The problem is, there is a clear resistance to discipleship in the Church. At the core of it are the same kind of people who closed their minds to Jesus so fanatically in the Gospels that it eventually led them to kill him. These are the “Pharisee party” (not known by that name, of course), who typically — now as well as then — are the most “established” or “accredited” members of the Church. In the Gospels these are clearly and repeatedly identified as the three categories of “chief priests,” “scribes,” and “Pharisees.”
The “chief priests” were the higher clergy. The scribes were the officially approved “teachers of the Law,” which included doctrine as well as rules. And the Pharisees were members of a reform movement who insisted most inflexibly on keeping all the rules and spoke out most strongly against those they perceived as bending them. What the three had in common, that united them against Jesus, were prestige, power, and a complacency in what they were teaching and doing that made them resistant to anything new.
The key to the Catholic spirit is a recognition of mystery. The teaching that comes from God himself, and the New Law of Jesus are so far beyond human understanding that we can only grow into them through commitment to that open-minded, never-ending faith formation the American bishops begged for in their letter Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us. If we ever think we “understand” our religion, we have denied the faith!
To order your own Daily Reflections for the Immersed in Christ program, click here to visit http://www.immersedinchrist.com/.
Click here to subscribe to Daily Mass Readings delivered by email.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave your comments!