NO TO THE WAR AMONG US
The Jews were used to talking proudly about the Law of Moses. According to tradition, God Self had given it to God’s people. It was the best they had received from God. In that Law is contained the will of the only true God. There they can encounter all that they need to be faithful to God.
For Jesus also the Law is important, but now it doesn’t occupy the central place. He lives and communicates another experience: God’s reign is coming; the Father is looking to open a path among us to make 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 cast out of our life the aggressiveness, the rejection of the other, insults or vengeance. The one who doesn’t kill, fulfills the Law, but if that person doesn’t free self from violence, in his heart the God doesn’t yet reign who seeks to build a more human life with us.
According to some observers, in our current society there’s growing a language that reflects the increase of aggressiveness. Each day there are more frequent offensive insults, only choosing to humiliate, despise and wound. Words born of rejection, resentment, hate or vengeance.
In addition, conversations are often woven of unjust words that deal out condemnation and sow suspicion. Words said without love and without respect that poison our living together and cause damage. Words born almost always of irritation, meanness or baseness.
This isn’t just something that happens only in our social living together. It’s also a serious problem within the Church. Pope Francis suffers when he sees divisions, conflicts and confrontations of «Christians at war with other Christians». It’s a state of things so contrary to the Gospel that he feels the need to make an urgent appeal to us: «No to the war among us».
Thus speaks the Pope: «It pains me to observe how in some Christian communities and even among consecrated people, we tolerate various forms of hate, calumny, defamation, vengeance, jealousy, desire to impose our own ideas no matter what the cost, and even persecutions that seem a relentless witch hunt. Whom are we going to evangelize with those behaviors?». The Pope wants to work for a Church in which «all can admire how we take care of one another, how we give each other mutual encouragement, and how we walk with each other».
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
