Jesus – eyebeleave

Fearful yet overjoyed

2349 words, 12 minute read.

Thinking about what emotions or attitudes ought to characterise a Christian, the following may well show up in top-ten lists: self-giving, generous, caring, compassionate, humble, faithful, peace-loving, merciful, just, patient, gentle, bold, persistent, forgiving and joyful. However, an emotion that would not make it into such lists appears repeatedly in the Gospels, namely fear. Fear fills the hearts of the chief priests and the scribes when they see the crowds cheering Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem before his passion (cf. Luke 22:2, Matthew 21:46, Mark 12:12), it grips Pilate when the chief priests invoke the law to force Jesus’ execution (cf. John 19:8), it pervades even the battle-hardened centurion and his men who were guarding Jesus on the cross (cf. Matthew 27:54), it makes the guards who watch Jesus’ tomb become “like dead men” when the angel appears and rolls away the stone blocking its entrance (cf. Matthew 28:4), it fills the townspeople who see Jesus curing a possessed man and sending his demons into a herd of swine (cf. Mark 5:33, Luke 8:35) or bringing a dead young man back to life (cf. Luke 7:16), it strikes the shepherds to whom an angel announces the birth of Jesus (cf. Luke 2:9).

In all these instances it can easily and rightly be argued though that fear is an emotion associated with those who oppose Jesus or who are, at least, far from him.

More interesting is the case of Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, whom an angel admonishes in a dream: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20-21). Joseph’s fears subside and he refrains from divorcing Mary, who bears another’s child. Fear enters Joseph’s life again when he follows an angel’s instructions to take Mary and Jesus back to Israel (Matthew 2:20) after living as refugees in Egypt, also on the angel’s instructions. Here Joseph followed what the angel tells him, “[b]ut when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there. And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee.” (Matthew 2:22) Joseph’s fear here is part of discerning God’s will and contributes to keeping his family safe.

Fear is also very much present in the minds of Jesus’ closest followers, the apostles, and I think it is good both to note this and to see how Jesus responds to it.

To begin with, fear enters the apostles’ life from their very first encounter with Jesus. St. Luke recounts that event for Peter, James and John as follows:

“He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that they were in danger of sinking. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.” (Luke 5:2-11)

Fear here is quite a natural reaction when faced with the miraculous actions of Jesus and one for which he does not castigate or admonish them – he simply reassures them that fear is not necessary, without reprimanding them for it.

Jesus is very patient with the apostles though and even on the next occasion, when they are afraid – St. Matthew even says that they are “terrified” – that the boat they and the sleeping Jesus are in is going to capsize, his response is rather mild:

“He got into a boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?” (Matthew 8:23-27; cf. Mark 4:36-41)

And still the apostles cannot get used to Jesus’ actions and it is terror that fills them again when they see him walking on water (the same man they saw stop a storm!). Jesus again just reassures them, draws their attention to himself, whom they know, and does not make a big deal out of it:

“When it was evening, the boat was far out on the sea and he was alone on shore. Then he saw that they were tossed about while rowing, for the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out. They had all seen him and were terrified. But at once he spoke with them, “Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!” He got into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were [completely] astounded.” (Mark 6:47-51, cf. Matthew 14:26-27; Cf. John 6:19-20)

Fear returns again when the apostles (the same three who were scared when they first met him) see Jesus transfigured and joined by Moses and Elijah. Here Jesus not only, but again simply, gently, invites them not to be afraid, but he touches them, since part of their fear in this case must stem from their doubting his reality and the sense of touch both dispels that fear and is a sign of warmth and affection:

“After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and do not be afraid.”” (Matthew 17:1-7; Cf. Mark 9:2-6)

Not only his deeds, but his words too make the apostles afraid, as in the following passage where Jesus tells them about his impending suffering and death:

“He was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death he will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.” (Mark 9:31-32; Luke 9:43-45)

Finally, even after his death and resurrection, Jesus’ presence engendered fear among his followers, as can be seen from St. Luke’s account of two disciples meeting him on the road to Emmaus and then telling the apostles about it, only to have Jesus himself appear among them:

“So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. The Appearance to the Disciples in Jerusalem. While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” (Luke 24:33-37)

Clearly Jesus does not want his followers to be afraid, as he also emphasises during the Last Supper where he says: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” (John 14:27) At the same time, fear in the face of the unknown is something that the apostles kept experiencing in spite of – and sometimes because of! – Jesus’ own presence among them, which Jesus in turn had a lot of understanding for and patience with and which he helped them out of with gentleness and closeness.

Fear was also not absent from Jesus’ own mind, e.g., when he feared for the wellbeing of his followers: “Jesus summoned his disciples and said, “My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, for they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, for fear they may collapse on the way.”” (Matthew 15:32). And while he broadly reassured his followers that fear was not necessary even in the face of persecution, Jesus did warn against the Devil and tell his disciples that he is to be feared:

“Therefore do not be afraid of them [who persecute you]. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:26-31, Cf. Luke 12:4-7)

My favorite Gospel passage though, in which Jesus’ followers are shown to be afraid, is that of Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” going to see Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning:

“After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing was white as snow. The guards were shaken with fear of him and became like dead men. Then the angel said to the women in reply, “Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ Behold, I have told you.” Then they went away quickly from the tomb, fearful yet overjoyed, and ran to announce this to his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them. They approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”” (Matthew 28:1-10; Cf. Mark 16:1-8)

A couple of significant things happen here: first, that it is not fear versus no fear that distinguishes the two Marys from the guards – they were all afraid in the face of an unknown and inexplicable event. However, the guards had nothing to soften the blow and were terrified into unconsciousness. The Marys, instead had their relationship with Jesus, which did not cancel out fear, but supplemented it with joy: “fearful yet overjoyed” may just be what a Christian response to the unknown and daunting ought to look like. The fear is real, but so is the knowledge of Jesus’ saving love. Second, the basis for their joy is confirmed by Jesus later meeting them, greeting them and allowing them to come close to him, to embrace him.

I invariably feel a sense of unease when someone is told off or criticised for being afraid or for being unhappy with an unpleasant situation (or when a person in such situations self-criticises or self-censors), because “fear is not of God” or because we have to “accept God’s will” when things go against us. And my unease here is not born of disagreement with either of those statements, but of the, to my mind, unwarranted suppression or denial of the validity of fear or displeasure. Jesus brought the Good News of God’s universal love to a world where fear and unhappiness persist, but where they can be lived with the help of a simultaneous joy born of Jesus’ love for us and closeness to us.

The morality of Jesus’ followers

1187 words, 6 minute read. [A Spanish translation is available here.]

If Jesus returned today, how could he tell who his followers are? He’d look not at what people say, but at what they do. Who is it that feeds the hungry, welcomes strangers, encourages the disheartened, is ready to give their life for their friends? He’d look for those who embrace the excluded, ease the pain of the suffering, defend the defenseless, not those who shout “Lord, Lord” or who declare that their presence renders a place “holy ground.” He’d look for those who waste time with the worthless, are brothers and sisters to the lonely and who take the last seat at banquets. He’d look for those who recognize Him in their neighbors and who put the needs of others ahead of their own.

In other words, he would look for those who live moral lives, since morality is nothing other than choosing good over evil, choosing love over hatred or indifference, choosing others over myself. For a follower of Jesus, morality starts with the good news that God so loves us that he sent us his only son, who loved us like a brother, who called us his friends. A Son who even accepted being forsaken by his own Father, moments before dying on the cross, so that no suffering, failure or separation would be insurmountable, so that no one would ever think that they are off limits for God’s love or the love of his followers, so that all would know that His resurrection is for them, open to them, waiting to welcome them.

Wherever there is division, suffering, exclusion, oppression, Jesus is firmly on the side of the forsaken. God’s self-giving, self-noughting love makes every person sacred and of intrinsic value. All of Christian morality follows from this central reality of God’s love for his creation and for us, humans, whom he made so that we may freely respond to his love. And He invites us to choose Him, to choose what is good, with every single choice we make and in every single action we perform. Should I feel jealous of another person’s success, or should I rejoice with them in their achievement? Should I say a certain thing about another person, or would it be gossip that wounds them? Should I buy this product, or another, knowing that a purchase impacts the lives of many who worked on bringing it within my reach, where one choice may contribute to just wages while another may line the pockets of modern day slave owners and destroy the environment? Should I sleep with my girlfriend or boyfriend as an expression of love for them, or would it be a reckless gamble with her or his life and the potential life of a child? Should I denounce abortion, or do I also need to seek the good of those who committed it, recognizing their anguish and suffering too and being aware that I don’t know and can’t know the state of their innermost selves?

God waits patiently, longs for all to come ever closer to Him and His mercy has no limits. And since following Jesus is an invitation to imitating him, I too am invited to love in the way in which God loves me and every single other person, no matter how imperfectly I or they may respond to God’s invitation to reciprocate His love. There is always a choice open to me that brings me closer to God and therefore to every other person too. No matter how far I am from God, choosing to move closer to Him is the moral thing to do and no matter how often I make the wrong choice, every present moment gives me alternatives that are more moral than others.

Not only is choosing good always available to me, but God Himself is there with me in my innermost self, in my conscience, to guide me and help me discern good from evil. Even in my most intimate self I am not alone, but it is there that God invites me to choose Him who is Good, who is Beauty, who is Truth, who is Love. And He sends me his followers to help me listen to His voice, to help me form my conscience so that it may be ever more attuned to God, to help me persist in choosing good over evil. And He helps me further still by making what is good deeply embedded in the very nature of the universe and accessible to reason.

The choice of good over evil is centered on self-giving, which is participation in God’s creative act of love. It requires self-noughting so that giving may be perfect and ready to perfectly receive a gift in return, holding nothing back and leaving nothing out. So that giving and receiving may be in imitation of the life of the Trinity itself, where the Father gives himself wholly, generating the Son, the Son empties himself wholly in return, giving Himself to the Father without exception and the Holy Spirit makes Himself nothing so that the Father and the Son may love one another in Him without constraint. Such loss comes at a price, but one that is far outweighed by the love that follows and the joy it brings.

Like the inner life of the Trinity, morality is not primarily a matter of individual perfection or achievement, but the quality of a life lived in a community that journeys towards God, a community that journeys with God. Imperfectly, failingly, but with the God who emptied himself, suffered forsakenness and died for his friends, walking among his brothers and sisters. Being composed of imperfect members, this community’s morality too is imperfect and evolving, and its perfection is commensurate with the degree to which it lives in the presence of Jesus in its midst. It strives for an ever deeper understanding of what choosing good over evil means, an understanding that grows over time as a fruit of the Holy Spirit. What once was considered acceptable becomes absolutely forbidden and what at one time was out of bounds is welcomed. Capital punishment and inter-denominational marriage respectively are past examples in the Catholic Church; what will be future ones? Everything changes and nothing does at the same time, since God’s self-giving, all-embracing love for us, whom he endows with intrinsic value by that love, is the immutable core to which we tend on our journey towards Him and with Him.

A consequence of this journey is also the need for particular sensitivity to what is on the boundaries of morality at any one time, since some of these, as yet forbidden choices may be where the journey towards God leads next, while others slope off and away from union with Him. Only an openness to God’s voice in my innermost self, in the hearts and minds of my brothers and sisters, in the voices of the suffering and forsaken and in silent prayer will lead to discerning right from wrong here, to understanding what God’s love and mercy call for in the here and now.

Benedict XVI on celibacy, priesthood and much more

Benedict

2073 words, 11 min read

As the events surrounding the introduction of Cardinal Sarah’s book “From the Depths of Our Hearts” unfolded last week, I felt no desire whatsoever to write about them. Instead, seeing Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, for whom I have the highest regard and to whom I am deeply grateful, being dragged into that mess was a real source of suffering for me, also on the back of having watched a recent documentary about him done by Bavarian television from which it was clear that his health is much deteriorated and that he is coming to the end of his life. The events surrounding this book, of which he at first was alleged to have been a co-author, simply did not make sense and were not consistent with the great theologian whose wisdom has been and remains a source of light for me. As events unfolded, it emerged that Benedict had only written one of that book’s chapters and I was keen to get hold of it to see what he had actually said about the topics of the priesthood and of celibacy.

A few days ago, the German edition of CNA then published Benedict’s chapter in full (in German) and I would here like to share a rough translation of some of its passages.¹ The chapter is 5903 words long (including 3 footnotes), is entitled “Die Gestaltwerdung des neutestamentlichen Priestertums in der christologisch-pneumatischen Exegese” (i.e., “The taking shape of New Testament Priesthood in Christological-Pneumatic Exegesis”) and is dated 17th September 2019. What follows will be well short of a full reflection on the text and will focus on the parts that either most spoke to me or that most puzzled me. The chapter overall focuses on the question of how the priesthood brought about by Jesus is in continuity with the priesthood of the people of Israel that precedes it and that, Benedict argues, it brings to its fulfilment. Far from being the central question of this chapter, celibacy is only one of a variety of aspects of the priesthood that Benedict speaks about here. The central focus here, as in all of Benedict’s thought, is Jesus and his invitation to us, as humanity, to become one with him.

Early on in the chapter, Benedict speaks about how the Jewish priesthood was viewed differently in Jesus’ time, with the Pharisees being its proponents, while the Essenes opposing its then-current form that they wanted to see purified. In that context, Benedict writes:

“This means that Jesus sees the destruction of the temple as a result of the misguided attitude of the ruling priest hierarchy. God, however, uses the misguided attitude of people, as at all corner points of salvation history, as a means for his greater love. In this respect, Jesus obviously sees the destruction of the current temple ultimately as a step of divine healing and interprets it as a final redesign of ritual worship. In this sense, the cleansing of the temple is the announcement of a new form of worshiping God and thereby affects the nature of ritual worship and priesthood as such.”

What radiates from Benedict’s words here is God’s love and and a thinking whose stage is that of eternity and universality. This is also apparent from my favorite passage, where he offers an astonishingly beautiful exegesis of the last supper, the crucifixion and resurrection:

“It is important to consider that the same Jesus who stands among the disciples surrenders himself to them in his flesh and blood and thus anticipates the cross and resurrection. It would all be pointless without the resurrection. The crucifixion of Jesus is not in itself an act of ritual worship, and the Roman soldiers who carry it out are not priests. They carry out an execution, but do not even remotely think of preforming an act of ritual worship. That Jesu, in the Upper Room [and] for all time, gives Himself as food, means an anticipation of his death and resurrection and the transformation of an act of human atrocity into an act of devotion and love. Thus Jesus himself performs the fundamental renewal of ritual worship, which remains decisive for all time: He transforms people’s sin into an act of forgiveness and love, into which future disciples can enter by participating in the foundation of Jesus. This explains what Augustine called the transition from the Last Supper to morning offering in the church. The Last Supper is God’s surrender to us in the forgiving love of Jesus Christ and enables humanity in turn to take up God’s gesture of love and to return it to God.”

Benedict then continues with setting out the significance of the cross and its relationship to the Eucharist, which he presents with reference to not only the Church but to all of humanity and he concludes with reflecting on the relationship between New Testament priesthood and the priestly office of Israel.

“The cross of Jesus Christ is the act of radical love, in which the reconciliation between God and the sinful world takes place in reality. Therefore this, which is in no way an event of ritual worship, is nevertheless the highest worship of God. In the cross, the katabatic line of the descent of God and the anabatic line of the devotion of mankind to God became one single act that made the new temple of his body in the resurrection possible. In the celebration of the Eucharist, the Church, indeed humanity, is repeatedly drawn into this process. In the cross of Christ, the prophetic criticism of ritual worship has reached its goal once and for all. However, at the same time, new ritual worship is established. Christ’s love, which is ever present in the Eucharist, is the new act of worship. Accordingly, the priestly offices of Israel are “raised up” into the service of love, which at the same time means worship of God. This new unity of love and ritual worship, of a criticism of ritual worship and the glorification of God in the service of love is, of course, an unheard-of assignment for the Church, which has to be renewed in every generation.”

After setting out the role of New Testament priesthood as existing in a tension between the cross and worship, and as being preceded by and bringing to fulfilment the priesthood of Israel, Benedict turns to the question of celibacy by first reflecting on its Old Testament nature:

“In the general awareness of Israel, it was apparently clear that priests were obliged to practice sexual abstinence during the times when they were involved in ritual worship, that is, in contact with the divine mystery. The connection between sexual abstention and worshiping God was entirely clear in the general awareness of Israel. As an example, I would only like to bring to mind the episode in which David asks Ahimelech for bread while fleeing from Saul. “The priest replied to David, “I have no ordinary bread on hand, only holy bread; if the men have abstained from women, you may eat some of that.” David answered the priest: “We have indeed stayed away from women.”” (1 Sam 21, 5f). Since Old Testament priests only had to devote themselves to ritual worship at certain times, marriage and priesthood were perfectly compatible.”

It seems to me that this is a curious argument and one that lacks the sharpness and deep insight of the earlier part of the text. Instead of going to the heart of the matter, like in the case of his profound reflections on the relationship between Jesus’ crucifixion and ritual worship, this passage effectively says: during Old Testament times it was obvious to everyone that priests had to abstain from sex during times when they were involved in ritual worship, and it offers as Scriptural foundation a passage where a priest (Ahimelech) tells King David that his soldiers may only consume bread used in ritual worship if they (the solders) have abstained from sex during some preceding period of time².

What follows immediately after the above is a paragraph on how New Testament priesthood differs from the Old Testament one:

“For the priests of the Church of Jesus Christ, the situation was fundamentally changed due to the regular or in many cases daily celebration of the Eucharist. Their whole life stands in contact with the divine mystery and thus demands an exclusivity for God, which excludes another, life-encompassing bond like marriage alongside itself. From the daily celebration of the Eucharist and from the comprehensive service for God that comes with it, the impossibility of a conjugal bond arose by itself. One could say that functional abstinence had by itself become ontological. This changed the reasons for it and its meaning from the inside. Today, however, the objection immediately arises that this is a negative valuation of the body and of sexuality. The accusation that priestly celibacy was based on a Manichaean worldview was raised as early as the 4th century, but was immediately rejected by the fathers with determination and then fell silent for some time. Such a diagnosis is wrong already because in the Church marriage was considered from the beginning to be a gift given by God in Paradise. But it required the human person as a whole and the service for the Lord also requires the human person completely, so that both vocations appear as not realizable at the same time. In this way the ability to forgo marriage to be fully present for the Lord had become a criterion for priestly service.”

This also strikes me as a peculiar argument since it suggests that married people could not wholly devote themselves to serving God or that married priests would in some way also be incomplete in their service (a long list of counter examples here includes St. Hilary, 4th century bishop of Poitiers and Doctor of the Church, who was married and had a daughter – St. Abra). It is also at odds with a 4th century magisterial text of the Catholic Church – the Apostolic Canons, where canon #6 declares “Let not a bishop, a priest, or a deacon cast off his own wife under pretence of piety; but if he does cast her off, let him be suspended. If he go on in it, let him be deprived.” In no way do I mean to argue against the value of celibacy here – its choice is certainly a gift that one can be called to make and a gift that also flourishes and becomes an ontological part of priesthood for celibate priests. But, post hoc does not imply propter hoc, and an argument for ontological unity between celibacy and the priesthood for a person who made the beautiful choice of giving themselves wholly to God in celibacy does not imply that it is a necessary prerequisite.

I really have mixed feelings about this text, where some of its parts brightly radiate with Benedict’s genius and are on par with the masterful magisterial writings from his time as Pope Benedict XVI, while other passages seem intellectually sluggish and superficial – adjectives I could not apply to any of his other writings …

Let me conclude with a translation of a brief passage from later on in the chapter, which made my heart burn within me, like the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus:

“It is the temptation of mankind time and again to want to be completely autonomous, to follow only one’s own own will and to think that only then will we be free; that only in such freedom without barriers is a person wholly human. But that’s precisely how we position ourselves against the truth.

Because the truth is that we have to share our freedom with others and that we can only be free together. This shared freedom can be true freedom only if we place ourselves into the measure of freedom itself, into the will of God.”

¹ I will again favor as literal a translation of the text as I can manage, over polish or readability. All mistakes in the translated text here are exclusively mine.
² In the Hebrew original it says “about three days”, which is rendered as “yesterday and the day before yesterday” in the German translation used in this passage’s original, while a variety of English translations, like the New American Bible (Revised Edition) I used in my translation here, make no specific reference to duration.

To judge or not to judge?

2281 words, 12 min read

This, like so much of putting Jesus’ teachings into practice, is at the same time utterly simple and rather complex. Are we to judge whether an act is right or wrong so that we may choose good over evil, or are we to abstain from judgement lest we, who are weak, imperfect and flawed, be judged ourselves? The immediate response to both – on the face of it – opposed questions is an obvious yes, which points to the need for a qualifier that in some cases points to non-judgment and in others to judgment.

How is that to be arrived at though? Again, simplicity and complexity meet: I just have to listen to my conscience (in the intimacy of which it is the Holy Spirit who speaks), but I must also involve intelligence, given to me by God to participate in the universe in a free and informed way.

As tends to be the case, what is to be sought here is not a decision tree of if-then casuistry, but an imitation of Christ. And where better to start understanding that than in the Gospels.

There, Luke 6 offers a first glimpse of both horns of the dichotomy. In verses 24-26 that follow Jesus’ setting out of the beatitudes, he reels off a series of warnings, which contain clear, negative judgments of wealth, satedness, jolliness, and good reputation:

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. But woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.” (Luke 6:24-26)

A few verses later (37-42, and also in Matthew 7:1-5) we get Jesus’ famous denunciation of judgment, condemnation and the holding of grudges, followed by a call to forgiveness and mercy that he promises will be reciprocated:

“Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” And he told them a parable, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.” (Luke 6:37-42)

In John 7 we then find Jesus encouraging his listeners in the temple to “Stop judging by appearances, but judge justly.” (7:24) when they condemn him for having worked a miracle on the Sabbath even though the Scriptures recount Moses performing a circumcision on the same day.

In the next chapter, John then recounts the episode of the adulteress who was about to be stoned to death and whose accusers had a change of heart when he challenged them by asking him who is without sin to throw the first stone. When the mob dispersed, Jesus said to the woman:

““Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more.”” (8:10-11).

Notice how this verse and a half contains both judgment (adultery is sin) and not judging (the woman). In fact, later in the same chapter we have Jesus saying: “You judge by appearances, but I do not judge anyone. And even if I should judge, my judgment is valid, because I am not alone, but it is I and the Father who sent me.” (8:15-16) when some Pharisees tell him that his statements about himself are not trustworthy. Again Jesus declares himself as not judging any person, even though he could.

In Matthew 18:6 we hear Jesus quite dramatically judging what appears to be a person, when he says the following (which is also found at Mark 9:42 and Luke 17:2):

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Notice also how this pattern echoes in Jesus words about Judas at the Last Supper:

“He who has dipped his hand into the dish with me is the one who will betray me. The Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.” (Matthew 26:23-24)

Next, we come to two epic judgment episodes in Jesus’ public life, both recorded by Matthew. The first is a vehement tirade against scribes and Pharisees, where you can imagine the veins on Jesus’ neck bulging as he spat it out:

“Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens [hard to carry] and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’ As for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi.’ You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven. Do not be called ‘Master’; you have but one master, the Messiah. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the kingdom of heaven[h] before human beings. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You traverse sea and land to make one convert, and when that happens you make him a child of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves.

“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If one swears by the temple, it means nothing, but if one swears by the gold of the temple, one is obligated.’ Blind fools, which is greater, the gold, or the temple that made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If one swears by the altar, it means nothing, but if one swears by the gift on the altar, one is obligated.’ You blind ones, which is greater, the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? One who swears by the altar swears by it and all that is upon it; one who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it; one who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who is seated on it.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. [But] these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth. Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous, and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’ Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets; now fill up what your ancestors measured out! You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna?” (23:1-33)

And just in case anyone felt like “Phew, good job I’m not a scribe or Pharisee!”, we hear Jesus pass universal Judgment in one of the Gospels’ most famous and fundamental passages in Matthew 25:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (31-46)

Yes, this is both beautiful in that God identifies himself with the hungry, thirsty, naked, strangers and prisoners and takes any good deed performed for them as performed directly for Him, but it is also a total and absolute condemnation of the opposite, of the absence of such good deeds, withheld from those in need and on the periphery.

Thinking about all of the above Gospel passages, my impression is that Jesus’ harshness comes when he speaks about behaviours and attitudes, where he judges with severity and points to Hell as the wages of hypocrisy, hatred and selfishness. Even when he speaks about Judas and that it would have been better had he not been born, he puts it in general terms – i.e., he speaks about “that man” who will betray him. Or, when he talks about leading others to sin being worse than having a millstone around ones neck, not to mention his tirade about the systematic perversions of the Pharisees. In all of these cases, it seems to me, Jesus’ objective is to warn against dangers to one’s ability to be part of a community and to participate in the life of God Himself. Betrayal, leading others to fall, hypocrisy all separate their perpetrators from others and introduce rifts in personal relationships. As such they lead to eternal death and Jesus pulls out all the stops to warn against them.

When facing individuals, rather than patterns of behaviour, Jesus tells us that he choses not to judge, while also being clear that he – but not we – would be in a position to do so. Why? I believe this is because of who he is, who God is – a God of Mercy. It is because of this that he invites us not to judge – and I think he means not to judge others, lest we be judged. What I don’t see Jesus either asking us or doing himself is to abstain from judging what Blessed Óscar Romero called “structures of sin”. Here, I believe, we, like Jesus, must denounce the evil being done in the world, whether it be various forms of economic exploitation and exclusion, war, violence or abominations like the sexual abuse of children and other vulnerable persons that has been perpetrated even by representatives of the Church.

God is a family

Border father son

588 words, 3 min read

Last Sunday our new parish priest started his homily with reflecting on Jesus’ startling rebuke of St. Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are thinking not as God thinks, but as human beings do.” (Mark 8:33). This, our parish priest argued, was akin to him going up to the parents of a disabled child, taking them to one side and saying: “Look, why don’t you put your kid into a home so you can live a calmer, more relaxed life?” The parents would look at him like at an alien and would be as horrified as Jesus was when Peter suggested to him to get out of his impending suffering and death. Peter’s saying “Heaven preserve you, Lord, this must not happen to you.” (Matthew 16:22) was like parents hearing someone telling them to get rid of their child for a quiet life. Our parish priest then went on to develop an edifying line of thought about “thinking as God does” but I saw a different path leading on from such an insightful opening.

What struck me was the wisdom of the simile. Jesus related to the will of his Father in as inalienable and unquestionable a way as a parent relates to their child. Suggesting alternatives to it or a turning away from it then elicits as visceral a reaction as would result from being faced with separation from one’s own kids. Jesus therefore reaches for the most savage label he has at his disposal – Satan. He, who enjoyed direct access to the Father’s will and chose to turn away from it with full knowledge of the consequences. He, about whom Jesus said: “I watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18). St. Peter must have been well freaked out, as must have Jesus. “How can he say that to me when I just wanted the best for him”; “How can he still not get it?! Hasn’t anything I said to him sunk in?” they may have thought …

Then it seemed to me that this simile points to another angle: that the preference parents have for their children mirrors an essential aspect of the nature of God, whose inner life is that of a family. As St. John Paul II said, “our God in his deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since he has in himself fatherhood, sonship and the essence of the family, which is love.” The Father favors the Son, the Son favors the Father and their preference for each other is the Holy Spirit, who thereby doesn’t remain “unfavored” since he is integral to the preferential relationship of the other two Persons. Thinking about my relationship with my family, I at times wonder about how my manifest preference for them sits with my relationship with everyone else, whom I am called to love equally. What struck me on Sunday is that the solution here is not to diminish my preference for my own family but to realize that every single person I meet is loved by God as his own child. Being a child of God myself, this places everyone else into my immediate family. Having a spouse and children (and parents and siblings) also serves the purpose of making me experience more deeply how it is that the Persons of the Trinity favor and love one another and each one of us. Yet again I return to Patriarch Athenagoras’ dictum: “God loves us all equally, but secretly each one of us is his favorite.”

I’m with Pope Francis: silence as imitation of Christ when facing discord, hatred, division

2068 words, 11 min read

The Viganò claims have been investigated and commented on extensively,¹ as has Pope Francis’ response of silence to them. Instead of adding a voice to the already rich and plentiful landscape, I would here like to look at Pope Francis’ response to Viganò in terms of the potential that it has to serve as an example to me personally.

First, let’s take a look at what Francis said, when asked about Viganò’s allegations aboard his return flight from Ireland around ten days ago, which were published that same day, on the morning of the second day of his two-day visit there:

“I read the statement this morning. I read it and sincerely I must tell you, and all those who are interested: read it yourselves carefully and make your own judgment. I will not say a single word on this. I believe the memo speaks for itself, and you are capable enough as journalists to draw your own conclusions. This is an act of trust: when some time has passed and you have drawn conclusions, perhaps I will speak. But I ask that you use your professional maturity in doing this: it will do you good, really. That is enough for now.”

Having read the 11-page “statement” earlier that day, I immediately got Pope Francis’ refusal to engage with that vague, handwaving rant, which plainly was a coordinated attack by his ideological opponents.² If he had responded to it as if it were a serious claim, he would have given it a level of credence that it did not merit and he would have made himself part of an irrational argument (the likes of which are hard won, given the ingenuity of those who tend to weave them – see also Viganò’s repeated “yes, buts” after the initial statement, as it gave way to scrutiny³). What is also noteworthy here is Pope Francis’ invitation to the journalistic community to be the one who weighs up Viganò’s claims – a smart move that demonstrates openness, which is crucial in this context, where it has been the Church’s internal coverups that have fuelled unspeakable suffering and damage. The invitation was accepted broadly and now, just over a week later, there seems to be little doubt that Viganò’s central claims of Pope Francis being involved in a coverup are false.⁴

On Monday this week (i.e., a week after the story broke), Pope Francis then gave a homily at the Santa Marta, the Vatican guest house where he stays, that provided a glimpse into the basis on which he chose to respond to Viganò’s statement with silence. He reflected on the Gospel of the day from Luke (4:16-30), where Jesus’s return to Nazareth and preaching in its synagogue is met with opposition when he comments on a passage from the prophet Isaiah and where he identifies himself with the promises it made. There, Jesus’ response to his critics is one of silence:

“When Jesus arrived at the synagogue, he aroused curiosity. Everyone wanted to see the person they had heard was working miracles in other places. Instead of satisfying their curiosity, the Son of the Heavenly Father uses only the Word of God, an attitude that he adopts also when he wants to defeat the Devil. And it is precisely this approach of humility that leaves space for the first “word-bridge”, a word that sows the seeds of doubt, that brings about a change of atmosphere from peace to war, from amazement to fury.

They weren’t people, but a pack of wild dogs instead that drove him out of the city. They did not reason, they shouted. Jesus was silent. They took him to the brow of a mountain to throw him off it.

This passage of the Gospel ends like this: ‘But he passed through the midst of them and went away’. The dignity of Jesus: with his silence he defeats the wild pack and walks away. Because the hour had not yet arrived. The same then happens on Good Friday: the people who on Palm Sunday had cheered for Jesus and had called to him ‘Blessed are You, Son of David’, then said ’crucify him’: they had changed. The devil had sown a lie into their heart, and Jesus was silent.

This teaches us that when there is such a way of acting, of not seeing the truth, what remains is silence.

It is silence that wins, but through the Cross. The silence of Jesus. How many times do arguments about politics, sport, money flare up in families and those families end up destroyed in these discussions where we see that the devil, who wants to destroy, is there …

Silence. Say your piece and then keep quiet. Because the truth is gentle, the truth is quiet, the truth is not noisy. It is not easy, what Jesus did; but there is the dignity of the Christian who is anchored in the power of God. With people who do not have good will, with people who seek only scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even in families: silence. And prayer.

May the Lord give us the grace to discern when we must speak and when we must stay silent. This applies to every part of life: to work, at home, in society … in all of life. Thus we will be closer imitators of Jesus.”

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that keeping quiet in the face of unjustified accusations was not just some clever tactic, but part of Francis’ desire to imitate Jesus – i.e., to live as a Christian. But, let’s be quite specific here about what he did and what constitutes an imitation of Christ – silence in the face if unjust accusations, of arguments “[w]ith people who do not have good will, with people who seek only scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction.” What Francis is not saying, and what his opponents have attributed to him, is to keep quiet in the face of harm, injustice, abuse or to cover up such sins and crimes. Instead, his, and Jesus’ advice and example are about how to respond to attempts at sowing discord, hatred, opposition.

As some commentators have already pointed out, Francis’ attitude has deeper roots still, going back to a period in his life during the late 1980s when he was “exiled” from his role among the Jesuits, following false allegations that he was complicit in the Argentine dictatorship’s crimes. Writing in 1990, in an article entitled “Silence and Word”, Francis roots his response to the situation he was living in the example given my Mary, Jesus’ mother and his first and greatest disciple:

“The Gospels present Our Lady as keeping silence, meditating all things in her heart. The strongest thing about her is her silence. We contemplate the image of Mary, the Undoer of knots. Her hands are undoing a ‘mess’, a tangle that would just be made worse by anyone who’d try to fix it. What does she undo? Why does she undo it? Irenaeus of Lyons explains: “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was undone by the obedience of Mary; what the virgin Eve tied by unbelief, the Virgin Mary untied by faith”. A mess set into the thread of the life of men and of peoples, due to these two things: disobedience and incredulity. That is what Mary undoes … and she does it with the hands of obedience and faith. The mess is rigged up by us … it does not come from outside. In one way or another we all contribute to its entangling. I do not care so much about knots. I worry that we want to undo them ourselves by our own strength or ability. Sometimes, when a hive of knots becomes evident, it is already well entangled. Those who intend to undo the knots by themselves cannot, and entangle themselves even more. In addition to the knots there begins a confusion born of one’s own sufficiency: the Tower of Babel is repeated, and in the heart of each distinct language, war already nests, and -behind the war- the murderous cainism of the brother. And if we project the situation ahead and let it grow by itself, we are left with one more step: the sufficiency of the Giants who set themselves up as ‘supermen’ with their own project instead of God’s: it sets the “type” of all human pretensions of taking on the role of doers and sovereigns, and all their aspirations to turn themselves into supermen; and then, finally, the flood. All this is born of the virgin Eve, of her disobedience and her unbelief; and all this is what Mary undoes with her faith and obedience. No one is alien to this ‘mess’, “all sinned in Adam.” It is the moment in which one wants to consolidate one’s own project instead of God’s project. It is a matter of insolent curiosity, of indiscreet audacity, characteristic of all sin.”

Silence here is an expression of faith, of trust in God, a self-emptying, self-abandoning into God’s hands. Mary here is in a position to undo messes and entanglements, not because of any particular powers of her own, but of her supreme strength, which is her letting God act in her life. By turning to her, I invite God into my life and make space for him to act in me and through me, instead of placing myself at the centre and (wrongly) considering my own abilities and capacities as sufficient. Silence here is a “making space” for God. It is a taking away of oxygen from war, from selfishness and from delusion.

Later on in the same text, Francis speaks about the effects of such silence, drawing on the same Gospel passage as in his homily last Monday:

“It is an example to see how he acts in the Synagogue of Nazareth, when a great scandal is provoked and they want to throw Jesus down. Jesus forces [the devil] to ‘show himself’, ‘he lets him come’. In times of darkness and much tribulation, when the ‘messes’ and the ‘knots’ cannot be unraveled and things cannot be clarified, then we must remain silent: the meekness of silence will make us appear even weaker, and it will be the same devil who, emboldened, will manifest himself in the light, who will show his real intentions, no longer disguised as an angel of light but openly. Resist him in silence, “hold your ground” but with the attitude of Jesus himself.”

Finally, Francis returns to Mary as her to whom to rush in times of trial, suspicion, in-fighting …

“In the silence of a situation that is a cross we are only asked to protect the wheat, and not to go about tearing up little weeds. On the roof of the Domestic Chapel of the Residence of the Company in Córdoba there is an image. There the Novice Brothers are under the mantle of Mary, protected; and below is written: “Monstra te esse matrem”. In times of spiritual turbulence, when God wants to fight Him, our place is under the mantle of the Holy Mother of God. This was understood already by ancient Russian spirituality when it advised, in such circumstances, to protect oneself under the Pokrov Presviatoi Bogoroditsy (the mantle of the Blessed Mother of God). Cry out to the Mother; tell Jesus what the woman of the Gospel said: “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed”, and Mary will be present, because “[o]ne could say that the words of that unknown woman in a way brought Mary out of her hiddenness”.”

¹ As of today (7th September 2018), I think one of the clearest accounts of their veracity is Greg Daly’s at The Irish Catholic.
² It should be needless to say the following, but given the delicacy and gravity of the matter, I will say it anyway: I am here talking solely about Viganò’s statement and not about the extraordinarily grave and serious matter of sexual abuse about which it makes allegations. The former is the noise of a fly while the latter merits all attention, serious engagement, rectification and prevention. And just like a fly in a burning house, the former is to be ignored while the latter is urgently and fully to be to attended to.
³ E.g., see here and here.
⁴ See, e.g., the Guardian.

Jesus, with feeling

Paulklee144 v vierspaltig

1424 words, 7 min read

While the focus in the Gospels is mostly on what Jesus said and did, the Evangelists in some cases also report how they thought he felt, which is what I would like to look at in this post.¹ Reading the Gospels with this aspect of Jesus in mind underlines the sense that it is his words and actions that were of greatest concerns to their authors, with little thought given most of the time to what Jesus’ emotional life might have been at any given moment. This makes the few explicit reference to his feelings the more interesting since they seem to point to instances where Jesus’ feelings were either not obvious (he may have done or said a certain thing in different states), a key to understanding his subsequent actions or of particularly high importance.

For a start, and unsurprisingly, Jesus felt love towards others, alongside loving them by what he said and did. Mark tells us about this being Jesus response to a man who observed the commandments since his youth:

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”” (Mark 10:21)

And he also felt love towards his friends:

“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” (John 11:5)

Jesus also felt hunger, as all three synoptic Gospels report. Matthew and Luke speak about Jesus’ understandable hunger after 40 days of fasting in the desert:

“He fasted for forty days and forty nights, after which he was hungry.” (Matthew 4:2)

“Filled with the holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry.” (Luke 4:1-2)

Mark instead tells us about Jesus’ hunger as a way to set the scene for the episode where he curses a fig tree for bearing no fruit out of season:

“The next day as they were leaving Bethany he was hungry.” (Mark 11:12)

Beyond the strongly biological, the Evangelists also report Jesus feeling amazed and astonished, in all cases in the face of faith or the lack thereof. Matthew and Luke tell us about Jesus’ response to the unexpected faith of the Roman Centurion, whose daughter is ill and who takes it as a given that Jesus has the power to heal here even at a distance:

“When Jesus heard this he was astonished and said to those following him, ‘In truth I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found faith as great as this.” (Matthew 8:10)

“When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him and, turning, said to the crowd following him, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”” (Luke 7:9)

Mark, instead reports the complement – Jesus’ amazement at the lack of faith in his own home town of Nazareth:

“He was amazed at their lack of faith.” (Mark 6:6)

Jesus also takes such surprise and responds to it with greater displeasure by being stern and strict when he wants to emphasise that his instructions are to be adhered to without fail. Mark reports this attitude when Jesus admonishes unclean spirits not to reveal his true nature:

“He warned them sternly not to make him known.” (Mark 3:12)

Matthew first mentions this when describing how Jesus spoke to two blind men whom he cured:

“And their sight returned. Then Jesus sternly warned them, ‘Take care that no one learns about this.’” (Matthew 9:30)

and then when describing Jesus’ reaction to Peter declaring who he thought Jesus was:

“Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Messiah.” (Matthew 16:20)

Sternness becomes indignation, as far as Mark is concerned, when he describes Jesus discovering that his disciples wouldn’t let kids come to him:

“When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”” (Mark 10:14)

And Jesus even feels anger and grief when the good he does – of curing a man’s hand – is disapproved of:

“Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and his hand was restored.” (Mark 3:5)

Jesus then feels perturbed and troubled upon receiving news of his friend Lazarus’ death:

“When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. […] So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.” (John 11:33-35,38)

The same feelings return to Jesus on the night before his crucifixion. First, already during the last supper, after washing the disciples’ feet and telling them that one of them will betray him:

“When he had said this, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”” (John 13:21)

Then, on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane, when feelings of sorrow accompany his distress and being troubled:

“He took along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to feel sorrow and distress.” (Matthew 26:37)

“He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed. Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch.”” (Mark 14:33-34)

Finally, the time in the Garden culminates in feeling agony:

“He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground.” (Luke 22:44)

However, the feeling most often reported by the Evangelists is one of compassion – of feeling pity and feeling sorry for the condition others are in. Jesus felt this for the public at large as he was teaching in towns and villages:

“And when he saw the crowds he felt sorry for them because they were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)

And he felt this in particular who followed him even to deserted places with a disregard for their own needs:

“When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick.” (Matthew 14:14)

“When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.” (Mark 6:34)

“My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat.” (Mark 8:2)

Feelings of pity were also elicited in Jesus by individuals at the periphery of society, like a leper and two blind men, whose healing was triggered by his feelings:

“Moved with pity, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight, and followed him.” (Matthew 20:34)

“Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”” (Mark 1:41)

Finally, pity was a also how Jesus felt when seeing a widow from Nain mourn her dead son:

“When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.”” (Luke 7:13)

What strikes me most about having read the Gospels through the lens of Jesus’ emotions is that they point to his having engaged with the world fully and richly, responding to it with great closeness at certain times and with forceful rejection and condemnation at others. His feelings in some cases grew out of his own self (bodily and psychologically) while in others they came about as reactions to events unfolding around him. Instead of an aloof, otherworldly apparition come to deliver a message, Jesus clearly had preferences, needs and dislikes, making himself one with us and therefore showing the way to a life of fulfilment through compassion and self-giving.

¹ Two principles guided my choices: first, to look for instances where it is the Evangelists who directly describe Jesus’ feelings (i.e., I left out verses where his actions are described and where these could be used to infer his feelings), and second to try and be exhaustive.

Gaudete et Exsultate: God’s face reflected in so many other faces

6590 words, 33 min read

At Roman noon today, Pope Francis published his latest apostolic exhortation, entitled Gaudete et Exsultate (“Rejoice and be glad”) in which he sets out “to repropose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges and opportunities. For the Lord has chosen each one of us “to be holy and blameless before him in love” (Eph 1:4).” (§2). This 126K word document will take some time to receive and internalize well and I would, for now, just like to share with you my favorite passages from it. The holiness Pope Francis presents here is one that has its eyes wide open to the world and to God present in it. It is a holiness that asks for everything and that gives more in return. A holiness that requires sacrifice to the smallest details and that offers fulfilment and endless joy in a community where God dwells among his people.

I like to contemplate the holiness present in the patience of God’s people: in those parents who raise their children with immense love, in those men and women who work hard to support their families, in the sick, in elderly religious who never lose their smile. In their daily perseverance I see the holiness of the Church militant. Very often it is a holiness found in our next-door neighbours, those who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence. We might call them “the middle class of holiness”. (§7)

Holiness is the most attractive face of the Church. But even outside the Catholic Church and in very different contexts, the Holy Spirit raises up “signs of his presence which help Christ’s followers” (Novo Millennio Ineunte). Saint John Paul II reminded us that “the witness to Christ borne even to the shedding of blood has become a common inheritance of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants”. In the moving ecumenical commemoration held in the Colosseum during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, he stated that the martyrs are “a heritage which speaks more powerfully than all the causes of division”. (§9)

We should not grow discouraged before examples of holiness that appear unattainable. There are some testimonies that may prove helpful and inspiring, but that we are not meant to copy, for that could even lead us astray from the one specific path that the Lord has in mind for us. The important thing is that each believer discern his or her own path, that they bring out the very best of themselves, the most personal gifts that God has placed in their hearts (cf. 1 Cor 12:7), rather than hopelessly trying to imitate something not meant for them. We are all called to be witnesses, but there are many actual ways of bearing witness. (§11)

To be holy does not require being a bishop, a priest or a religious. We are frequently tempted to think that holiness is only for those who can withdraw from ordinary affairs to spend much time in prayer. That is not the case. We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves. Are you called to the consecrated life? Be holy by living out your commitment with joy. Are you married? Be holy by loving and caring for your husband or wife, as Christ does for the Church. Do you work for a living? Be holy by labouring with integrity and skill in the service of your brothers and sisters. Are you a parent or grandparent? Be holy by patiently teaching the little ones how to follow Jesus. Are you in a position of authority? Be holy by working for the common good and renouncing personal gain. (§14)

When you feel the temptation to dwell on your own weakness, raise your eyes to Christ crucified and say: “Lord, I am a poor sinner, but you can work the miracle of making me a little bit better”. In the Church, holy yet made up of sinners, you will find everything you need to grow towards holiness. The Lord has bestowed on the Church the gifts of scripture, the sacraments, holy places, living communities, the witness of the saints and a multifaceted beauty that proceeds from God’s love, “like a bride bedecked with jewels” (Is 61:10). (§15)

This holiness to which the Lord calls you will grow through small gestures. Here is an example: a woman goes shopping, she meets a neighbour and they begin to speak, and the gossip starts. But she says in her heart: “No, I will not speak badly of anyone”. This is a step forward in holiness. Later, at home, one of her children wants to talk to her about his hopes and dreams, and even though she is tired, she sits down and listens with patience and love. That is another sacrifice that brings holiness. Later she experiences some anxiety, but recalling the love of the Virgin Mary, she takes her rosary and prays with faith. Yet another path of holiness. Later still, she goes out onto the street, encounters a poor person and stops to say a kind word to him. One more step. (§16)

At times, life presents great challenges. Through them, the Lord calls us anew to a conversion that can make his grace more evident in our lives, “in order that we may share his holiness” (Heb 12:10). At other times, we need only find a more perfect way of doing what we are already doing: “There are inspirations that tend solely to perfect in an extraordinary way the ordinary things we do in life”. When Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyên van Thuân was imprisoned, he refused to waste time waiting for the day he would be set free. Instead, he chose “to live the present moment, filling it to the brim with love”. He decided: “I will seize the occasions that present themselves every day; I will accomplish ordinary actions in an extraordinary way”. (§17)

At its core, holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his self-sacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries, as Saint Ignatius of Loyola pointed out, leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes. (§20)

The Father’s plan is Christ, and ourselves in him. In the end, it is Christ who loves in us, for “holiness is nothing other than charity lived to the full”. As a result, “the measure of our holiness stems from the stature that Christ achieves in us, to the extent that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we model our whole life on his”. Every saint is a message which the Holy Spirit takes from the riches of Jesus Christ and gives to his people. (§21)

It is not healthy to love silence while fleeing interaction with others, to want peace and quiet while avoiding activity, to seek prayer while disdaining service. Everything can be accepted and integrated into our life in this world, and become a part of our path to holiness. We are called to be contemplatives even in the midst of action, and to grow in holiness by responsibly and generously carrying out our proper mission. (§26)

Needless to say, anything done out of anxiety, pride or the need to impress others will not lead to holiness. We are challenged to show our commitment in such a way that everything we do has evangelical meaning and identifies us all the more with Jesus Christ. We often speak, for example, of the spirituality of the catechist, the spirituality of the diocesan priesthood, the spirituality of work. For the same reason, in Evangelii Gaudium I concluded by speaking of a spirituality of mission, in Laudato Si’ of an ecological spirituality, and in Amoris Laetitia of a spirituality of family life. (§28)

This does not mean ignoring the need for moments of quiet, solitude and silence before God. Quite the contrary. The presence of constantly new gadgets, the excitement of travel and an endless array of consumer goods at times leave no room for God’s voice to be heard. We are overwhelmed by words, by superficial pleasures and by an increasing din, filled not by joy but rather by the discontent of those whose lives have lost meaning. How can we fail to realize the need to stop this rat race and to recover the personal space needed to carry on a heartfelt dialogue with God? Finding that space may prove painful but it is always fruitful. (§29)

We need a spirit of holiness capable of filling both our solitude and our service, our personal life and our evangelizing efforts, so that every moment can be an expression of self-sacrificing love in the Lord’s eyes. In this way, every minute of our lives can be a step along the path to growth in holiness. (§31)

Do not be afraid of holiness. It will take away none of your energy, vitality or joy. On the contrary, you will become what the Father had in mind when he created you, and you will be faithful to your deepest self. To depend on God sets us free from every form of enslavement and leads us to recognize our great dignity. We see this in Saint Josephine Bakhita: “Abducted and sold into slavery at the tender age of seven, she suffered much at the hands of cruel masters. But she came to understand the profound truth that God, and not man, is the true Master of every human being, of every human life. This experience became a source of great wisdom for this humble daughter of Africa”. (§32)

When somebody has an answer for every question, it is a sign that they are not on the right road. They may well be false prophets, who use religion for their own purposes, to promote their own psychological or intellectual theories. God infinitely transcends us; he is full of surprises. We are not the ones to determine when and how we will encounter him; the exact times and places of that encounter are not up to us. Someone who wants everything to be clear and sure presumes to control God’s transcendence. (§42)

It is not easy to grasp the truth that we have received from the Lord. And it is even more difficult to express it. So we cannot claim that our way of understanding this truth authorizes us to exercise a strict supervision over others’ lives. Here I would note that in the Church there legitimately coexist different ways of interpreting many aspects of doctrine and Christian life; in their variety, they “help to express more clearly the immense riches of God’s word”. It is true that “for those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance, this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion”. (§43)

Only on the basis of God’s gift, freely accepted and humbly received, can we cooperate by our own efforts in our progressive transformation. We must first belong to God, offering ourselves to him who was there first, and entrusting to him our abilities, our efforts, our struggle against evil and our creativity, so that his free gift may grow and develop within us: “I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). For that matter, the Church has always taught that charity alone makes growth in the life of grace possible, for “if I do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). (§56)

Still, some Christians insist on taking another path, that of justification by their own efforts, the worship of the human will and their own abilities. The result is a self-centred and elitist complacency, bereft of true love. This finds expression in a variety of apparently unconnected ways of thinking and acting: an obsession with the law, an absorption with social and political advantages, a punctilious concern for the Church’s liturgy, doctrine and prestige, a vanity about the ability to manage practical matters, and an excessive concern with programmes of self-help and personal fulfilment. Some Christians spend their time and energy on these things, rather than letting themselves be led by the Spirit in the way of love, rather than being passionate about communicating the beauty and the joy of the Gospel and seeking out the lost among the immense crowds that thirst for Christ. (§57)

[A]mid the thicket of precepts and prescriptions, Jesus clears a way to seeing two faces, that of the Father and that of our brother. He does not give us two more formulas or two more commands. He gives us two faces, or better yet, one alone: the face of God reflected in so many other faces. For in every one of our brothers and sisters, especially the least, the most vulnerable, the defenceless and those in need, God’s very image is found. Indeed, with the scraps of this frail humanity, the Lord will shape his final work of art. For “what endures, what has value in life, what riches do not disappear? Surely these two: the Lord and our neighbour. These two riches do not disappear!” (§61)

The Beatitudes are like a Christian’s identity card. So if anyone asks: “What must one do to be a good Christian?”, the answer is clear. We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, we find a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives. (§63)

The word “happy” or “blessed” thus becomes a synonym for “holy”. It expresses the fact that those faithful to God and his word, by their self-giving, gain true happiness. (§64)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”

Wealth ensures nothing. Indeed, once we think we are rich, we can become so self-satisfied that we leave no room for God’s word, for the love of our brothers and sisters, or for the enjoyment of the most important things in life. In this way, we miss out on the greatest treasure of all. That is why Jesus calls blessed those who are poor in spirit, those who have a poor heart, for there the Lord can enter with his perennial newness. (§68)

This spiritual poverty is closely linked to what Saint Ignatius of Loyola calls “holy indifference”, which brings us to a radiant interior freedom: “We need to train ourselves to be indifferent in our attitude to all created things, in all that is permitted to our free will and not forbidden; so that on our part, we do not set our hearts on good health rather than bad, riches rather than poverty, honour rather than dishonour, a long life rather than a short one, and so in all the rest”. (§69)

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth”

These are strong words in a world that from the beginning has been a place of conflict, disputes and enmity on all sides, where we constantly pigeonhole others on the basis of their ideas, their customs and even their way of speaking or dressing. Ultimately, it is the reign of pride and vanity, where each person thinks he or she has the right to dominate others. Nonetheless, impossible as it may seem, Jesus proposes a different way of doing things: the way of meekness. This is what we see him doing with his disciples. It is what we contemplate on his entrance to Jerusalem: “Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey” (Mt 21:5; Zech 9:9). (§71)

Someone might object: “If I am that meek, they will think that I am an idiot, a fool or a weakling”. At times they may, but so be it. It is always better to be meek, for then our deepest desires will be fulfilled. The meek “shall inherit the earth”, for they will see God’s promises accomplished in their lives. In every situation, the meek put their hope in the Lord, and those who hope for him shall possess the land… and enjoy the fullness of peace (cf. Ps 37:9.11). For his part, the Lord trusts in them: “This is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word” (Is 66:2). (§74)

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”

The world tells us exactly the opposite: entertainment, pleasure, diversion and escape make for the good life. The worldly person ignores problems of sickness or sorrow in the family or all around him; he averts his gaze. The world has no desire to mourn; it would rather disregard painful situations, cover them up or hide them. Much energy is expended on fleeing from situations of suffering in the belief that reality can be concealed. But the cross can never be absent. (§75)

A person who sees things as they truly are and sympathizes with pain and sorrow is capable of touching life’s depths and finding authentic happiness. He or she is consoled, not by the world but by Jesus. Such persons are unafraid to share in the suffering of others; they do not flee from painful situations. They discover the meaning of life by coming to the aid of those who suffer, understanding their anguish and bringing relief. They sense that the other is flesh of our flesh, and are not afraid to draw near, even to touch their wounds. They feel compassion for others in such a way that all distance vanishes. In this way they can embrace Saint Paul’s exhortation: “Weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15). (§76)

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled”

Hunger and thirst are intense experiences, since they involve basic needs and our instinct for survival. There are those who desire justice and yearn for righteousness with similar intensity. Jesus says that they will be satisfied, for sooner or later justice will come. We can cooperate to make that possible, even if we may not always see the fruit of our efforts. (§77)

True justice comes about in people’s lives when they themselves are just in their decisions; it is expressed in their pursuit of justice for the poor and the weak. While it is true that the word “justice” can be a synonym for faithfulness to God’s will in every aspect of our life, if we give the word too general a meaning, we forget that it is shown especially in justice towards those who are most vulnerable: “Seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Is 1:17). (§79)

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy”

Jesus does not say, “Blessed are those who plot revenge”. He calls “blessed” those who forgive and do so “seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22). We need to think of ourselves as an army of the forgiven. All of us have been looked upon with divine compassion. If we approach the Lord with sincerity and listen carefully, there may well be times when we hear his reproach: “Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” (Mt 18:33). (§82)

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”

A heart that loves God and neighbour (cf. Mt 22:36-40), genuinely and not merely in words, is a pure heart; it can see God. In his hymn to charity, Saint Paul says that “now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Cor 13:12), but to the extent that truth and love prevail, we will then be able to see “face to face”. Jesus promises that those who are pure in heart “will see God”. (§86)

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”

It is not easy to “make” this evangelical peace, which excludes no one but embraces even those who are a bit odd, troublesome or difficult, demanding, different, beaten down by life or simply uninterested. It is hard work; it calls for great openness of mind and heart, since it is not about creating “a consensus on paper or a transient peace for a contented minority”, or a project “by a few for the few”. Nor can it attempt to ignore or disregard conflict; instead, it must “face conflict head on, resolve it and make it a link in the chain of a new process”. We need to be artisans of peace, for building peace is a craft that demands serenity, creativity, sensitivity and skill. (§89)

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”

Jesus himself warns us that the path he proposes goes against the flow, even making us challenge society by the way we live and, as a result, becoming a nuisance. He reminds us how many people have been, and still are, persecuted simply because they struggle for justice, because they take seriously their commitment to God and to others. Unless we wish to sink into an obscure mediocrity, let us not long for an easy life, for “whoever would save his life will lose it” (Mt 16:25). (§90)

Here we are speaking about inevitable persecution, not the kind of persecution we might bring upon ourselves by our mistreatment of others. The saints are not odd and aloof, unbearable because of their vanity, negativity and bitterness. The Apostles of Christ were not like that. The Book of Acts states repeatedly that they enjoyed favour “with all the people” (2:47; cf. 4:21.33; 5:13), even as some authorities harassed and persecuted them (cf. 4:1-3, 5:17-18). (§93)

In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (vv. 31-46), Jesus expands on the Beatitude that calls the merciful blessed. If we seek the holiness pleasing to God’s eyes, this text offers us one clear criterion on which we will be judged. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (vv. 35-36). (§95)

Given these uncompromising demands of Jesus, it is my duty to ask Christians to acknowledge and accept them in a spirit of genuine openness, sine glossa. In other words, without any “ifs or buts” that could lessen their force. Our Lord made it very clear that holiness cannot be understood or lived apart from these demands, for mercy is “the beating heart of the Gospel”. (§97)

If I encounter a person sleeping outdoors on a cold night, I can view him or her as an annoyance, an idler, an obstacle in my path, a troubling sight, a problem for politicians to sort out, or even a piece of refuse cluttering a public space. Or I can respond with faith and charity, and see in this person a human being with a dignity identical to my own, a creature infinitely loved by the Father, an image of God, a brother or sister redeemed by Jesus Christ. That is what it is to be a Christian! Can holiness somehow be understood apart from this lively recognition of the dignity of each human being? (§98)

[An] ideological error is found in those who find suspect the social engagement of others, seeing it as superficial, worldly, secular, materialist, communist or populist. Or they relativize it, as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend. Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection. We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel, spend with abandon and live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty. (§101)

We often hear it said that, with respect to relativism and the flaws of our present world, the situation of migrants, for example, is a lesser issue. Some Catholics consider it a secondary issue compared to the “grave” bioethical questions. That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable, but not a Christian, for whom the only proper attitude is to stand in the shoes of those brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives to offer a future to their children. Can we not realize that this is exactly what Jesus demands of us, when he tells us that in welcoming the stranger we welcome him (cf. Mt 25:35)? (§102)

The saints do not waste energy complaining about the failings of others; they can hold their tongue before the faults of their brothers and sisters, and avoid the verbal violence that demeans and mistreats others. Saints hesitate to treat others harshly; they consider others better than themselves (cf. Phil 2:3). (§116)

It is not good when we look down on others like heartless judges, lording it over them and always trying to teach them lessons. That is itself a subtle form of violence. Saint John of the Cross proposed a different path: “Always prefer to be taught by all, rather than to desire teaching even the least of all”. And he added advice on how to keep the devil at bay: “Rejoice in the good of others as if it were your own, and desire that they be given precedence over you in all things; this you should do wholeheartedly. You will thereby overcome evil with good, banish the devil, and possess a happy heart. Try to practise this all the more with those who least attract you. Realize that if you do not train yourself in this way, you will not attain real charity or make any progress in it”. (§117)

If you are unable to suffer and offer up a few humiliations, you are not humble and you are not on the path to holiness. The holiness that God bestows on his Church comes through the humiliation of his Son. He is the way. Humiliation makes you resemble Jesus; it is an unavoidable aspect of the imitation of Christ. For “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Pet 2:21). In turn, he reveals the humility of the Father, who condescends to journey with his people, enduring their infidelities and complaints (cf. Ex 34:6-9; Wis 11:23-12:2; Lk 6:36). (§118)

Here I am not speaking only about stark situations of martyrdom, but about the daily humiliations of those who keep silent to save their families, who prefer to praise others rather than boast about themselves, or who choose the less welcome tasks, at times even choosing to bear an injustice so as to offer it to the Lord. “If when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval” (1 Pet 2:20). This does not mean walking around with eyes lowered, not saying a word and fleeing the company of others. At times, precisely because someone is free of selfishness, he or she can dare to disagree gently, to demand justice or to defend the weak before the powerful, even if it may harm his or her reputation. (§119)

Far from being timid, morose, acerbic or melancholy, or putting on a dreary face, the saints are joyful and full of good humour. Though completely realistic, they radiate a positive and hopeful spirit. The Christian life is “joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17), for “the necessary result of the love of charity is joy; since every lover rejoices at being united to the beloved… the effect of charity is joy”. Having received the beautiful gift of God’s word, we embrace it “in much affliction, with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess 1:6). If we allow the Lord to draw us out of our shell and change our lives, then we can do as Saint Paul tells us: “Rejoice in the Lord always; I say it again, rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). (§122)

Holiness is also parrhesía: it is boldness, an impulse to evangelize and to leave a mark in this world. To allow us to do this, Jesus himself comes and tells us once more, serenely yet firmly: “Do not be afraid” (Mk 6:50). “I am with you always, to the end of the world” (Mt 28:20). These words enable us to go forth and serve with the same courage that the Holy Spirit stirred up in the Apostles, impelling them to proclaim Jesus Christ. Boldness, enthusiasm, the freedom to speak out, apostolic fervour, all these are included in the word parrhesía. The Bible also uses this word to describe the freedom of a life open to God and to others (cf. Acts 4:29, 9:28, 28:31; 2 Cor 3:12; Eph 3:12; Heb 3:6, 10:19). (§129)

Look at Jesus. His deep compassion reached out to others. It did not make him hesitant, timid or self-conscious, as often happens with us. Quite the opposite. His compassion made him go out actively to preach and to send others on a mission of healing and liberation. Let us acknowledge our weakness, but allow Jesus to lay hold of it and send us too on mission. We are weak, yet we hold a treasure that can enlarge us and make those who receive it better and happier. Boldness and apostolic courage are an essential part of mission. (§131)

God is eternal newness. He impels us constantly to set out anew, to pass beyond what is familiar, to the fringes and beyond. He takes us to where humanity is most wounded, where men and women, beneath the appearance of a shallow conformity, continue to seek an answer to the question of life’s meaning. God is not afraid! He is fearless! He is always greater than our plans and schemes. Unafraid of the fringes, he himself became a fringe (cf. Phil 2:6-8; Jn 1:14). So if we dare to go to the fringes, we will find him there; indeed, he is already there. Jesus is already there, in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, in their wounded flesh, in their troubles and in their profound desolation. He is already there. (§135)

Let us not forget that Jesus asked his disciples to pay attention to details. The little detail that wine was running out at a party. The little detail that one sheep was missing. The little detail of noticing the widow who offered her two small coins. The little detail of having spare oil for the lamps, should the bridegroom delay. The little detail of asking the disciples how many loaves of bread they had. The little detail of having a fire burning and a fish cooking as he waited for the disciples at daybreak. (§144)

A community that cherishes the little details of love, whose members care for one another and create an open and evangelizing environment, is a place where the risen Lord is present, sanctifying it in accordance with the Father’s plan. There are times when, by a gift of the Lord’s love, we are granted, amid these little details, consoling experiences of God. (§145)

Finally, though it may seem obvious, we should remember that holiness consists in a habitual openness to the transcendent, expressed in prayer and adoration. The saints are distinguished by a spirit of prayer and a need for communion with God. They find an exclusive concern with this world to be narrow and stifling, and, amid their own concerns and commitments, they long for God, losing themselves in praise and contemplation of the Lord. I do not believe in holiness without prayer, even though that prayer need not be lengthy or involve intense emotions. (§147)

So let me ask you: Are there moments when you place yourself quietly in the Lord’s presence, when you calmly spend time with him, when you bask in his gaze? Do you let his fire inflame your heart? Unless you let him warm you more and more with his love and tenderness, you will not catch fire. How will you then be able to set the hearts of others on fire by your words and witness? If, gazing on the face of Christ, you feel unable to let yourself be healed and transformed, then enter into the Lord’s heart, into his wounds, for that is the abode of divine mercy. (§151)

I ask that we never regard prayerful silence as a form of escape and rejection of the world around us. (§152)

Meeting Jesus in the Scriptures leads us to the Eucharist, where the written word attains its greatest efficacy, for there the living Word is truly present. In the Eucharist, the one true God receives the greatest worship the world can give him, for it is Christ himself who is offered. When we receive him in Holy Communion, we renew our covenant with him and allow him to carry out ever more fully his work of transforming our lives. (§157)

We are not dealing merely with a battle against the world and a worldly mentality that would deceive us and leave us dull and mediocre, lacking in enthusiasm and joy. Nor can this battle be reduced to the struggle against our human weaknesses and proclivities (be they laziness, lust, envy, jealousy or any others). It is also a constant struggle against the devil, the prince of evil. Jesus himself celebrates our victories. He rejoiced when his disciples made progress in preaching the Gospel and overcoming the opposition of the evil one: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Lk 10:18). (§159)

[W]e should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable. The devil does not need to possess us. He poisons us with the venom of hatred, desolation, envy and vice. When we let down our guard, he takes advantage of it to destroy our lives, our families and our communities. “Like a roaring lion, he prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8). (§161)

God’s word invites us clearly to “stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph 6:11) and to “quench all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Eph 6:16). These expressions are not melodramatic, precisely because our path towards holiness is a constant battle. Those who do not realize this will be prey to failure or mediocrity. For this spiritual combat, we can count on the powerful weapons that the Lord has given us: faith-filled prayer, meditation on the word of God, the celebration of Mass, Eucharistic adoration, sacramental Reconciliation, works of charity, community life, missionary outreach. If we become careless, the false promises of evil will easily seduce us. (§162)

Discernment is necessary not only at extraordinary times, when we need to resolve grave problems and make crucial decisions. It is a means of spiritual combat for helping us to follow the Lord more faithfully. We need it at all times, to help us recognize God’s timetable, lest we fail to heed the promptings of his grace and disregard his invitation to grow. Often discernment is exercised in small and apparently irrelevant things, since greatness of spirit is manifested in simple everyday realities. It involves striving untrammelled for all that is great, better and more beautiful, while at the same time being concerned for the little things, for each day’s responsibilities and commitments. For this reason, I ask all Christians not to omit, in dialogue with the Lord, a sincere daily “examination of conscience”. Discernment also enables us to recognize the concrete means that the Lord provides in his mysterious and loving plan, to make us move beyond mere good intentions. (§169)

Only if we are prepared to listen, do we have the freedom to set aside our own partial or insufficient ideas, our usual habits and ways of seeing things. In this way, we become truly open to accepting a call that can shatter our security, but lead us to a better life. It is not enough that everything be calm and peaceful. God may be offering us something more, but in our comfortable inadvertence, we do not recognize it. (§172)

Naturally, this attitude of listening entails obedience to the Gospel as the ultimate standard, but also to the Magisterium that guards it, as we seek to find in the treasury of the Church whatever is most fruitful for the “today” of salvation. It is not a matter of applying rules or repeating what was done in the past, since the same solutions are not valid in all circumstances and what was useful in one context may not prove so in another. The discernment of spirits liberates us from rigidity, which has no place before the perennial “today” of the risen Lord. The Spirit alone can penetrate what is obscure and hidden in every situation, and grasp its every nuance, so that the newness of the Gospel can emerge in another light. (§173)

An essential condition for progress in discernment is a growing understanding of God’s patience and his timetable, which are never our own. God does not pour down fire upon those who are unfaithful (cf. Lk 9:54), or allow the zealous to uproot the tares growing among the wheat (cf. Mt 13:29). Generosity too is demanded, for “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Discernment is not about discovering what more we can get out of this life, but about recognizing how we can better accomplish the mission entrusted to us at our baptism. This entails a readiness to make sacrifices, even to sacrificing everything. For happiness is a paradox. We experience it most when we accept the mysterious logic that is not of this world: “This is our logic”, says Saint Bonaventure, pointing to the cross. Once we enter into this dynamic, we will not let our consciences be numbed and we will open ourselves generously to discernment. (§174)

God asks everything of us, yet he also gives everything to us. He does not want to enter our lives to cripple or diminish them, but to bring them to fulfilment. Discernment, then, is not a solipsistic self-analysis or a form of egotistical introspection, but an authentic process of leaving ourselves behind in order to approach the mystery of God, who helps us to carry out the mission to which he has called us, for the good of our brothers and sisters. (§175)

I’m with Fr. Martin: respect, compassion, and sensitivity for LGBTs

2413 words, 12 min read

Jesus’ last will and testament, which he passed on to the apostles at the Last Supper, contains the following exhortation: “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). Here, Jesus explains in the same verse that “one” means to relate to each other “as you, Father, are in me and I in you.” And since “all” means “all,” it falls to every Christian to strive towards building relationships with everyone like those among the persons of the Trinity – i.e., relationships of loving self-noughting and self-othering. This means that there is no more us versus them, only an all-encompassing us.

Now, this “us” undoubtedly also includes those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, and indeed anyone else too, regardless of their sexual orientation. It is therefore essential that we, Christians make everyone, regardless of their sexuality, feel not only welcome but loved and since this has often not been the case, there is a need for a deliberate effort to reach out, which has also been apparent in many things Pope Francis, and many other representatives of the Catholic Church, have said and done recently.

In this context, an important contribution has recently been made by Fr. James Martin SJ, who has for many years ministered to the LGBT community and who has now written an excellent book on how to bring it and the institutional Church closer together. The book is entitled “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity” and contains four parts. The first two are built on the metaphor of a bridge between the institutional Church and the LGBT community, where Fr. Martin’s advice for traversing it in both directions is based on what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches with regard to LGBT people, which is to treat them with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity” (§2358). The third part comprises a series of scriptural passages that Fr. Martin found helpful in his ministry, each with an introduction and followed by questions suitable for reflection. Finally, the book concludes with a beautiful prayer – “A prayer for when I feel rejected”.

When I first read this book, I found it to be a pure expression of the Gospel desire to share the Good News that Jesus brought to humanity – an invitation to mutual love, to dialogue and to closeness. I also thought that it was highly non-controversial and entirely consistent with the Catholic Church’s teaching and I thought no more about it. During the course of recent days, things have changed though and I have seen a savage and persistent campaign of hate directed at Fr. Martin, who is now being accused of heresy and whose name is being dragged through the mud of social media echo chambers. I am no censor or even theologian, but as a member of the Church’s laity, I have a right and duty to support and defend those who uphold the Gospel, and Fr. Martin certainly does that in spades.

Instead of engaging in a futile rebuttal of his critics, I would just like to share with you some of my favorite passages mostly from the first part of “Building a Bridge,” since it is there that I have most felt spoken to myself.

In the opening pages of the book Fr. Martin sets out the rationale for writing it, which is about breaking down us v. them barriers:

“[T]he work of the Gospel cannot be accomplished if one part of the church is essentially separated from any other part. […] In these times, the church should be a sign of unity. Frankly, in all times. Yet many people see the church as contributing to division, as some Christian leaders and their congregations mark off boundaries of “us” and “them.” But the church works best when it embodies the virtues of respect, compassion, and sensitivity.”

Next, he looks at each of respect, compasion and sensitivity in turn, as they apply to the institutional Church’s relationship with LGBT Catholics and the LGBT community in general. Thinking about respect first, Fr. Martin highlights three consequences of it, the first of which is recognition:

“[R]ecognizing that the LGBT community exists, and extending to it the same recognition that any community desires and deserves because of its presence. […] Jesus recognizes all people, even those who seem invisible in the greater community.”

Throughout the book, Fr. Martin also presents and engages with potential reservations about his proposals. For example, in the case of recognition being misconstrued as blanket approval, he writes:

“Some Catholics have objected to this approach, saying that any outreach implies a tacit agreement with everything that anyone in the LGBT community says or does. This seems an unfair objection, because it is raised with virtually no other group. If a diocese sponsors, for example, an outreach group for Catholic business leaders, it does not mean that the diocese agrees with every value of corporate America.”

The second aspect of respect then is “calling a group what it asks to be called.”:

“[P]eople have a right to name themselves. Using those names is part of respect. And if Pope Francis and several of his cardinals and bishops can use the word gay, as they have done several times during his papacy, so can the rest of the church.”

The third side of respect is to recognise that LGBT Catholics bring many gifts to the Church:

“Respect also means acknowledging that LGBT Catholics bring unique gifts to the church—both as individuals and as a community. […] Many, if not most, LGBT people have endured, from an early age, misunderstanding, prejudice, hatred, persecution, and even violence, and therefore often feel a natural compassion toward the marginalized. Compassion is a gift. They have often been made to feel unwelcome in their parishes and in their church, but they persevere because of their vigorous faith. Perseverance is a gift. They are often forgiving of clergy and other church employees who treat them like damaged goods. Forgiveness is a gift. Compassion, perseverance, and forgiveness are all gifts.”

In summary, Fr. Martin argues that respect translates to participation in God’s love:

“Seeing, naming, and honoring all these gifts are components of respecting our LGBT brothers and sisters and siblings. So also is accepting them as beloved children of God and letting them know that they are beloved children of God. The church has a special call to proclaim God’s love for a people who are often made to feel, whether by their families, neighbors, or religious leaders, as though they were damaged goods, unworthy of ministry, and even subhuman. The church is invited to both proclaim and demonstrate that LGBT people are beloved children of God.”

Turning to compassion, the model is Jesus’ incarnation itself and the need for listening to and living alongside others:

“The word compassion (from the Greek paschō, “to suffer”) means “to experience with, to suffer with.” So what would it mean for the institutional church not only to respect LGBT Catholics, but to be with them, to experience life with them, and even to suffer with them? […]

The first and most essential requirement is listening. It is impossible to experience a person’s life, or to be compassionate, if you do not listen to the person or if you do not ask questions. […]

We need not look far for a model for this. God did this for all of us—in Jesus. The opening lines of the Gospel of John tell us, “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (1: 14). The original Greek is more vivid: “The Word became flesh and pitched its tent among us” (eskēnōsen en hēmin). Isn’t that a beautiful phrase? God entered our world to live among us. This is what Jesus did. He lived alongside us, took our side, even died like us.

We can celebrate and treasure more than simply their gifts. We can celebrate and treasure them. This is a kind of compassion too—to share in the experience of Christian joy that LGBT men and women, young and old, bring to the church.”

Next, sensitivity is presented as a call to closeness, along Pope Francis’ lines of encountering and accompanying and in imitation of Jesus’ reaching out also to those considered on the margins of the People of Israel, in an outside-in motion:

“Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines sensitivity as “an awareness or understanding of the feelings of other people.” That’s related to Pope Francis’s call for the church to be a church of “encounter” and “accompaniment.” To begin with, it is nearly impossible to know another person’s feelings at a distance. You cannot understand the feelings of a community if you don’t know the community. You can’t be sensitive to the LGBT community if you only issue documents about them, preach about them, or tweet about them, without knowing them.[…]

In this, as in all things, Jesus is our model. When Jesus encountered people on the margins, he saw not categories but individuals. To be clear, I am not saying that the LGBT community should be, or should feel, marginalized. Rather, I am saying that within the church many of them do find themselves marginalized. They are seen as “other.” But for Jesus there was no “other.” Jesus saw beyond categories; he met people where they were and accompanied them. The Gospel of Matthew, for example, tells the story of Jesus meeting a Roman centurion who asked for healing for his servant (8: 5–13). Although the man was not Jewish, Jesus saw a man in need and responded to his need. […]

The movement for Jesus was always from the outside in. His message was always one of inclusion, communicated through speaking to people, healing them, and offering them what biblical scholars call “table fellowship,” that is, dining with them, a sign of welcome and acceptance in first-century Palestine. In fact, Jesus was often criticized for this practice. But Jesus’s movement was about inclusion. He was creating a sense of “us.” For with Jesus, there is no us and them. There is only us.

In this context, Fr. Martin also addresses the potential objection that Jesus also admonished sinners not to sin, arguing that his approach was one of inclusion first and conversion second (a conversion we are all called to and in need of):

“One common objection here is to say, “No, Jesus always told them, first of all, not to sin!” We cannot meet LGBT people because they are sinning, goes the argument, and when we do meet them, the first thing we must say is, “Stop sinning!” But more often than not, this is not Jesus’s way. In the story of the Roman centurion, Jesus doesn’t shout “Pagan!” or scold him for not being Jewish. Instead, he professes amazement at the man’s faith and then heals his servant. Likewise, in the story of Zacchaeus, after spying the tax collector perched in the tree, he doesn’t point to him and shout, “Sinner!” Instead, Jesus says that he will dine at Zacchaeus’s house, a public sign of openness and welcome, before Zacchaeus has said or done anything. Only after Jesus offers him welcome is Zacchaeus moved to conversion, promising to pay back anyone he might have defrauded. For Jesus it is most often community first—meeting, encountering, including—and conversion second. Here I’m talking about the conversion that all of us need, not simply LGBT people (and, incidently, not “conversion therapy”). Pope Francis echoed this approach in an inflight press conference in 2016, on his return to Rome from the countries of Georgia and Azerbaijan. “People must be accompanied, as Jesus accompanied,” he said. “When a person who has this situation comes before Jesus, Jesus will surely not say: ‘Go away because you’re homosexual.’””

At the conclusion of the first half of the book, Fr. Martin spells out a point that forms the bedrock of his approach, which is that:

“[w]e are all on the bridge together. For that bridge is the church. And, ultimately, on the other side of the bridge for each group is welcome, community, and love.”

And, finally, he draws our attention to the sustaining power of the Holy Sprit, to the need of our, universal brotherhood and sisterhood, and to God’s constant accompanying of humanity:

In difficult times you might ask: “What keeps the bridge standing? What keeps it from collapsing onto the sharp rocks? What keeps us from plunging into the dangerous waters below?” The answer is: the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, which is supporting the church, is supporting you, for you are beloved children of God who, by virtue of your baptism, have as much right to be in the church as the pope, your local bishop, and me. Of course, that bridge has some loose stones, big bumps, and deep potholes, because the people in our church are not perfect. We never have been—just ask St. Peter. And we never will be. We are all imperfect people, struggling to do our best in the light of our individual vocations. We are all pilgrims on the way, loved sinners following the call we first heard at our baptism and that we continue to hear every day of our lives. In short, you are not alone. Millions of your Catholic brothers and sisters accompany you, as do your bishops, as we journey imperfectly together on this bridge. More important, we are accompanied by God, the reconciler of all men and women as well as the architect, the builder, and the foundation of that bridge.

To my mind, Fr. Martin has written a beautiful treatise on dialogue, openness and love that could just as well be applied to any other group of people who are and/or feel marginalised by the Church. The text could easily be transposed to refugees or atheists or to other groups and communities, whom parts of the Church may not be as welcoming towards as they should¹ and I highly recommend the book in its entirety.

¹ E.g., see Pope Francis’ words from the press conference during his return from Armenia in June 2016: “I think that the Church not only should apologise … to a gay person whom it offended but it must also apologise to the poor as well, to the women who have been exploited, to children who have been exploited by (being forced to) work. It must apologise for having blessed so many weapons.”

Humor in St. Matthew’s Gospel

Fishers of men

2105 words, 11 min read

The theory of humor is about as much use to humor as ornithology is to birds, to paraphrase Richard Feynman. Instead of setting out a preamble that contrasts Bergson’s attributing the comic to inflexibility with Kant’s focus on strained expectations being transformed into nothing, or with Freud’s view that it is a mechanism for psychological release, or reflecting on the importance of the non sequitur and the absurd, I will just say that what is labelled as humorous in the following is simply what made me laugh, chuckle or smile.

I am certainly not the first (and hopefully not the last either) to find comedy in Scripture, so there is no claim to novelty here. Instead, the following follows from a desire to share what I found when reading St. Matthew’s Gospel, back to back, with the aim of looking for humor in it.¹ As a final preambulatory point, and one that ought to be redundant for recidivist readers of this blog, I believe humor to be a profoundly positive and deeply relationship-building trait, as a result of which its roots and its pinnacle are in God and their absence from Scripture would be a joke.

Even though it might not be obvious at first, St. Matthew’s Gospel opens with what to my mind is a very funny bit – the genealogy of Jesus (1:1-16). On the face of it, this is a formal piece, designed to legitimize Jesus’ lineage and rootedness in the people of Israel, since it presents a sequence of forty pillars of the community from Abraham, father of God’s chosen people, to St. Joseph, Jesus’ own earthly father. So far so serious, but what gives this résumé a nice, humorous twist is the mention of four women – St. Joseph’s great-great-… grandmothers:

Tamar, who was mistaken for a prostitute by Jesus’ ancestor, Judah, who subsequently solicits her services and whose immorality is then publicly unmasked by her.
Rahab, who was actually a prostitute.
Ruth, who was a foreigner, a Moabite, member of a tribe with a tempestuous relationship with the Israelites, eventually destroyed by them.
Bathsheba, who was a real looker and whose first husband, Uriah, was sent to his death by king David after he saw her naked, so that he could take her for himself.

St. Matthew could just have presented us with a dry list of the great and the good of Israel’s glorious history. Instead, he very much spices things up and I wonder whether his contemporaries laughed, or at least sniggered at the ladies he chose to parade alongside the gents who otherwise might have projected too much propriety.

Matthew also seems to have a nice, dry sense of humor, when, in Chapter 4 he tells us that Jesus “fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry.” (4:2) A bit like the Black Knight telling King Arthur “It’s just a flesh wound,” after having both arms cut off in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

And it is not only Matthew, who has fun here. Jesus too played games when talking to the disciples and it seems like Matthew was only too happy to record them. In the same, fourth chapter we get this gem:

He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. (4:19-20)

Really? This guy shows up out of nowhere, tells a bunch of fishermen that he’ll make them “fishers of men” and they all jump up and ask where to sign up. What seems much more likely to me is that these guys would have followed Jesus no matter what he said, so he had some fun with them and delivered a line of beautiful absurd humor. “My hovercraft is full of eels.” might have been too much (although it is appropriately fishing-themed), so he went with “I will make you fishers of men.” I can imagine Jesus reminiscing with Peter about it after the resurrection and the two having a great laugh …

The absurd is also well represented in the various exaggerations that Jesus uses, such as his invitation to schizophrenia when almsgiving:

“But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret.” (6:3-4)

To typographical hair-splitting:

“Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” (5:18)

Or to wanton exaggeration in response to reasonable requests (“No, I won’t just count to infinity once, I’ll do it twice!” as Chuck Norris would add):

“If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.” (5:40-41)

Jesus’s parables, as recounted by Matthew, are also a good source of humor, like the following one about light:

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house.” (5:14-15)

I can’t help but be reminded of the Sufi story of Mulla Nasreddin looking for his ring:

“Mulla had lost his ring in the living room. He searched for it for a while, but since he could not find it, he went out into the yard and began to look there. His wife, who saw what he was doing, asked: “Mulla, you lost your ring in the room, why are you looking for it in the yard?”

Mulla stroked his beard and said: “The room is too dark and I can’t see very well. I came out to the courtyard to look for my ring because there is much more light out here.””

The parable about the pearls too must have elicited some laughter, simply by virtue of the sharp simile it used:

“Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.” (7:6)

Neither dogs, who in some cultures today are treated like children, nor pigs, who were the very embodiment of uncleanliness, were epithets that one would have been happy about and their free application to those Jesus was critical of must have made his listeners chuckle.

And, the parable about the camel must also have made them laugh at the ridiculousness of what Jesus was delivering to them, presumably with a straight face:

“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”” (19:24-26)

Eddie Izzard’s “If you’ve never seen an elephant ski, you’ve never been on acid,” comes to mind.

Jesus also happily used flowery language on another occasion:

“But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment,o and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.” (5:22)

And, purely in the interest of clarity, remember that “Raqa” means div, dope, eejit, gobshite, plonker, tool, berk, wally, schmuck, pillock, thicko, numpty, … – now, don’t tell me that didn’t at least make you smile!

Also, let’s not forget that Jesus quite happily self-applied humor and didn’t shy away from formulating what he perceived was a crowd’s attitude towards him using some choice words:

““To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”” (11:16-19)

Now, Jesus’ pulling his listener’s legs didn’t just end with the use of some juicy words. No, our Lord took it to the next level and wove entire stories to illustrate just how absurdly misguided some of his contemporaries were.

He accused them of being impotent:

“I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black.” (5:34-36)

So self-obsessed as to be dangerous:

“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye?” (7:3-4)

So entirely missing the magnitude of what he was presenting to them as to be stupid:

“Another of [his] disciples said to him, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” But Jesus answered him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”” (8:21-22)

And, so completely back-to-front that their behavior, when transposed to a familiar scenario, would be criminal:

“Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread,or a snake when he asks for a fish?” (7:9-10)

Situational comedy wasn’t off the menu either, where the best example is a contribution to the universally-rich category pertaining to mothers-in-law:

“Jesus entered the house of Peter, and saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand, the fever left her, and she rose and waited on him.” (8:14-15)

No, no, he didn’t “just” cure her so she’d rustle up a nice dinner, it was for her own good …

Jesus didn’t shy away from shock tactics either, going more for a nervous than a hearty laugh and intermingled with a sense of fear rather than Freud’s release:

“When he was going back to the city in the morning, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went over to it, but found nothing on it except leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again.” And immediately the fig tree withered. When the disciples saw this, they were amazed and said, “How was it that the fig tree withered immediately?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Amen, I say to you, if you have faith and do not waver, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”” (21:18-22)

If the disciples didn’t think “This guy’s loco,” when Jesus made the fig tree wither for not bearing fruit as Jesus passed by, then I’d eat my hat (if I wore one). I wonder whether nervous “ahaha”s filled the air as the tree – an inanimate object without will or the potential for culpability – was “punished” for not doing it’s job and whether some of the disciples took a couple of cautious steps back, away from their Master.

In what can only be seen as a case of Žižek’s post-hoc predestination proof points, applied to the Dead Parrot sketch, Jesus also delivers the following, perfect line:

“When Jesus arrived at the official’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd who were making a commotion, he said, “Go away! The girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they ridiculed him. When the crowd was put out, he came and took her by the hand, and the little girl arose.” (9:23-25)

¹ Please, note that nothing could be further from my mind than to suggest that my reading of the following passages from the perspective of humor is a claim to their only meaning or interpretation being from that point of view.