22 Sept 2024 – 25th Sunday (Year B)
22 Sept 2024 – 25th Sunday (Year B)
(1) Wisdom 2:12, 17-20
The cruelty of the wicked against the just
The godless say to themselves,
“Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him,
and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
Let us test him with insult and torture,
so that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.”
Responsorial: from Psalm 54
R./: The Lord upholds my life
O God, save me by your name;
by your power, uphold my cause.
O God, hear my prayers;
listen to the words of my mouth. (R.)
For proud men have risen against me,
ruthless men seek my life.
They have no regard for God. (R.)
But I have God for my help.
The Lord upholds my life.
I will sacrifice to you with willing heart
and praise your name for it is good. (R.)
(2) James (3:16-4:3
Jealousy, ambition, and self-seeking contrasted to gentleness, mercy and peace
For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your ravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.
Gospel: Mark 9:30-37
In light of his passion, Jesus calls them to be servants of all
Jesus and his disciples passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Welcoming the Cross
The first reading today sounds like one of the Psalms that are applied to the story of Christ’s passion or like one of the Servant songs in Isaiah. But in reality it comes from one of the latest books in the Bible, composed not in Hebrew but in Greek, in Alexandria (and not contained in the original Hebrew Bible). The situation of the righteous man who is insulted, tortured, or executed is one that is not confined to special religious texts; it is a situation that arises at all times. So the passion and death of Jesus, which he predicts to his disciples for the second time today, is not in itself an extraordinary destiny. Many people suffer worse and longer torture, detained for years in solitary confinement for example, and more painful and degrading deaths. Many are unjustly condemned and never vindicated, unlike Jesus. That Jesus dies as a martyr is again not something absolutely unique. Many people have been prepared to lay down their lives to resist injustice and oppression.What makes the passion of Christ unique is its saving role, expressed a little further on in Mark’s Gospel in words that may well come from the lips of the historical Jesus himself: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). Some people today find the idea of the death of Jesus as a saving sacrifice, an atonement, to be objectionable, and it is caricatured as showing a cruel God torturing his son in order to avenge himself on humankind. We need to put aside such reaction to let the message of salvation claim our hearts and our minds. Jesus’s life befits a Messiah, bringing healing and enlightenment to all. But his death brings salvation to the whole human race. God does not punish but grants healing and salvation to all by allowing his beloved Son to enter so deeply into our suffering, including the suffering people inflict on one another, and including the ultimate failure of death and dishonour. If we embrace the Messiah that God sets before us we will find also that the divine vindication of this Messiah, who is raised up from death, also becomes credible.
The minds of the disciples are completely elsewhere. The question that bothers them in their discussion is which of them will have the highest place in the Kingdom. It even gives rise to a quarrel. It is easy to laugh at them, but the laugh is on us. Called to follow Christ, we worry about tiny advantages and securities as if Christ never was. Jesus appeals to the disciples’ ambition: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Indeed Jesus often appeals to our low level of thinking to inspire us with the ambition of imitating him, who came “not to be served, but to serve” (Mk 10:45).
“Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’” Today a wave of refugees sweeps across Europe. When we welcome these children we welcome the Son of Man, who had “nowhere to lay his head” (Mt 8:20; Lk 9:58), and in welcoming him we are welcoming God back into our desiccated lives. To welcome the suffering multitudes is also to welcome the Cross, and to discover its saving power, first shown in the community of love that it creates.
Like Father, Like Son
St Mark traces the profile of Jesus as a strange and disconcerting Messiah. That is what Jesus was in reality for Peter and, as we know, Mark echoes the catechesis of Peter and his itinerary of discovery of the Messiah. The emphasis throughout is on the newness and originality of Jesus in the context of human history. He is on an entirely different level compared with the traditional teaching of the Scribes and Rabbis, and, even, the Law itself, because of the sublimity of his message. Beside him, all else is second-rate or old-fashioned.
The life of Jesus unfolds as an enigma at the centre of which lie his Passion and death. That he comes from a modest, unpretentious background, that he presents himself without rank or title, without wealth or backing, that he makes no effort to command everybody’s obeisance by means of some great cosmic sign — all of these are already disconcerting enough. All limits are exceeded, however, when he announces a most sinister ending of his life as being on the way. He is going to allow himself to be arrested, insulted and crucified like a common criminal. This enigma can be articulated in two great rhetorical questions that dominate the
Gospel: who is Jesus? (from 1:14 up to Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi, 8:30) and Where is he going? (from 8:22 to 16:8). The answer — that he is the Son of God — runs through the entire Gospel, but somewhat like an under-surface stream that cannot be heard unless one listens attentively, as, for example, when Jesus holds up the little child.
When a pope or bishop takes a little baby from its mother’s arms to raise it above the crowd, he is repeating what was a significant gesture of Jesus. It is not just a demonstration of the kindly nature of a good man; it is a sure sign of the Kingdom and an indication of the kind of Messiah that Jesus was proclaiming himself to be. By this gesture, Jesus expresses the absolute newness that he himself is. In our ordinary world, deference would be given to grown-ups; Jesus gives it to the child. What is it in the child that merits this? Surely, it is that the child is an explosion of joy and life, is full of spontaneity and confidence, is without deviousness and mental reservations, and has the freshness of the dawn or the fountain-head. The child is like Springtime, like the rising sun, the bearer of the future. The child sparkles and makes everyone else sparkle, even the one with the murkiest face.
The Messiah is not to be a prince or a hero in worldly terms. Rather, A child is born to us (Is 9, 5.) His first appearance is in swaddling clothes. The Son of God wished to be born, to live and to die as a child, innocent and unsuspecting, poor and dependent, because the Father’s House is the Kingdom of children. Unless we become as little children, we cannot enter it. What a disconcerting Messiah Jesus is! He never ceases to astonish us. The child, the Messiah — and the Father, what a trinity! Another case of Like Father, like Son.
The price of seeking privilege
One would really expect better of the disciples. Although they had spent so much of their time in the company of Jesus, saw so much of his behaviour and heard so much of his preaching they were still wide of the mark in their understanding of greatness and service. Jesus himself set the pattern of real service: “though he was in the form of God.. he emptied himself, assuming the condition of a slave” (Phil. 2:6f.) In the Gospel of Mark Jesus predicts his passion three times within quite a short period of time. The first is in chapter eight (8:31-33) and takes place in Caesarea Philippi just after Peter’s profession of faith which was our Gospel last Sunday. The second is today’s reading from chapter nine (9:30-32) in Galilee just after the healing of the dumb demoniac. The third comes in chapter ten (10:32-34) on the road to Jerusalem just after the teaching about leaving everything for the sake of the Gospel.
These three predictions of the passion have been compared to the solemn tolling of a bell. Jesus is in the thick of his ministry but is progressing irrevocably towards Jerusalem where all was to be brought to fulfilment. Of these three accounts the one we have today is the simplest and for this reason is regarded as the most primitive. In each case the disciples misunderstand what Jesus is telling them. But they realise that things are slowly coming to a head and they want to be part of it, that’s surely why they were arguing about who was the greatest. The disciples are slow on the uptake but gradually they begin to get the message. This news about a forthcoming passion is hard for them to grasp and that’s why Jesus repeats it on several occasions.
We gather here in this Church week by week, we come here because of our faith and we do so in order to pray and worship God together. We are Christ’s disciples in the world today we are trying our level best to live the way he wants us to live, we try to refrain from struggling for position, we try to live out the prescriptions of the Gospel in our daily lives. We know that we frequently fail, but with the help of God we pick ourselves up and start again in the knowledge that we are moving towards the goal for which we long so much.
If anyone wants to be first he must make himself last of all and servant of all. This teaching is at the heart of the Gospel. It is Jesus’ recipe for discipleship. But be careful and notice what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean a Uriah Heep sort of humility. It doesn’t mean putting yourself down all the time. It doesn’t mean baseness before others. But the actual text says that Jesus wants us to be the servant of all. This sounds like a bit of a tall order but it is actually all of a piece with serving Jesus. Our master gave his life for the whole human race. He valued each and every creature, he served even the lowest of the low. He did so not always in the way they expected but he changed their lives and through his actions enabled them to live in a new and better way. So we should do no less. To put it at its simplest we serve others in the way Jesus serves us.
Some truths are hard to hear
We can all struggle at times to listen to someone if what they say arouses painful emotions in us. They might be trying to tell us something about ourselves that we find difficult to hear. That very human tendency is reflected in the disciples in today’s gospel. Jesus had something very important to say about what was about to happen to him. In the words of the gospel, he was telling them that he would find himself in the hands of others, who would put him to death. This was something that the disciples found very hard to hear and were not able to take on board. As the gospel says, ‘they did not understand what he said and they were afraid to ask him.’ Already in Mark’s gospel Jesus told them what was likely to happen to him. They were no more open to hearing it the second time than they were the first. They did not understand it and they were reluctant to question him because they were afraid they might not be able to live with the answers he would give them. In some ways that is a very human reaction. We often find ourselves not willing to ask questions because we suspect that we would struggle to live with the answers to our questions.
Yet, in our heart of hearts, we often recognize that there are certain realities we have to face, even if they are painful to face. There are certain illusions we may have to let go of, even if we have come to cherish them. In the second part of today’s gospel Jesus worked to disillusion his disciples, in that good sense. He needed to prise them away from the illusions of greatest that they harboured. They seemed to have thought that being part of Jesus’ circle would bring them privilege and status. No sooner had Jesus spoken of himself as someone who would end up as one of the least than the disciples began to argue among themselves as to which of them was the greatest. They wanted power and, it seems, that they wanted power for its own sake. This is the kind of self-centred ambition that James talks about in the second reading when he says, ‘you have an ambition that you cannot satisfy, so you fight to get your way by force.’ In place of that very worldly ambition, Jesus places before his disciples a very different kind of ambition, an ambition that has the quality of what James in that reading refers to as ‘the wisdom that comes down from above.’ This is God’s ambition for their lives and for all our lives. It is the ambition to serve, as Jesus says in the gospel, ‘those who want to be first must make themselves last of all and servant of all.’ This ambition to serve, again in the words of James in that second reading, is something that ‘makes for peace and is kindly and considerate; it is full of compassion and shows itself by doing good.’
Jesus implies that this is to be our primary ambition as his followers. All our other ambitions have to be subservient to that God-inspired ambition. In his teaching of his disciples and of us all, Jesus is careful on his teaching by performing a very significant action. He takes a little child and sets the child in front of his disciples, puts his arms around the child and declares that whoever welcomes one such child, welcomes him and not only him but God the Father who sent him. Jesus was saying by that action that the ambition to serve must give priority to the most vulnerable members of society, symbolized by the child who is completely dependent on adults for his or her well being. Our ambition is to serve those who, for one reason or another, are not in a position to serve themselves. Jesus goes, assuring his disciples and us that in serving the most vulnerable we are in fact serving him. In the presence of the disciples who seemed consumed with an ambition for power for its own sake Jesus identifies himself with the powerless, those who are most dependent on our care. Over against the ambition of the disciples to serve themselves, Jesus puts the ambition to serve him as he comes to us in and through the weakest members of society. In our gospel Jesus is putting before us what his family of disciples, what the church, is really about.
Key Message:
Are we the ‘last in earth and first in heaven’ or ‘first in earth and last in heaven’?
Homily:
The takeaway from the first reading:
The first reading elaborates on the thoughts of a wicked manipulative person. We would have experienced a similar situation in our life. Like our peers in the office degrading our work through their manipulative words, belittling us in front of our colleagues, our cousins gossiping about us, and so on. We also experienced that our deeds done with good intentions are misinterpreted as deeds done with selfish motives. All these are offshoots of jealousy, bitterness, and a feeling of insecurity.
How should a Christian fight in these scenarios?
1. Never spread the wicked deeds or manipulative words of others;
2. Let God fight our battle. When God sees that we do not fight in our own way and wait on God to show the truth, God will do extraordinary things to bring vindication to us. Sit at the feet of our Lord Jesus and submit all the injustice or troubles to Him.
Testimony: “I recognised that I was not feeling joyful even when I went for an outing. Though I was visiting new places, I did not have to work, had no responsibilities, no worries, no stress… but still I was not feeling joyful. As I was trying to root-cause this, it came to me that I have not been praying well in my early morning hours. So then I started to diligently pray, sing and praise Jesus happily, I found joy overflowing from my heart, even as I was kneeling down just in my little room for prayer. Though everything around me was the same, the joy in my heart was new. I felt that even my own little room was more joyous than the tourist attractions when I praise my dear Jesus”
A wise person is the person who has learned to sit at the feet of our Lord Jesus, every morning!!
Few weeks back, I had written a testimony on the faith of a family who were facing issues in their neighbourhood. They were avoided by the people in their neighbourhood. Now their issue is resolved. Recent update in their testimony: “Earlier my neighbours were unhappy with us. My neighbours were badmouthing us. We were believing in Jesus for vindicating us. Then their kids started throwing play items inside our garden. I collected all the play items and kept them near their door. They were moved and started talking with us. Then the family who were living in our house before us visited us and we welcomed them warmly. They were very happy in our house. Now they are planning to introduce us to our neighbourhood friends in the next get together within our community. My Jesus is faithfully fighting my battles!!”
All of us would have experienced the vindication of God when we fight our battles in this way in our own personal lives. God will surely fight for us, but it will be hidden from us for a period of time. Suddenly, one day we will realize that God has granted us victory, but actually, He would have been working for us for a long time.
A good example is in the life of our Mamma Mary. When Mamma Mary conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, She did not convince St. Joseph that she had conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. How terribly Mamma Mary would have suffered when St. Joseph came to know about Her pregnancy. How much pain Her innocent heart would have undergone when St. Joseph was contemplating to separate from her. In all these sufferings, Mamma Mary knew that God would fight her battles.
We all know how God fought the battle for Mamma Mary – God fought it miraculously, by sending Angel Gabriel!!
Why should good people suffer?
In the same example of Mother Mary’s annunciation, we have the message.
God could have easily avoided the suffering of Mother Mary and Saint Joseph, by asking Angel Gabriel to give the annunciation news to Saint Joseph too on the Angel Gabriel’s return trip to Heaven. But God wanted to give us the ‘Holy Family’, an example in everything. So God did not keep them away from sufferings.
1. Mamma Mary did not ask ‘Why this suffering?’, but said ‘Let God’s will be done.’ – This is our best response and invokes God to fight for us.
2. We can now recollect that there are sufferings in the life of Mother Mary and Saint Joseph right from the start. Through the path of pain, they served God.
God has allowed the most Holy Family to undergo unlimited sufferings, to show us an example. When the ‘Holy Family’ got through the path of sufferings, we would also be able to get through them.
The takeaway from the second reading:
The second reading today explains “pure wants/requests”. It says if we ask God because of our jealousy, envy, selfish ambitions, or unwanted desires, we will not obtain anything.
The requirement for “correct asks” is aligning ourselves according to God’s will.
Let us see the Bible references for this:
1. “A prayer request that made God happy”.
King Solomon sang 1000 praises for our Almighty God. It impressed God and then God came in a dream and asked Solomon to tell his wish. Solomon asked for wisdom stating that to take care of God’s numerous people, he would need wisdom. The Bible says that God was impressed with Solomon’s reply. God liked the following factors:
a. King Solomon did not ask for fame or riches for himself.
b. He asked for wisdom to take care of God’s people.
Solomon’s faithfulness reverberated in his prayer request too. This made God happier. So God granted Him more than what He had wished for.
2. “A Prayer request that God does not hear”.
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. Isaiah 59:2
This bible verse says that our sins hide our prayers from God. We should repent for our sins, if our sins are blocking our prayers. Then our prayers will reach God as it is written – “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working”, as in James 5:16.
The takeaway from the Gospel reading:
We will look into two messages from today’s Gospel:
1. God’s preparation for our suffering:
In today’s Gospel and in last week’s Gospel we see that Jesus is preparing His Apostles for His suffering. Jesus calls them separately and explicitly tells them in advance to prepare them. Similarly, the Holy Spirit in His overflowing love, prepares us also for all the major adversities in our lives if they are according to the will of God. We will not be able to recognise it then, but when we look back and analyse, we will be able to understand and recognise proactive preparation from God.
God chooses His own ways;
a. By telling through His little voice.
Testimony: “I heard the little silent voice telling me that it had been some time since I had suffered for God. I too thought that it is true. My life is calm without any battles to fight. That same day my father had a fall and was hospitalised. But I was feeling peaceful inside because I knew that this suffering is in plan and it will help in saving souls”
b. By preparing us with simple struggles so that we will have the faith to carry on bigger tasks/challenges. The life of our Lord Jesus is a great example for this. Jesus faced opposition all through His ministry. He faced hunger, He did not have a place to sleep, He was rejected by the people of His own town. Though He was God, He underwent pain and struggles all through His life. Finally, when the day of carrying the big cross came, He knew what to expect.
2. God’s definition of first and last:
The leadership style of our Lord Jesus Christ was “Servant Leadership”. But according to the world’s definitions, being ‘FIRST’ has more visibility, and is most aspired for. In the heavenly realm, being ‘LAST’ has more visibility and is the most aspired one.
Mother Teresa started her ministry by begging for the poor. Once when she was begging for the poor, a rich person spat in her hands. Immediately, Mother Teresa wiped her hands in her dress, again with open arms, she sweetly said, “What you have given just now, is for me alone. Please give something for the poor”. This changed the heart of the person and he liberally provided for the poor.
Mother Teresa craved to be the servant of all on earth, God granted her ‘Saint’ cadre ‘FIRST’ place both in Heaven and earth.
“But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” Matthew 19:30.
Tips for implementing the Takeaways:
1. Charitable thoughts, words, and deeds:
When we feel like recalling the injuries caused by others, it is great to offer the sacrifice of not meditating upon the past sufferings. It is more challenging than many other action-oriented tasks. Submit your sufferings to Mother Mary. Try focussing on some other activity, as soon as the mind brings up these thoughts. Offer them repentance for the sins of the world along with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Not shouting when you feel like shouting, not gossiping when you feel like gossiping, not pointing fingers at others, keeping silent when things are not going your way, not complaining are all charitable works.
Feeding the poor, especially those around us like domestic helpers, buying Christmas or birthday dresses, and any of our favourite methods of charitable works. Helping a young student study, teach a dull student, listening to someone’s pains are all great works.
Any form of charity Our Father likes and our fervent prayers are easily heard.
2. Personal Aspirations in sync with God’s aspirations:
When our will aligns with God’s will, then we will have a satisfied and fulfilled life. Kneel down and pray to God to show clarity in what He has planned for your life. Then we can work with God and our life will be more fruitful.
3. Living last on earth:
Living last on earth does not mean becoming the poorest person. Our Lord Jesus was the living teacher for His Apostles. He was the loving lead of His twelve-member team. Yet He was humble. He lovingly washed their feet. After His resurrection, He cooked for them. He ensured that they took a rest when they were tired. He allocated tasks for them like arranging for a ‘Passover meal’. Yet was there any place where our Lord Jesus was not humble?
In our daily lives too, we may be the boss of our organisation or a person in a leadership position or we may have incompetent peers. Instead of complaining about what our incompetent team is doing, we should be their help.
We should not think more highly of ourselves than anyone else. That is humility.
When Mother Teresa was asked about her huge achievements, Mother Teresa sweetly replied that if God had chosen anyone else also, they too would have done the same.
First is not becoming first in what we choose to do, but in what God chooses for us to do.
Expanded as a sermon for today: A core message of the Gospel is its invitation not to fret and run about like Martha, but to choose “the better part” with her sister Mary who “sat at the Lord’s feet listening to his words” (Luke 10:39). Today’s Gospel shows a worse estrangement from the peace and joy of faith, as the Disciples let themselves be consumed by futile ambition and competitiveness. Jesus holds up to them a child, a model of simplicity and innocence, someone able to appreciate the wonder of existence, undistracted by mostly futile adult cares.
On Fri Sept 13, the Pope ended his three-day journey to Singapore with a magnificent statement: “all religions are a path to God.”
“They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all.” “Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God.”
When Francis used similar language in a 2022 trip to Kazakhstan, a local bishop, Athanasius Schneider, who is a well-known critic of the pope, warned that it risked creating a “supermarket of religions.” But Francis would say that God himself created the rich diversity of cultures and religions, and that they can be a blessing.
“If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t’, where will that lead us? There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].”
He’s been saying this kind of thing all along. Early in his pontificate, talking in commemoration of his friend Tony Palmer (evangelical bishop) he said that we are all on the same path together, whether we are Jews or Muslims or Hindus, etc., and humorously interjected “This is a theological disaster!” (perhaps thinking how Card. Müller would fume over at the CDF).
A sample reaction: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/09/the-pope-and-other-religions
The reactionaries are flooding the airwaves and we need to speak up loudly in defence of the pope’s call to interreligious dialogue.
Unfortunately, the suspicion-ridden tone of the CDF document Dominus Iesus (2000) in tandem with the persecution of selected interreligious theologians such as Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Jacques Dupuis put a damper on such thinking in the Catholic world, and is constantly invoked by those eager to denounce the pope as a heretic.
On the basic issue, the pope is sensitive to the mystical core of the great religions. He will not deny that God makes Godself known to all, and particularly through their religions (as John Paul II noted).
Augustine recognized that Plotinus had made great breakthroughs in knowledge of God, in his meditation on the absolute simplicity of the One, the “power of all things” (dunamis pantōn), who is not remote, but the very centre, nearer to us than we are to ourselves, present in his entirety everywhere (totus ubique praesens). Plotinus uses impersonal language for the One, but sometimes he calls him “he” and even “God.”
Augustine himself knew ecstatic moments of Plotinian mysticism, touching “idipsum” (the very reality of God) with the pinnacle of his mind, and letting his whole being be flooded with the presence of God as light (on reading some texts of Plotinus).
Plotinus released Augustine from spiritual blockage and make him able to think and talk about God in a liberated way. Twelve centuries later Teresa of Ávila was moved to tears by Augustine’s Confessions and referred to him as a supreme authority on the interior life, but it was from Plotinus that Augustine learned to find God within in, in the depth of his mind. Teresa urges us to sit in God’s presence, to welcome him in all humility as a Guest in one’s soul, welcoming him as father or brother or master or spouse. “God walks amid the pots and pans” is one of her sayings.
In a way that echoes the Buddhist wisdom of nonduality, all of these “mystics” refuse to be hung up on a duality between this life and the next, but proclaim that heaven is here, “heaven in ordinarie” (as the Anglican contemplative poet George Herbert describes prayer). “This is eternal life, to know Thee, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
In the climactic chapter of the Vimalakīrti Sutra, thirty-two bodhisattvas speak of stepping back from painful dualities to a prior unity. Their rather cryptic utterances reflect a contemplative turn which has affinities with the examples just surveyed. “When we speak of the joy of final release and the joylessness of the cycle of rebirth, we have duality.” But “only for one who is still bound does the possibility of liberation arise…. Why should one who is not bound at all seek liberation. The monk who is neither bound nor liberated does not experience joy nor joylessness—this is the gateway to non-duality” (The Teaching of Vimalakīrti 8.29, trans. Paul Harrison). The famous silence in which this chapter ends brings the mind into union with ultimate reality. Those who write Buddhism off as a godless religion need to attend more patiently to the numinous resonances of Buddhist discourse.
The critics of the pope focus their pearl-clutching on Islam, as if it were inconceivable that Muslims could reach God. I would answer in the words of a young man in a computer shop taking a break for prayer: “How many people can say that they know their Creator?”
Catholicism is wasting away because it has cut itself off from the great concert of religious joy that is going on all the time as the divine Logos enlightens all minds (John 1:9). Pope Francis recognizes the closeness to God of many non-Christians, embraces them in mutual understanding. This ecumenical explosion is the antidote to religion as horror, as in Netanyahu’s “Remember Amalek!” which has now brought him to a new threshold of terrorism, using people’s mobile phones to blind them.
#2
From: “The Queen of Peace”: Note About the Spiritual Experience Connected with Medjugorje
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez says in Par. 7:
This love, which enables us to bring peace to the world, also implies a love for those who are not Catholic. Indeed, this is not to propose syncretism or to say that “all religions are equal before God.” Yet still, all people are loved. This is a point best understood in the ecumenical and interreligious context of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has been marked by a terrible war with strong religious components:
“On earth, you are divided, but you are all my children. Muslims, Orthodox, Catholics, all of you are equal before my Son and me. You are all my children. This does not mean that all religions are equal before God, but people are. It is not enough, however, to belong to the Catholic Church to be saved: one must respect God’s will […]. To whom little has been given, little will be asked” (20 May 1982). “You are not true Christians if you do not respect your brothers and sisters who belong to other religions” (21 February 1983). However, there is also a reminder of the need to “preserve the Catholic faith at all costs, for you and for your children” (19 February 1984).