You are Christians By Your Love
Jesuits are the best ecumenical bridge between conservative hard core catholicism and the Protestant world. Father Mark at Holy Trinity noted on the feast of Corpus Christie that Jesus in the Eucharist is in the communion, in the sharing of bread and wine, common elements at a communal table,
because Jesus said "whenever you eat this bread and drink this wine" in the context of a communal supper, he did not say, 'whenever you stare at a piece of bread." Adoration has its place, but should not take the place of communion, or communally sharing- because it is not merely the 'act of consecration' or the intent to manifest Jesus but in the sharing He is actually manifest. Sharing even with enemies.
God is Trinitarian- relational. Communal. There is a father and a son. And a Holy Spirit, and a woman named Mary who was the earthly instrumentality. Jesus didn't grow in
a pod or pond or hatch from an acorn. He came through a woman's womb. On purpose.
What the church has evolved into is a bit off the mark in that the focus is exclusively on the consecration with smells, bells and whistles and incense laded incantations- like a magic act. Presto-chango- body of Christ, just looks like a wafer.
This isn't the full meaning of what he meant. He meant, you manifest me when you Share my love, I am love, share it, participate in the sharing of what is needed to live, and you find me.
The Catholic church over the years adopted a model of "king" after European royalty appropriated to Jesus that he rejected. It puts priests in royal noble roman robes and puts them behind a table dictating to the congregation who are meant to idolize them as the exclusive mediators between God and Man (the model of Priest in the Jewish world Jesus came to transcend), in the place of Jesus. Jesus was the 'servant King', the one who washed feet. He probably changed a few diapers. He is the model of humility not self exaltation, not lookie lookie me all over the press in my bright red robes. He died so we could have fullness of life, and joy overwhelming. He didn't die to kill us all off- The greatest of all is the servant of All. The first now will be the last. Religious leaders who are all about 'looking good' are totally missing the mark- it's about how well they create an environment of love among the people where there is real giving from the heart going on- real love happening, because God is love. And love is much bigger than a breadbox. It is the creational principle behind the whole world.
Church can and has devolved into a trade association model, where evangelism is about collecting new paying members to finance projects- some of which don't serve large portions of the contingencies- like the focus on catholic schools which ignores people without kids tilting a budget to one segment of the world.
The church is enormously wealthy- if there are a billion people in the catholic church, and everyone just throws one dollar in the bucket every sunday they make one billion dollars every week. So why are they all screaming for money? Because they are not serving Love so much as they are serving their projects which serve various segments and have driven people out for not meeting basic human relational needs. It is an empire builder, it has a head of state and a country with castles and estates.
It is inexcusably greedy to not create a way that priests can have families. It is a profound perversion of the heart of Jesus.
POSTSCRIPT
Imagine if at your family dinner table all the money and preparation and time went into setting the table and lighting the candles and the color of the plates matching the napkins, etc. with next to no time paid attention to dinner conversation. In fact, keep silent, because the noise is distracting. Don't talk, people might start liking each other. That's church roman--- sort of (Jesuits excluded).
No comments:
Post a Comment