{"id":21809,"date":"2016-06-04T20:31:16","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T18:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/?p=21809"},"modified":"2016-06-04T20:31:16","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T18:31:16","slug":"being-a-christian-in-a-secularized-world-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/being-a-christian-in-a-secularized-world-today.html","title":{"rendered":"Being a Christian in a Secularized World Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Society Without Love<\/em><\/p>\n

The central problem that is causing so much anguish in people\u2019s lives today is the lack of love.\u00a0 Mother Teresa said it well:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest sickness in the West today is not tuberculosis or leprosy.\u00a0 It is feeling ourselves unloved and unwanted; it is feeling ourselves abandoned.\u00a0 Medicine can heal physical illness, but the only cure for loneliness, despair and the absence of a future is love.\u00a0 In our world there are many who die because they don\u2019t have even a piece of bread, but even more die for lack of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Really, we live in a society in which love is truly rare.\u00a0 All of us risk becoming a sort of orphan, no mother, no father, abandoned, each of us, to our fate.\u00a0 And even though this is a terrible state of affairs, we accept it meekly and even consider it normal.\u00a0 But can anything flourish in a desert?\u00a0 What can blossom in cities and countries that lack love like deserts lack water?\u00a0 Nothing but the bitter and poisonous weed of individualism that pushes us to go it alone, to try to save only ourselves.\u00a0 We grow up hearing everybody tell us \u201cTake care of yourself.\u201d\u00a0 Those words are like a \u201cGospel of the World.\u201d that stands in opposition to the \u201cGospel of Jesus.\u201d\u00a0 Jesus even heard it on the cross.\u00a0 In Chapter 23 of Luke\u2019s Gospel we read that everybody (priests, soldiers, the people, and even one of the thieves crucified with him) screamed at him, \u201cSave yourself.\u201d\u00a0 That was the last temptation of Jesus.\u00a0 But how could he save himself when he really came to save others.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t he say, \u201cThe Son of Man did not come to have service done him, he came to serve others, and to give his life as a ransom for the live3s of many.\u201d (Mk 10:45).\u00a0 It is easy for us to concentrate on our own personal salvation, especially when uncertainty and danger surround us.\u00a0 Defending oneself, one\u2019s personal space, one\u2019s interests, one\u2019s finances, becomes our most important, and sometimes our only, concern.\u00a0 The dream of society ever more united disappears and loneliness takes over.\u00a0 It sometimes looks like the march to a society made up of persons who are alone and unloved is unstoppable.<\/p>\n

The Twentieth Century showed all its ferocity when it gave in to the exaltation of the ego, in individuals, in nations and in ideologies.\u00a0 It was perhaps the most tragic century in all of human history.\u00a0 Humanity had never been crimes so vicious or so widely destructive.\u00a0 And the century we have just begun continues to experience unthinkable horrors.\u00a0 It\u2019s enough to remember the many conflicts that are underway, the thousands who die of hunger.\u00a0 While the market expands, the distance between rich and poor widens in a way that is unsustainable.\u00a0 In the outskirts of our cities we witness the drama of children who are abandoned and exploited mercilessly, the drama of young people who see their lives as lacking purpose and fall prey to violence and terrorism, the drama of the elderly who see themselves moved aside even as they live longer and longer, the drama of men and women in the prime of life who see jobs and their livelihood\u00a0 disappearing.\u00a0 In these circumstances we can understand what loneliness means for the poor, what abandonment means for the weakest among us, and what a tragedy it is to be force to leave one\u2019s homeland.<\/p>\n

Still, our need for love and protection is enormous, everywhere, at every latitude.\u00a0 We see a frenzied search for well-being, for protection, for safety, and let me say it, for fathers.<\/p>\n

The greatest challenge we face is how to deal with the lack of love that runs through all of our society.\u00a0 A widespread feeling of insecurity has made everyone more fearful and often leads to a growing wall of mistrust.\u00a0 But fear never protects anyone.\u00a0 And a race to \u201csave yourself\u201d doesn\u2019t save anyone.\u00a0 To build walls, to grow distances between people, to stay in inside one\u2019s own little world, little city, little region, little country, little diocese, little community\u2014none of this leads to salvation.\u00a0 And things get worse if we give up and think that the world cannot be changed.\u00a0 If we do that, we surrender to a merciless world and become partners with evil.<\/p>\n

Once more, begin with love<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In a world like that, we have to go back and start from love.\u00a0 The crisis that we are living in is one of love more than of faith.\u00a0 There is just too little love in the world.\u00a0 And the lack of love makes both faith and reason weak.\u00a0 A faith without love is cold, and reason without love is like ice.\u00a0 Christians have a serious responsibility: without love faith becomes weak, but so does reason.\u00a0 And the world risks an ever-faster descent into an abyss.\u00a0 Without love, all peace is in danger, without love, the important questions of bioethics and the environment will never be dealt with adequately.\u00a0 Love it the way not only for a new evangelization but also for a new humanism.\u00a0 The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the Gospel stories that most clearly point out the way of love, the one that Jesus himself was the first to travel.\u00a0 He is the first and the true Good Samaritan and he shows us the nature of Christian love.<\/p>\n

That Doctor of the Law who asked Jesus, \u201cMaster, what must I do to have eternal life?\u201d\u00a0 Jesus answered by showing him the path taken by the Samaritan. Here it is: The Samaritan saw a man badly hurt and took pity on him.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t think of himself or of his own concerns.\u00a0 He saw only a man in need.\u00a0 We would have thought that the priest and the Levite would look after the man, but no one would have been surprised if the Samaritan had paid no attention to the situation\u2014given especially the reputation that Samaritans had. Indeed, being a heretic and a stranger, it would have been reasonable for him to avoid a situation that could have become dangerous.\u00a0 But he stopped, and in stopping he showed how it is possible to rise above oneself, one\u2019s own affairs and projects, beyond one\u2019s own group, one\u2019s own ethnicity, one\u2019s own nation.\u00a0 Everything started from compassion for badly hurt person.\u00a0 The Samaritan saw and was moved, he got off his horse, approached the man and \u201cbound up his wounds, cleaning them with oil and wine.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was what the priest and the Levite did.\u00a0 Jesus didn\u2019t say where they were going.\u00a0 Neither did he say anything about them possibly being becoming ritually pure if they touched a dead person.\u00a0 All he said was that the priest, \u201cwhen he saw the man, passed by on the other side of the road\u201d and that the Levite did the same thing.\u00a0 Both of them \u201csaw the injured man but kept going.\u00a0 It is so sad to see those two phrases together \u201cthey saw\u201d and \u201cthey kept going\u201d\u00a0 Sadly, this is something that happens all too often.\u00a0 Hasn\u2019t it happened to each of us when we cross the street to avoid a beggar who is asking for a handout?\u00a0 The priest and the Levite are just examples of an attitude that we have as well.\u00a0 We can all see ourselves in them, and it doesn\u2019t make us look very good.\u00a0 But it is not just a question of missing a chance to help someone.\u00a0 There is a deeper meaning to be found in what Jesus said and it touches the very heart of Christianity, of being a Christian.<\/p>\n

When He chose two Church officials as the \u201cvillains\u201d in the parable, he wanted to express a clear condemnation of religion divorced from mercy, of piety divorced from love for the poor, of ceremonies unbound from love for the poor.\u00a0 What a scandal that it was two men dedicated to God\u2019s service who abandoned a person so badly injured.\u00a0 Religion divorced from love is an impossibility.\u00a0 With his condemnation Jesus was following the ancient and unbroken prophetic tradition that calls unworthy any sacrifice offered to God but lacking in charity and justice.\u00a0 As far back as the eighth century B.C. the prophet Amos preached against Israel dn its leaders who honored God with solemn ceremonies but oppressed the poor and the helpless.\u00a0 \u201cI hate your churchy feast days, I despise them!…When you put your sacrifices on the altar, I don\u2019t accept them…Enough! Instead, see to it that your righteousness flows like spring water and your justice like a torrent in flood.\u201d (cf. Amos 5:21-24) All of Church tradition rejects worship separated from love for the poor.\u00a0 These words of St. John Chrysostom to his flock are timeless: \u201cIf you want to honor the Body of Christ, don\u2019t disrespect him when he is naked, don\u2019t honor Christ in the Eucharist with silk vestments and at the same time you neglect that other Christ shivering in the cold and without warm clothes.\u00a0 Jesus who said \u201cthis is my Body\u201d confirming with his words what he had done, also said: \u201c you saw me hungry and didn\u2019t give me anything to eat\u201d and \u201cwhat you didn\u2019t do for one of these little ones neither did you do it for Me.\u201d\u00a0 The Body of Christ that is on the altar has no need for a cloak; it needs pure souls.\u00a0 The Body that waits outside the Church needs a lot of help.\u00a0 We must learn to think and to behave worthily toward these great mysteries and to honor Christ as he wants to be honored.\u00a0 God has no need of golden vessels, what He needs is hearts of gold.<\/p>\n

The Samaritan lets himself be led by love, by compassion.\u00a0 It must be noted that compassion is not simply an awareness of the misfortunes of other.\u00a0 It is much more.\u00a0 It is the same sentiment of God that we see in every page of the Scriptures.\u00a0 It is the same feeling that God has for the poor.\u00a0 In the pages of Scripture God is never separated from the poor. \u00a0From\u00a0 the very beginning, from when God preferred the sacrifice of Abel to that of Cain.\u00a0 \u201cAbel\u201d means \u201ca breath\u201d, nothing, absolute weakness.\u00a0 \u201cAbel,\u201d rather than being a proper name, indicates a condition, weakness, or better, \u201cthe weak.\u201d\u00a0 God, the God of the Church Father and not the God of philosophers, is a God who is turned toward the one who is weak, who prefers the one who is poor.\u00a0 This is the God of Jesus Christ, a God who lowers himself in a way that is scarcely believable, just to be with the poor.\u00a0 On every page, Holy Scripture presents God as the defender of the poor and the weak, of the orphan and the widow.\u00a0 God does not appear as one who is impartial and equidistant.\u00a0 In a way, he is unjust because he prefers the poor.<\/p>\n

In Jesus, the bond of preference between God and the poor reaches it extreme limit, identification.\u00a0 When at the Last Judgment, Jesus says, \u201cI was hungry and you gave me to eat,\u201d He identifies with the poor, and he considers that identification to be the norm for all of life, more so even that manifestations of \u201cpiety.\u201d\u00a0 If the very being of God is revealed to us in the Word become man and identified with the poor, that is because the very being of God cannot be conceived of as a \u201cfulness\u201d turned in on itself, but rather always in a tension, a permanent exodus as it were, from itself toward the other.\u00a0 In this light, the almost uninterrupted tradition the Church of considering the poor, even more than the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ, takes on its full meaning.\u00a0 And God\u2019s relationship with the poor is not something exterior to Him, not an add-on to his deepest being.\u00a0 It is part of his very life, his very being.\u00a0 It is part of the Trinitarian mystery itself.\u00a0 The history of love for the poor belongs to the very history of God who, through His Son, has become a brother to the weak and the poor.<\/p>\n

The Church and Preferential Love for the Poor<\/em><\/p>\n

Love for the poor is thus non something added on to the experience of the Church and of individual Christians.\u00a0 It is an integral part of that experience, it is, so to speak,\u00a0 its Gospel guarantee.\u00a0 A Church without the poor is a Church without God.\u00a0 An unbreakable covenant between Jesus and the poor is written in the pages of the Gospels, and is thus a covenant between the poor and all Christians.\u00a0 That covenant is of the essence of the faith and is the very content of the faith: the Lord God and His Son are not empty and abstract names; from the very beginning they are an \u201cunderstanding\u201d with the poor.\u00a0 Without the poor it is impossible to understand the God of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Pope Francis\u2014following the tradition of the Second Vatican Council\u2014has pointed out to the Church at the beginning of this Millennium that love for the poor is the first step for the Church.\u00a0 In the Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium <\/em>he writes:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cFor the Church, the option for the poor is a theological category more than one that is cultural, sociological, political or philosophical.\u00a0 God gives to the poor \u201cHis first mercy.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 This divine preference has consequences in the faith life of all Christians, who are called to have \u201cthe same mind as Jesus\u201d (Phil. 2:5).\u00a0 Inspired by that preference, the Church has professed an option for the poor<\/em> understood as a \u201cspecial form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which all of Christian tradition gives witness.\u201d\u00a0 This option, in the teaching of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, \u201cis implicit in the Christological faith in that God who has made Himself poor for us, to enrich us through his poverty.\u201d\u00a0 For this reason, I want a poor Church for the poor.\u00a0 They have much to teach us.\u00a0 Beyond participating in the sensus fidei, <\/em>\u00a0through their own sufferings they know the suffering Christ.\u00a0 We must all let ourselves be evangelized by them.\u00a0 The new evangelization is an invitation to recognized the salvific strength of their existence and to put that existence at the center of the path of the Church.\u00a0 We are called to discover Christ in them, to loan our voices to them in their struggles, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to understand them and to welcome the mysterious wisdom that God wants to communicate to us through them.\u201d (198)<\/p>\n

If every Christian is to be like the Good Samaritan, can compare the Christian community to the inn mentioned in the parable.\u00a0 Several authors have done so.\u00a0 Christian communities are to be the places of rest and healing for the men and women of this world.\u00a0 An they mush be so particularly for the poor.\u00a0 St. John XXIII offers a beautiful definition of the Church: \u201cThe Church presents itself as it is and wishes to be: the mother of all and particularly of the poor.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, every Christian community must be the mother of all and particularly of the poor.\u00a0 In this way we can compare it to the inn of the parable.\u00a0 Welcome for the poor is one of the key tasks of the Christian community.\u00a0 We have to compare ourselves with the splendid Gospel scene described in Mark: \u201cIn the evening, after sunset, they brought him all the sick and those possessed by devils.\u00a0 The whole city had gathered in front of the door.\u201d (Mk 1:32) Shouldn\u2019t the same thing be happening at the doors of our Churches?\u00a0 The poor understand this and for that reason come without stopping.\u00a0 And didn\u2019t Jesus say: \u201cBlessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.\u201d (Lk. 6:20) How much more then should our churches do?\u00a0 And yet, we are sometimes bothered by all this.\u00a0 Saint Augustine said:\u00a0 \u201cHappy are those Churches that have beggars at their doors.!\u201d\u00a0 And he added: \u201cThe remind us of what we are before God\u2014beggars!\u201d\u00a0 We can compare the inn to civil society as well, the city of mankind, which must be fermented by Christian love so that it can be worthy of mankind and become ever more like the \u201cnew earth\u201d that the Book of Revelation speaks of.\u00a0 If there is doubtless a distinction between the Christian community and civil society, there is nevertheless no separation.\u00a0 Indeed, we could say that the community of believers must be in the world to be leaven in the mass, or as a light in a room.\u00a0 It is in that sense Christian that Christians know that they are at the service of a renewed humanity according the demands of the Gospel.<\/p>\n

The Christian\u2014Friend of the Poor<\/em><\/p>\n

At the end of the parable, Jesus answers the doctor of the law, who had finally understood the idea of the word \u201cNeighbor.\u201d\u00a0 And Jesus, at this point, said the only thing that could be said: \u201cGo and do likewise.\u201d\u00a0 That invitation is clear: Do what the Samaritan did.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t just offer help.\u00a0 He did much more: he opened his heart to a man whom he did not know.\u00a0 He overcame separation and established a bond.\u00a0 We can say that his concern went so far as to create a bond of friendship.\u00a0 The parable makes it clear that there was a personal relationship between the Samaritan and the injured man.\u00a0 We can further say that they became in a certain sense brothers.\u00a0 To show how important their relationship was, one commentator has said that the Samaritan \u201cleft his credit card\u201d with the innkeeper to cover the man\u2019s expenses, just as he would have done for a brother.\u00a0 This brotherly\/sisterly love is what makes Gospel love different.\u00a0 The Samaritan doesn\u2019t just lend a hand and then leave as if everything had ended.\u00a0 He chooses to the care for the unfortunate man whom he had met by chance but who had become a brother.\u00a0 That man was now part of his heart, of his affections.\u00a0 Christina love does not choose its friends.\u00a0 It welcomes as friends the poor whom it meets on its way.\u00a0 We can say that the poor have a right not so much to our help as to our friendship, and we have a duty not only to help them but to love them.<\/p>\n

This is the most important lesson of the parable, and it is often the most neglected.\u00a0 One of the most evident gaps in the life of believers is the absence of a personal direct, friendly, and brotherly relationship with the poor.\u00a0 It is easy to think that it is the others, the experts, the officials, the volunteers who are to take care of them.\u00a0 The parable says no, it says that every Christian must stop like the Samaritan did.\u00a0 For the believer, the poor are not a social challenge to deal with.\u00a0 They are family and they have aright to be loved, and to have brothers and sisters, just like we do.\u00a0 That is why the relationship with the poor cannot be reduced to a simple activity or to an office.\u00a0 Every Christian must have a personal relationship with the poor, even with only one.\u00a0 An encounter with the poor must be a direct experience that every Christian lives out.<\/p>\n

For this reason we can say the welcome for the poor is what best reveals God\u2019s presence in the Christian community.\u00a0 Christian \u201cpiety\u201d (and not only Christian piety) is the translation, pale and imperfect though it is) of the \u201cPietas\u201d that is God Himself.\u00a0 Note however that the universal dimension of the Church\u2019s savific mission given to it by God in the Gospel is not diminished by the \u201cprivilegium pauperum<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 We have to say that the best beginning of the universal mission is beginning with the poor.\u00a0 From there the community can reach out to all.\u00a0 Christianity\u2014as it appears from the Gospel\u2014starts with the poor and goes forward to the whole world.\u00a0 In that sense the Church can (and must) be for all, but it does that by beginning with the poor.\u00a0 The primacy of the poor in the Gospel can never be done away with.\u00a0 That is seen, sometimes with difficulty, throughout all the twenty centuries of Church history.\u00a0 If the poor are either not welcomed or not considered as \u201cbrothers and sisters,\u201d it is clearly seen that Christians have strayed from the Gospel.\u00a0 When the poor are close, God is never far away.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/em><\/p>\n

Finishing the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke passes immediately to describing the meeting of Jesus with Martha and Mary.\u00a0 A dear Waldensian friend of mine, Valdo Vinay, once told me that these two passages are always to be red together, never separately.\u00a0 He said that the reason for this is that we can never separate the meeting of Jesus and Mary from the meeting of the Samaritan and the injured man.\u00a0 In the Church we don\u2019t have prayer experts in one group and charity experts in another.\u00a0 Every Christian is both a man or woman of prayer and a man or woman of charity.\u00a0 These two Gospel passages summarize well the task of the Church in the new Millennium: the Christian is one who is open to hearing the Gospel, as Mary did at the feet of Jesus, and who at the same time is a person of charity, as the Good Samaritan did when he saw, stopped and cared for the injured man.\u00a0 Every disciple, every Christian Community, is called to live out these two fundamental dimensions of the Gospel.\u00a0\u00a0 Prayer and charity proceed from the same indivisible love of God.\u00a0 For this reason, disciples must sit at the feet of Jesus to receive from Him his love and to learn his mind.\u00a0 Thus they will love and be moved by all those who have need of help and consolation.<\/p>\n

This is the path to Gospel joy for believers and for the poor.\u00a0 And Christians understand in this way the statement of Jesus related by the Apostle Paul: \u201cThere is more joy in giving than in receiving.\u201d\u00a0 Whoever practices love experiences joy; and above all he sees the world being transformed.\u00a0 Christina love, indeed, is not a rule, it is not a command, it is a spiritual energy that changes the heart of whoever welcomes it, and it transforms the world.\u00a0 It breaks every barrier, brings close those who are far away, brings strangers together, makes enemies part of one family, bridges voids that humanly speaking cannot be crossed, enters into the hurts of society and carefully seeks to heal them.\u00a0 By its nature, Christian love is prophetic, it performs miracles; it has no limits; it does the impossible.\u00a0 And it spreads itself because it is the most beautiful and most attractive way to spread the Gospel.\u00a0 A Church that puts no limits on love, that has no enemies to fight, only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Society Without Love The central problem that is causing so much anguish in people\u2019s lives today is the lack of love.\u00a0 Mother Teresa said it well: \u201cThe greatest sickness in the West today is not tuberculosis or leprosy.\u00a0 It is feeling ourselves unloved and unwanted; it is feeling ourselves abandoned.\u00a0 Medicine can heal physical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-interventi","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/monsignor-paglia.png?fit=641%2C428&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5mkxU-5FL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}