whole and how did we come to conceive the Christian project as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others?”
In his address to the bishops of the United States in April of this year at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., Pope Benedict stated the same problem in the affirmative. He said, “Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted. Only when their faith permeates every aspect of their lives do Christians become truly open to the transforming power of the Gospel.”
This misunderstanding, this privatizing of the faith, is something all of us are vulnerable to. However, in the United States with its culture of individualism, with the way we lionize the “self-made” person with all that term suggests by way of going it alone and an unregulated autonomy make us particularly susceptible to this distortion of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
The Pope was not expressing a pet peeve or some kind of idiosyncratic beef. Ingredient to the gospel preached and lived by Jesus is the understanding that we are all interrelated and interconnected and called to serve even as Jesus came not to be served but to serve and to give.. Jesus has not been called The Man for Others because he isolated himself from his contemporaries or was indifferent to the human condition. To trace this reality even farther back, at the very beginnings of God’s dealing with humanity; God was not pleased with Cain’s response to the question, “Where is your brother?” “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain should have known better and, certainly by now, so should we.
As the followers of Jesus, we cannot hold ourselves aloof from the condition of our brothers and sisters in the family of God, nor is it permitted us to be disinterested and detached from what is happening to Earth, our home. The imperative from our baptism is to get ourselves involved.
First of all by prayer, yes. The prayer for enlightenment as to where we can best serve the human family, where we can best be those channels of the values of the reign of God. Prayer, too, for our own transformation of heart that we may be unselfseeking and involve ourselves in a self-emptying way that the Spirit flowing through us will empower those we serve.
But, then, to really get ourselves engaged, to be willing to leave our own comfort zone, to get our hands dirty, to share with others whatever we have to share, whether materially, emotionally, spiritually as the case and the demand may be. To do this with a certain spirit of abandon, not even looking for results, with the faith conviction that, if we serve in this fashion, the Spirit of God flowing through us will produce its own fruit at the proper time.
This calls not for a knee-jerk response but for reflection with other like-minded citizens of this planet, preferring always cooperation over competition. There is no telling how much good can be done if we would not concern ourselves with who will get the credit! To study or engage with others who have studied societal or ecological problems to discover what structures in our society have to be changed or done away with if we are to have the just society we all are hungry and thirsty for is a part of this involvement and living out our commitment as incorporated into the Christ who lives in the world today.
One does not have to be a philanthropist in order to enrich others (and it may be observed, be enriched ourselves in the process), we have only to draw upon the inheritance that is ours as alive with the life of the risen Lord in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, in whom dwells the fullness of divinity which we share by the life of grace! We have been given a wild tiger that we have tamed into a cuddly pussy cat. This season of Advent-Christmas season when we celebrate the birth of him who through his union with one of us has taken up his abode in all of us may be an excellent time to arouse this reality from its torpor! And truly acknowledge the presence of him who has never left us by his presence in our fellowman and woman!
Fr. John Baptist Pesce, C.P.
