NO! TO THE WAR
BETWEEN US
The Jews talked proudly about the Law of Moses. According to tradition, God Self had given it to God’s people. It was the best thing they had received from God. In that Law was contained the will of the one true God. There they could encounter everything that they need to be faithful to God.
For Jesus too the Law is important, but now is doesn’t occupy the central place. He lives and communicates another experience: the Reign of God is coming; the Father is seeking to open up a path among us to making a more human world. It’s not enough to keep fulfilling the Law of Moses. It’s necessary to open ourselves to the Father and work together with God to make a more just and fraternal life.
That’s why, according to Jesus, it’s not enough to fulfill the Law that commands «Do not kill». It’s necessary, in addition, to uproot from our life aggressiveness, disdain of others, insults or revenge. The one who doesn’t kill fulfills the Law, but if that one doesn’t free self from violence, in his heart there still doesn’t reign that God who seeks to build with us a more human life. According to some observers, there’s spreading in today’s society a language that reflects the growth of aggressiveness. Each day we find more frequently the offensive insults, hurled only to humiliate, put down and wound. Words born of rejection, resentment, hatred or revenge.
In addition, conversations are at least woven with unjust words that spread condemnation and sow suspicion. Words spoken without love and respect, that poison our living together and cause damage. Words born almost invariably of irritation, meanness or baseness.
This isn’t a fact that only happens in our social gathering. It’s also a serious problem within the Church. Pope Francis suffers when he sees divisions, conflicts and confrontations of «Christians at war against other Christians». It’s a state of things so contrary to the Gospel that he’s felt the need to direct an urgent call to us: «No! to the war between us».
Thus speaks the Pope: «It pains me to see how in some Christian communities, and even among consecrated persons, we allow all kinds of hatred, calumny, defamation, revenge, envy, desires of imposing our own ideas no matter what the cost, and even persecutions that seem like a relentless witch-hunt. Whom are we going to evangelize with those behaviors?». The Pope wants to work for a Church in which «everyone can admire how we take care of one another, how we give encouragement mutually and how we walk with one another».
Jose Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
