Holy Scripture: the foundation of life in Christ
The first lines of the Letter to the Hebrews, in the New Testament, tell us that “in many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers through the prophets, and in these last times he has spoken to us through his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things.” (Heb 1:1ff.)
Thus, the history of the Old Testament, in its contexts and texts, becomes the announcement and preparation of the New Testament and, in turn, the history of the New Testament, also in its contexts and texts, becomes the fullness of the revelation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Definitive and perfect revelation by which Jesus – with the evangelist John – the disciples of all times confess him as the Word of the Father, (Jn 1,1ff) insofar as, as the word does, Jesus reveals and manifests God the Creator, the God of the Old Testament, the compassionate and merciful God the Father.
The same reason why the first Christians, like us today, also confess that Jesus is the “way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14,6) that leads us to the Father and that “whoever has seen him has seen the Father” (Jn 14,9).
In this way, the entire Word, communication or revelation of God recorded in the Holy Scripture becomes a path that prepares us (Old Testament) for the encounter with God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.
And, for this reason too, the Word of God becomes a source of faith and tradition for the disciples and for the ecclesial community. And the life, being and work of each believer and of the whole Church must be bound, regulated and conformed to the very life of Jesus, of the Son, so that, in following Him, through Him, with Him and in Him, we can become the image and likeness of the Father.
This is what Christian life consists of: becoming Christ-like, being able to cry out like Paul “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20) in order to become trinitized. Thus, the first and primordial vocation of the disciple is to live by becoming intimate with Christ (like his mother and brothers – Mt 12:50), to encounter Christ, to remain in Him (like the branches in the vine life and the branches – Jn 15) to dwell in Him and God in us.
Where does the path of the Holy Scripture lead?
The question asked Jesus by a scribe: What is the principal commandment of the law? (Mt 22:36-40) is the same question asked by man of all times: What is essential, what remains, the only valuable and most important thing in man’s life? What is it that fills human existence with truth and meaning? What is the first commandment of all? Where is the foundation, the definitive, the truth, the reason for our lives and our history? What do we have to do to be happy, to attain eternal life? How can we coincide with Jesus Christ and how can we encounter Him, with His same life plan?
For the scribe of the gospel, for His disciples of always, for all those who seek a reasonable answer to the most fundamental of questions, Jesus answered and answers us today: What matters is to love! To love God by loving one’s neighbor, because to love God IN one’s neighbor is the same commandment, synthesis and fullness of the whole law and the prophets.
Love for God IN the brother: one commandment, one and the same vocation. That is why in the New Testament, the one who says that he loves God whom he does not see and does not love his brother is a liar. (1 Jn 4.20) To the lawyer’s question Jesus adds a second commandment – similar to the first – about which no one has asked him: to love the other as God loves us.
Here is the synthesis of the life of man, of the disciple. The commandment on which religion, worship, morality and our salvation, our happiness and perfection depend. The parameter with which we must measure our conscience as Christians: to love our neighbor, as God loves us, with works, especially the most needy.
Love for God is made concrete and verified IN the love of one’s neighbor and in the fulfillment of this commandment: to love God in one’s brother, consists of true religion, true worship of the Father, the closeness and construction of his Kingdom in the world, and Christian life and commitment, because this is his will: that we love one another as He himself loves us.
For Jesus, God and man are inseparable. We cannot serve one, forgetting the other. We cannot love God without loving his children and we cannot love man without loving the Father of all. Thus, the creature, the human being, especially the smallest and most vulnerable, becomes the place of encounter with Christ, and through Christ with the Father, par excellence. Because “whatever you did to one of my little ones, you did it to me or you did not do it to me.” (Mt 25)
Therefore, the religion that Jesus lived, taught and inaugurated – just like the whole path to which the writings of the New Testament lead us – consists in discovering, loving and worshipping God IN one’s brother, with works, especially IN the most needy. Christianity, unlike all other religions, always includes in the supposed direct relationship between man and God a fallen brother, beaten on the path of life, a hungry man, a thirsty man, naked, in need of attention, service and mercy.
In Christianity, the good or bad relationship with God is measured and judged by the good or bad relationship with the other, with the weakest and most vulnerable, in whom we discover the very face of God.
To love God IN the neighbor, with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, with all one’s being, as God loves us, eternally and without measure; because the other, the neighbor, is my brother and because to love one’s brother is to fulfill the will of the Father. To love God, loving preferably the smallest, the weakest, the most needy, with works that show the truth and the effectiveness of love to the ultimate consequences: “I was hungry and you gave me food…” (Mt 25)
From the moment that Jesus pronounced this teaching, a new religion was inaugurated in which love for God is equated with love for man; a religion that has as a measure of the relationship with God the relationship with the neighbor and as a preferred and preferred place for the encounter with God the encounter with the neighbor.
Encountering Christ in our brother or sister
We have spent centuries pretending to love God without loving one another, in a Church life centered on worship and in temples, with very little or no formation and with a precarious intelligence and reasonableness of faith. This is an easy, comfortable worship tailored to our needs: a few devotions are enough, with a few sporadic rites divorced from daily life outside the temples, with some social customs, with some devotions that are somewhere between religious and superstitious, to believe that we are fulfilling our duty.
A more difficult matter is to love God, IN our brother or sister, whom I have to accept, serve, forgive and with whom I have to share even to the point of washing feet and giving my life. We have been forgetting for centuries that the second commandment, that of loving our neighbor, is similar to the first: loving God. Forgetting, like the Pharisees, the commandment of God to cling to traditions (Mk 7:8)
All of which explains – except for the exceptions and individual cases – the resounding failure of the Church in its evangelizing task, as the governing Institution of our societies and charged with impregnating personal and social life with the values and criteria of the gospel of Jesus Christ; evident and painful failure of Christianity – not of Jesus and his gospel that is about to be released and that continues to be necessary and current – in these societies mostly inhabited by men and women, rulers and ruled, with certificates of Catholic baptism, who call themselves “Christians” but with a total absence of criteria of the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth in social, political, economic, etc. relationships and structures. Societies, with much worship and very Catholic and religious in form, but full, individually and structurally and in daily life, of corruption, inequity, injustice, violence and death.
After two thousand years, it is time to walk along the path marked out for us by the New Testament to meet Christ. Time to love God less, time to leave the sacristies and the pietistic, individualistic and useless solipsism of our non-Christian “religious” practices and love one another more in order to fulfill the will of God. It is time to seek, find and love God through Christ, loving Him IN our brothers and sisters, time to worship God in the poorest and most humble, time to live doing the will of the Father which coincides with the only commandment of the Christian religion: the NEW commandment of love. “If you are going to offer your gift at the altar… go first and be reconciled to your brother.” (Mt 5,23-24).
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council marked a milestone in the history of the Catholic Church and in its awareness of the urgency of keeping up with the historical changes and new sociocultural challenges facing today’s man and, with it, the evangelizing task of the Church.
For this “aggiornamento” the Church – in all its organisms, synods, national and continental episcopal conferences, particular churches and parish communities – makes efforts today to form the faith of all the People of God, so that the Christian life of all believers (lay people, ordained ministers, religious and consecrated) may be an intelligent, reasoned, responsible and reasonable choice for Christ, “like one who is going to build a tower or like one who is going to fight a battle” (Lk 14:28).
It is in this context of faith formation that the mission and vision of the task of our Academy of Catholic Leaders and the realization of this V International Seminar are inscribed and have truth and value, so that as disciples of Christ and being in the world, without being of the world (Cf. Jn 17:16), through the encounter and following of Jesus Christ and the logic of the Gospel, we may build the reign of God in the world as “a new heaven on a new earth” (Rev 21:1)
Mario J. Paredes is CEO of SOMOS Community Care, a social care network of more than 2,500 independent providers responsible for reaching out and delivering care to more than 1 million Medicaid patients across New York City
