Through Jesus Christ, God’s own broad, deep, and all-inclusive worldview is made available to us. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the point of the Christian life is to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by the cross, which is God’s great act of solidarity instead of judgment. This is how we are to imitate Jesus, the good Jewish man who saw and called forth the divine in Gentiles like the Syrophoenician woman and the Roman centurions who followed him; in Jewish tax collectors who collaborated with the Empire; in zealots who opposed it; in sinners of all stripes; in eunuchs, pagan astrologers, and all those “outside the law.” Jesus had no trouble whatsoever with otherness.
If we are ready to reclaim the true meaning of “catholic,” which is “universal,” we must concentrate on including—as Jesus clearly did—instead of excluding—which he never did.
The only thing Jesus excluded was exclusion itself.
--Fr. Richard Rohr
Image source: Brunswick Monogrammist (anonymous Netherlandish painter), Parable of the Great Banquet, c. 1525, https://stephencook.com.au/2021/07/09/jesus-and-non-resistance-the-parable-of-the-wedding-garment/
Quotation source
Quotation source
No comments:
Post a Comment