He had to put together a team of people to accompany him on the journey of instruction in the Faith.
One of them said to him: "the most important thing about your decision is that you feel comfortable about the Church, and if you do not, then do not proceed with it."
I often get the feeling that the very active people in the Church believes that the Church = it is them.
In other words; if you do not like us, do not join us.
"Who do they think they are?" is my reaction.
These people are barriers to new people who wants to come in.
The use of the word comfortable struck me. The authentic teaching of Jesus does not indicate that first you have to find the comfort, and then you choose that, because it suits you.
The Church is not an association or a club; it is about radical CHANGE, CONVERSION.
That is very rarely comfortable.
The role of the Church is to deliver the teaching, to transmit it to us in order that we can continue to hand it down.
The best way to transmit something is by example. So a person who priorities comfort, will by their very person, prevent the transmission of the complete understanding of Christ's message.
Essentially, it all amounts to surrender.
Abandoning oneself to God, means that one is empty of oneself inside, and that one accepts whatever comes.
When we say in truth: "God, it is you I want", we are throwing ourselves out on the deep end, and we do not know what is going to happen next.
It could even be extremely uncomfortable, who knows?
The point is that one accepts internally whatever comes our way, good and bad.
Because we know that life is like that for everybody, we are not exceptions just because we adhere to the Church.
People being people, there is bound to be people in the Church that we are not comfortable with, it could even be the priest.
Is that then a reason to change church?
Anyone who emphasizes the importance of comfort first, has not understood the message of Christ.
The Passion and Crucifixion of Our Lord was not comfortable.
"Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get
away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing
things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it."
(Matthew 16, 23-25)
