Saint Mark the Evangelist wrote the shortest, yet earliest, Gospel. It is the longstanding majority view among biblical scholars that Saints Matthew and Luke used the Gospel of Mark as their source. This hypothesis is what the scholars call Marcan (Markan) priority.

What we have today from the Gospel of Mark is something that frightens believers of today, like you and me, and most especially priests.

“These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Mark 16.17-18)

I for one have never driven out a demon. I have difficulty learning new languages. I am definitely afraid of snakes and certainly would not dare take a deadly drink. I have anointed many deathly ill people. Most of them did not survive. Do all these prove that I am not a true believer of Christ?

Saint Gregory, in commenting on 1 Corinthians 14:22, says, “These signs were necessary in the beginning of Christianity. In order that faith might take root and increase, it must be nourished by miracle; for so even we, when we plant shrubs, only water them until we see that they are taking root, and when we see that they have rooted themselves, we cease to water them.”

Saved by the bell, so to speak…

Nevertheless, as believers, we are not saved from Jesus’s call to go into the whole world and proclaim the Good News to the whole of creation. And there are things that we really need to do:

There is one demon that we need to drive out… the demon of individualism.

There is one language that we need to speak… the language of mercy.

There is one snake that we need to take hold and control… the snake of clericalism.

There is one deadly drink that will not harm us… the poison of materialism.

There is one illness that we need to lay our hands on… the illness of indifference.

These are the signs that the people of today are looking for in all of us who believe in the resurrected Christ.

Fr. Bobby Cena is a diocesan priest from the Philippines who is doing a Doctorate of Ministries at Regis College, University of Toronto. While doing his studies, Fr. Cena is residing at Scarboro Missions’ central house in Scarborough.

A few decades ago, we almost never emphasized the importance, as disciples of Christ, of protecting creation…Nor did we understand the importance of promoting a deeper respect and dialogue with followers of other religions.

There are times when many of us look back on the early church through very nostalgic lenses. Yet a reading of Acts reminds us that the early Christians also struggled with many different opinions as they tried to be open to where the Spirit was leading them as disciples of Christ.

As you no doubt have heard, the earliest disciples of Christ were Jews. They looked upon him as their long awaited messiah and they understood Jesus as bringing about the fulfillment of their hopes as a Jewish people. Never in their wildest dreams did they think that being faithful disciples of Jesus would gradually lead them to let go of many of the traditions that they held dear.

Unexpectedly these Jewish Christians were faced with the fact that many gentiles felt called to be disciples of Jesus. They were faced with the question as to whether these new gentile Christians, in order to be welcomed into the church, first needed to become Jews.

One of the first Christian communities to welcome gentiles was centered in Antioch in Syria. It was to this community that both Barnabas and Paul were drawn by the Spirit. And it was from this community that these two disciples were also commissioned to go out to preach to the people of Asia Minor or what is now Turkey. Surprisingly in many of the places they visited, more gentiles than Jews were open to the message about Christ and wanted to be baptized.

Things were progressing well until some Jewish Christians from Jerusalem visited these areas and told the gentile converts that they were not true disciples of Jesus unless they also followed the Jewish laws.

The Bible tells us (Acts 15.22-31), that Paul and Barnabas travelled to Jerusalem to speak to Peter and other leaders of the church community to ask if it was truly necessary for these gentile Christians to follow all the Jewish laws. In the end, the Jerusalem church leaders sent a message to the church communities to say that Paul and Barnabas were welcoming the gentiles as fellow Christians without forcing them to adhere to Jewish laws.

Like these early Jewish Christians, we too need to be open to change. Where is the Spirit of Jesus leading us today? What religious practices might we be called to let go? What new avenues of witnessing to Christ is the Spirit calling us to embrace?

We are being called to be open to recognizing the Spirit’s activity and presence in our world through new ways of being disciples of Christ.

Just as in the early church, there are voices today that tell us the solution is in holding on tightly to the ways of the past. And yet we are being called to be open to recognizing the Spirit’s activity and presence in our world through new ways of being disciples of Christ.

A few decades ago, we almost never emphasized the importance, as disciples of Christ, of protecting creation to preserve this blessed gift for future generations. Nor did we understand the importance of promoting a deeper respect and dialogue with followers of other religions.

Fr. John Carten, SFM, takes part in a Japanese tea ceremony. Japan, circa 1992.

The Gospel of John (15.12-17) reminds us that our one guiding principle has remained the same. We have been chosen by Christ to be his witnesses in the world. Jesus continues to invite us to be centred on him, to draw our strength, wisdom, and hope from him, just as he drew these things from the Father.

We are called to become close friends with Jesus and that is only possible if we spend time with him in prayer, listening to his word, being of service to others, and striving to love one another as he has loved us.

It does not matter if we agree on everything. What does matter is that we strive to encourage one another in the midst of our differences and then maybe we, too, like the early Christians, will discover together where the Lord is leading us to be his witnesses today.

The early Jewish disciples felt impelled by the Spirit to let others know of the love and friendship they had experienced in Christ. It led them to embrace gentiles as fellow Christians overcoming years of separation, suspicion, and hostility.

May we as Church today learn to be open with those who think and act differently from ourselves so that we may truly put into practice Jesus’ commandment of love.

Fr. John Carten serves in leadership as a member of Scarboro’s General Council. He also serves as Treasurer General. Fr. Carten first went to Japan in 1972 as a seminarian and after ordination he was missioned there for many years.

Ecuador. Photo by Philippe Henry.

Today we hear the continuation of the passage from John’s Gospel describing Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

Again the emphasis is on the incredible love that Jesus has as a shepherd for all. The life of a shepherd in Israel was dangerous work because of attacks both by robbers and by wolves. Many shepherds lost their lives defending the sheep that they loved. Hired help would often run away to save their own lives. Jesus tells us he is not like that. He is with us for the long haul. The depth of his love is shown by the fact that Jesus willingly lays down his life for us.

Jesus uses another description to elevate the love he has towards us to a whole new level of intensity. He says, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” (John 10.14-15)

To know means to love deeply. It is impossible for us to grasp the incredible relationship of love that is shared between Father, Son, and Spirit. Yet Jesus is reminding us that this is the same love that he has towards us, his sheep.

Finally, he lets us knows that this is not an exclusive kind of love but an inclusive one. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice.” (John 10.16)

Biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown, in one of his books on John’s Gospel called “The Community of the Beloved Disciple,” says that various ideas are developed here. “Other sheep” first of all referred to Christians of the Apostolic Churches centred around Peter’s memory. These Christians were later joined by the Johannine Christians, centred around the beloved disciple, to become the one great Church of Christians.

From the standpoint of his Jewish followers, Jesus is also referring to the many Gentiles that He was to gather into his flock.

Today we can also look at it in terms of all those people who are not Christians but who live in accordance with the gospels and who live by the values of the kingdom even though many of them have never heard of Christ.

“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice.” (John 10.16)

By his words, Christ is saying that he will gather us all together into the kingdom of God, into the relationship of love.

In the reading from Acts today, of the experience of Peter and the early Church, we are given a very concrete example of how these words of Jesus were realized.

Peter goes to Jerusalem to share his experience in the house at Jaffa (Joppa) and later in the home of the Gentile Cornelius in Caesarea. The Spirit has led Peter to see that all food is sacred and is a blessing from God, thereby opening up the path of table fellowship between Jews and Gentile Christians.

Then Peter is led to the home of the Roman centurion, Cornelius, where right before Peter’s eyes the Gentiles are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is in fact an extension to the Gentiles of the event that various Jews experienced at Pentecost. “God gave them the same gift that he gave to us.” (Acts 11.17)

These events challenge us to recognize and be open to how God is working in new ways through the Spirit, among people in our times, to bring all nations into a unity in Christ. “That they may all be one as we are one.”

We are challenged to see that we, too, must be open to learning from other Catholics or Christians who see things differently than we do. And we must be open to learning from people of other faiths or people of no faith, to see how the Spirit may be working through them to lead us deeper into the truth.

Our God is inclusive and so are we challenged to be the same.

“Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” (Luke 24.35)

I don’t know how to describe my Christmas experience of several years ago in Riobamba, Ecuador. It was so sad, yet it foreshadowed an experience of great joy and grace for me. I remember it so well and will never forget it.

We were preparing for the Christmas celebrations in Bellavista, the community where I ministered, and we had invited three other communities to join us. The celebrations consisted of a Christmas concert presented by the children of each community, followed by an open-air Mass in front of the church.

Many hands took part in the whirlwind of activity required to organize the Mass and to coordinate a concert with so many children. We had not a moment to pause. By the early afternoon, amid the hustle and bustle, we became aware of a beggar sitting alone in the park across the street. She was an old woman and we learned that she had been there since the morning.

Around five o’clock in the afternoon, after the celebrations were over, two of us went with our pastor to see the woman. She was poorly clothed, covered with lice, and appeared exhausted. When we began to speak with her, she immediately put her hand in the pocket of her tattered jacket and brought forth a piece of fruit bread, a bread that is very popular in Ecuador during the Christmas season. She broke the bread with thin, fragile fingers and handed each of us a small piece.

We all felt a wave of emotion pass through us as we witnessed this humble, rejected woman sharing with us what little she had—the “widow’s mite” of which Jesus spoke. We helped her to her feet and supported her to the car that would take her to a family who would care for her until her own family could be located.

The memory of that experience has never left me. It was, as I saw later, just a preparation for a joyful and grace-filled revelation.

This moment of insight happened a few months later at the Latin America and Caribbean regional meeting of Scarboro missioners, which took place in Panama. The group’s first reflection was on the story of the disciples on their journey to Emmaus after the resurrection. In the story, Jesus meets them on their way and ends up having supper with them. It was then that Jesus revealed himself to them in the breaking of the bread.

Like the disciples, it was at that moment that I recognized the significance of my encounter with the old woman. I became overwhelmed in such a way that I could never express in words. To this day, I cherish the memory of this gift of so many years ago, when Jesus revealed himself to us in the breaking of a piece of Christmas fruit bread.

Julia Duarte-Walsh and her husband Tom served as Scarboro lay missioners in Peru, Panama, Ecuador and in Canada. They have four children.

The unforgettable talk that Jesus had with the apostles after the Last Supper is extremely important in our lives today. Within hours, he was to face his final test and obedience to God would require that he submit, willingly, humbly, and lovingly, to an unparalleled injustice — crucifixion at the hands of God’s creatures.

With this challenge hanging over his head, Jesus spoke as never before to his apostles. When called by Jesus, they had shown great generosity and sincerity; they had given up a lot to follow him. They did indeed love him and were growing in that love. But these same apostles had also shown the weakness of human nature — in spite of what they had heard and seen, they had been very slow to understand Jesus’ message. They had quarreled among themselves about who was the greatest. Jesus had even told them they were people “of little faith.” Now, devastating new failures lay just ahead.

During the course of his talk, Jesus foretold that Judas would betray him, that Peter would deny ever knowing him, that all would run away leaving him alone in the hands of his enemies. Yet Jesus’ love for his apostles showed no sign of lessening; on the contrary, each moment during his talk seemed to bring a new outpouring of his love for them.

Here we touch on mystery:

• the life-giving love that Jesus had offered them and would never withdraw;
• the compassionate love with which Jesus spoke to them, even knowing that they were about to be dreadfully unfaithful;
• the forgiving love with which Jesus would still call them back, after their failure, to a new and even more wonderful union with himself.

Humble servants

The story begins with Jesus washing the feet of his apostles, an act which at the time was usually done by a servant. In explanation he made an urgent appeal that his followers should all be humble servants looking after one another, and he gave his assurance that those who would live by this ideal would be happy people. Then came the tragic defection of Judas. Blinded by his personal greed, Judas had failed to appreciate any part of Jesus’ message of love. He now compounded his earlier infidelities by leaving the group to betray his Lord. The lasting sadness of the story of Judas comes not only from what he did, but also from the fact that he alone, of the 12 apostles, did not return to Our Lord to receive the forgiveness offered to all by a loving Saviour.

After Judas left, Jesus spoke intimately and at length with those who remained. The apostles had grown in love and appreciation for him as the One sent by God, but they were still very dependent on him in his human condition — the carpenter from Nazareth — who was their friend, the one who had called them and who had shared his life with them. Jesus now had to prepare them for something totally different. The time had come for Jesus to leave this world and return to God. Soon he would no longer be with them. He had shared their human life, now he was calling them to share his divine life, with the Father and the Spirit. This new reality would demand of them a deeper act of faith as well as a determined commitment to love him and to love one another.

Without any merit on our part, we have been touched by God…

Jesus spoke to them repeatedly of that beautiful union of everlasting love that united him with God, and of how the apostles were now to be included in that union. He returned several times to this new way of being. It would be part of the deep invisible mystery of divine love that he and his Father would always be “in them” and that the apostles would be “in him” and “in the Father.”

For the apostles this was not a question of something they had to learn, much less of something they had to do. Rather, it was a question of elevating human life to a divine level by responding to Jesus in faith and love. When Jesus spoke to them, this was beyond their understanding. However, after his death and resurrection all this began to come together in their hearts, and after his ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit it became their continuous way of union with Jesus.

Witnesses

Jesus spoke also of other important things that night. He explained their mission to be his witnesses, of how they would face hostility, hatred, and even death on his account. He made it clear that if they remained in a loving union with him, they would receive his gifts of inner peace and joy, and that he could and would do great things through them. He called them to love one another as he had loved them.

At the end of the talk, Jesus opened his heart in an extraordinary and touching prayer. He prayed for the glory of God, Father and Son; he prayed for his apostles and for his future followers, including us: “May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.”

Jesus’ prayer for us underlines two important things: first, that almost everything spoken to the apostles was spoken also to us and for us; and, second, that to live in loving union with Jesus is also the vital vocation of every Christian. If we are faithful in this, it will have a marvelous effect on the world, lifting up the world and bringing about the reign of God, in which all creation lives in justice, peace, mercy and love.

A Christian on Jesus’ terms

Do we understand what all this means? What it means to be a Christian on Jesus’ terms? We are called to live by faith. Our success will depend mostly on how we live up to what is expected of us. With so much at stake we do well to ponder, deeply and lovingly, the things that Jesus has done for us and has said to us.

Jesus’ talk starts at the beginning of Chapter 13 and continues to the end of Chapter 17 in the Gospel of John. If we read it slowly and prayerfully, allowing Jesus to speak directly to us, we will be greatly enriched. Even greater benefits can come if we read it many times over the years, pondering it and allowing Jesus’ words to sink ever deeper into our souls.

Without any merit on our part, we have been touched by God and freely given the gift of faith. Our lives are to be a message to the peoples of the world. God offers divine love to every person in the world and calls all humanity into the fullness of life. We bear a heavy responsibility, and only with God’s help can we be faithful. Since we share the universal weakness of fallen humanity, we may continue to sin and bring dishonour on our Christian faith. But Jesus will never fail to call us back.

“I give you a new commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you, you also must love one another By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples” John 13.34-5.

Fr. Basil Kirby was ordained in 1941 and served in Canada as well as in the Dominican Republic and Guyana missions. In Canada, he did a lot of work in the formation of priest and lay candidates. He also served as Secretary General and then as Treasurer General for Scarboro Missions until his retirement in 1985. Fr. Bas made his own funeral arrangements, requesting the most simple of funerals and that the homily be focused not on himself but on “the Divine generosity by which we are called to be God’s adopted children.”

The tall, stately Lawaan trees with branches only at the top created a cool, protective canopy above us. Underneath, the forest looked clean. The ground ferns, herbaceous plants, young saplings, and mosses seemed all proportionally spaced and planned by the Master Designer.

We walked on a carpet of freshly fallen leaves, cushioned underneath by the older layer of decaying matter, or biomass, providing natural fertilizer and continuing the life cycle—a continuum of death and resurrection.

Parasitical aerial ferns and vines clung to the trees, together with white and purple orchids in full bloom. We walked on a carpet of freshly fallen leaves, cushioned underneath by the older layer of decaying matter, or biomass, providing natural fertilizer and continuing the life cycle—a continuum of death and resurrection.

In 1984 I spent six days wandering through a virgin forest with my Manobo tribal friends as guides. I was fascinated by the beauty of God’s creation. I was emotionally moved by the clean rivers, streams, and springs from which we drank and bathed. I will never forget the experience.

Since my arrival in the Philippines in 1980, I have mourned the rampant destruction of the rainforest by logging companies.

Since my arrival in the Philippines in 1980, I have mourned the rampant destruction of the rainforest by logging companies. Their destructive logging methods were illegal, but no one bothered to complain.

The small farmer would follow the logging companies, burn the remaining tree stumps on the hillsides, and plant their crops. This practice did not allow the forest to regenerate. Many of these poor farmers had been displaced from their land by huge multinational corporations growing pineapples, coffee, and bananas for export.

With the hillsides laid bare due to aggressive logging practices, the rains erode the topsoil quickly, rendering the land useless for farming in a few short years. Every year, hundreds of hectares of fertile soil in the valley are washed away to the sea because of the floods caused by the destruction of the watershed.

By 1985, one of the two big companies logging in San Fernando moved into the virgin forest I had visited the year before. They began to destroy the forest. Two years later, a group of concerned parishioners who had become aware of the serious ecological situation, picketed and managed to stop this company.

In 1988 they picketed again and stopped the second logging company. Things seemed to be getting a bit under control in the San Fernando valley. The people had managed to save at least some of the virgin forest.

One day a report came to me that there were illegal loggers and rattan cutters coming into the virgin forest from outside the boundaries of the area. I was very saddened by the news.
The next morning, while I was praying on the veranda of the rectory, I talked to the Lord about what was happening to the forest He had given us. At that moment, Minggai our cat, who was an excellent mouser, came running onto the veranda with a mouse in his mouth. Minggai stood in front of me as if to say, “Look what I’ve got.” I thought to myself, the forest in this area has about as much chance to survive as that mouse has in the mouth of Minggai.

Just then, Minggai threw the mouse in the air to begin to play with it. The veranda has a wall around it with a six inch space between the floor and the wall. The mouse fell exactly in that space under the wall and went scampering away, much to the dismay of Minggai.

Since then, there continues to be reforestation efforts in the watershed area and assisted natural regeneration. The Manobo tribal peoples are also presently reforesting bamboo along some rivers and streams. There are still many problems in the area and there needs to be much more education on the importance of a balanced ecosystem. But whenever I get discouraged, my mind goes back to the incident with Minggai and the mouse.

Fr. Charlie Gervais served most of his 55 years of priesthood in the Philippines.

In 1987, the Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) and Peoples’ Organization (Pagbugtaw sa Kamatuoran) in San Fernando, Bukidnon, successfully campaigned against logging companies with the help of Scarboro missionaries and the Redemptorist Mission Team, and with the support of Bishop Gaudencio Rosales and the local clergy. Poor farmers and members of BECs barricaded the highways with their bodies and did not allow logging trucks to pass until the Aquino Government finally declared a total log ban in the province of Bukidnon. The BECs and grassroots communities entered into partnership with the Department of Energy and Natural Resources in implementing the log ban and a reforestation program. Today serious efforts are underway to reforest bald hills and develop ecologically sound ways of farming…Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si, which cites the Philippine bishops’ 1988 pastoral letter, “What is happening to our beautiful land,” is an affirmation of the pioneering efforts of the Church in the Philippines—including the BECs—to defend the environment. Bishops, priests, religious, and lay people in various parts of the country have been at the forefront in the struggle against logging, mining and coal-fired power-plant projects. As we respond to Pope Francis’s “urgent challenge to protect our common home,” each diocese, parish, BEC, lay organization, movement, and association needs to study the encyclical and come up with plans to continually concretize the Church’s commitment to the environment…For all of us, it will mean adopting a more simple and green lifestyle and rejecting consumerism.
–Taken from the website of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines

We are told that each of us is called to “accept ourselves.” Just what exactly does that mean?

So often today we hear the expression used to indicate acceptance of our present condition and of situations in the past that we cannot change. Psychologists also use this expression to indicate self-appreciation; that is, liking ourselves despite whatever faults we see in ourselves. All well and good, but this is incomplete.

To fully accept ourselves is to accept and embrace the truth that within each and every one of us is the potential to change, to grow, and to mature. Accepting ourselves also implies acceptance of our role as agents of change.

To fully accept ourselves as Christian people is to acknowledge sinfulness and our dependence on God. It is to acknowledge that the grace of God is freely given and draws us into the future inviting us to accept our potential to be better people. It invites us to make an act of faith in the God who cares and calls and stretches out a hand to lead and guide us.

We are challenged to accept the teaching of Jesus as addressed to each of us: “You did not choose me but I chose you” (John 15.16). We recognize that we are called and invited to respond. “He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him” (John 1.39).

We are asked to accept a commitment to go beyond ourselves, overcoming selfishness and self-centredness.

Fr. Jack Lynch, SFM, visits with Buddhist monks in Tibet.

We are asked to accept a commitment to go beyond ourselves, overcoming selfishness and self-centredness. “And he said to them, ‘Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation'” (Mark 16.15).

Let us pray that we accept fully the call and challenge of the Lord. Let our commitment be to the Reign of God: to Truth and Life, to Sanctity and Grace, to Mercy, Love, Justice, and Peace.

In August of last year, I went to Honduras to discern the possibility of working with migrating peoples. Honduras is a poor country, full of violence and with few prospects for a better life for many of its peoples.

The migrant Hondurans I have met are not only those trying to flee their country, but also those who have been returned by land or air from Mexico and the United States for entering those countries illegally. All of the returnees are traumatized in one way or another from their long and perilous journey. Some return with physical injuries. We can see their bodies mangled by the train they call “The Beast,” or in other accidents that happened on their journey from Honduras to somewhere in Mexico. Some have lost an arm or a leg. Never making it to their destination, their American Dream becomes a nightmare.

At the migrant welcome centre in the San Pedro Sula Airport, I have seen people being returned from the United States. Whenever I have been at the centre, I have seen from 60 to 140 people being returned at a time. They come back with almost nothing. Most carry their meagre belongings in small red sacks like the ones containing onions or potatoes at grocery stores in Canada. Many of their sacks are not half full.

When they walk through the door of the welcome centre they are first given their shoelaces since these were removed before they boarded the plane. After the shoelaces, they are given a baleada and a coffee. A baleada is a thin tortilla folded in half and filled with beans and cheese. The returnees are hungry and many are clearly distraught. These meetings have shown me humanity at its most vulnerable. A humanity that often has no hope or faith that life can be better. Many of the returnees have done this trip more than once and many will try again with the hope that next time they will make it.

It is their right to find a better life, but it is also their right to have a better life in the country where they were born, and to have no need to migrate.

I know I have found my call to accompany and advocate for migrants in their journey from despair to hope, either here in Honduras or in one of the many other countries with a migrant population searching for hope and life. It is their right to find a better life, but it is also their right to have a better life in the country where they were born, and to have no need to migrate.

I am still discerning my place and my role in these situations that many times seem to have no end or reason. I place my trust and hope in God that I, too, will find my way in this journey and draw closer to God as I accompany the suffering migrant. Just like the women who accompany Jesus in his suffering on the way to Calvary, I hope that I can be faithful till the end. I hope I can share God’s love and help these people regain their dignity, which has been stripped away by the treatment they receive in their journey. Together, may we find a path and a light to guide us through the darkness.

Scarboro missioner Fr. Luis Lopez was ordained on July 11, 2015, at the Scarboro Missions chapel by Bishop Wayne Kirkpatrick, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

The wisdom of the Word of God that penetrates deeper than a two-edged sword is evident in the encounter of Jesus with the man who is you and me in Mark’s Gospel account (10:17-30).

In the first place, the Kingdom or Reign of God calls people to conversion, not before all else to the law or to pious exercises, but to a new mode of existing before God and in the light of the good news announced by Jesus.

It implies not so much rapture as rupture: “Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three…” (Luke 12.51-53)

But the conversion will be life-giving in that it will lead a person to a crisis, disposed to sell all properties to acquire the field with a hidden treasure, the precious pearl, and even more.

It is easier to live within laws and prescriptions that foresee and determine everything. It is far more difficult to create a norm for each moment inspired by love. This calls for creative imagination and expresses itself in the radical formulas of the Sermon on the Mount.

A multifaith sharing organized for high school students by the Scarboro Missions Department of Interfaith Dialogue. World Youth Day, 2002, Toronto.

It is easier to live within laws and prescriptions that foresee and determine everything. It is far more difficult to create a norm for each moment inspired by love. This calls for creative imagination and expresses itself in the radical formulas of the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus did not come to bring a more radical and severe law, nor did he preach a more perfect devotion to the law (pharisaism). Nor did he preach any system of justice that consecrates and legitimizes a social status-quo that has as its starting point a basic inequality (discrimination) between people. He announces: All are worthy of love. And to the scribes question: “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus answers that this question should not be asked at all. All are neighbours to each other. All are children of the same God and because of this all are brothers and sisters.

It’s this demand of universal love of friends and enemies alike that puts into permanent crisis all societies and churches. Jesus announces a principle that checkmates all inhuman subordination to a system whether social or religious. The norms of the Sermon on the Mount presuppose love, a new human person and one liberated for greater things. “If your virtue or justice goes no deeper than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.”

To enter the kingdom it is not sufficient to do what the law ordains. The present order of things cannot save people from their deep alienation since it is order in the midst of disorder.

An example of the disorder: we see the wanton destruction of our forests, pollution of the waters and air, the plundering of the Earth for minerals and whatever resource commodity that entices profiteering greed. We see the destruction of the forests ruining the habitat of Indigenous peoples of the world (and displacing them). We know very well that no Indigenous peoples would ever inflict such destruction on the Earth or plunder it in this way, as our societies do.

Open to what truly matters

The image we get from these sayings, parables, and brief stories of the Gospels is of a person free from preconceived ideas, whose eyes are open to what truly matters, who gives to those who are abandoned and in need. In this way Jesus shows us that the established order cannot redeem us from profound human alienation, and that the world must suffer a restructuring in its very foundations in order to become the location of the Kingdom or Reign of God.

What counts now is not exterior categories and labels that people can grab onto or not. What matters is what is revealed in the heart that opens itself to God and to others. It is this that determines who is good or bad, divine or diabolic, religious or irreligious.

Jesus touched human persons at their very core, and with all his energies tried to create the conditions for a breakthrough of the Reign of God, which is not an entirely different world, but this world completely renewed.

Fr. Justin MacInnis was ordainedin 1963. His first assignment was to Brazil where he served for 18 years among Indigenous Amazonian peoples. On returning to Canada he was assigned to Edmonton to work with First Nations people.

Where do we find the Spirit leading us to witness to the reign of God today? How do we bring the light of the Gospel message in a manner that is genuine, humble, and forthright as Jesus did in his day?

One of the greatest opportunities for a Christian faith witness is through interfaith dialogue with people of other faith traditions, each of us learning to listen and be open to the other. Never before in the history of the world have the major religious traditions felt such a common desire and need to listen to one other, to share together each one’s experience of the Divine. In all of this, God’s Spirit is slowly but surely helping us to discover that we can all find unity in God even as we experience the diversity of our religious traditions.

Afghan children. Photo: Development and Peace-Caritas.

Jesus proclaimed again and again, “The kingdom of God is near to you and among you.” Is this not the goal of mission, to witness by word and action the kingdom or reign of God?

The times call for authentic witnesses who are willing to immerse themselves in service to the needs of others, to advance the basic needs of humanity and of all creation. Our priorities must be to advocate for justice for the oppressed, to bring peace and healing to those wounded by conflict and ill with disease, to phold the rights of the weak and vulnerable, the hungry, the homeless, the refugee, those enslaved in global sexual trafficking.

We know from the teaching and witness of Jesus that our God earnestly seeks freedom for the captive and the oppressed. Everyone just by being born on Earth is a child of God and inherits the right to share in God’s gifts. Our mission is to live and promote these Gospel values — values that reflect the heart of God.

There is a great urgency to witness the Gospel in the world today. In the words of the late Scarboro missionary Fr. Robert (Buddy) Smith: “There is so much at stake now, that we are talking of a total giving, where there is no turning back. The mission of Christ is worthy of a lifetime. Now is the time to look over the horizon to the world that awaits us, and to see things another way as Jesus did.”