Let Go the Colt!

Mark narrates (Mark 11:1-11) the story of Jesus’ “bold entry” into Jerusalem with poetic brevity. The phrase “as it was already late”, part of the last verse, is likely to create a sense of urgency – no space for lethargy, no time for procrastinating! And Jesus moves forward. The disciples are with him in that journey. There were others, willing to “let go”, or “offer” what belonged to them for the sake of Jesus’ mission culminating in “sacrificing of the self”, a final overcoming of the ego!

If every single Christian takes time to read this little story and allow it to echo in their heart, will they then sense the urgency to walk with Jesus? Where will this walk take them? Are the Christians today ready, for sake of Jesus, to offer their “colt” that they jealously guard? What is that “colt” in their “heart”, in their “wallet”, that they must now “let go” for the mission of Jesus of Nazareth, the Missio Dei, the Mission of God – very different from the mission of the Christendom, particularly of the western world – to continue in God’s World?

Fundamentals of Faith

Dr S. Radhakrishnan, the late philosopher president of India once said, “Christians are ordinary people making extra-ordinary claims”. He said this when he found the professed claims of Christians were not matching their life style.

Christians, sure, are humans! And they have all the human weaknesses. But yet the world demands “a validation” from those, enthusiastically and very regularly, “professing faith”. For that is the way the world ratifies the truth of a faith.

This expectation is not a mere “worldly” one; it is also a “godly” demand. Hence, Jesus said: “If you love me, you will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (John 14:23)

One of the first things that we may want to note is that the “Word” and “Commandment” in John’s Gospel are synonymous words. Hence, “keep my word” equals “keep my commandment”.

And if we probe a little more, even the word “love” belongs to the same category. In other words, to keep the word, or his commandment, is same as to “love”. So Christians regularly pray: “Pour into our hearts such love…” And Christians are expected to repeat this until that “love” happens. It is then a useful exercise to keep repeating, day and night, the phrase “pour into our hearts love that we may in turn love”. So as God pours this love into my feeble heart “I keep his word”, or “keep his commandment”.

Or, those who regularly walk to the “Lord’s Table”, to the altar for Holy Communion, may repeat the same prayer with modified words: “May we who receive this sacrament always be strengthened to do your will”.

Second, in the writings of John “faith” is very simple. It is to love. Likewise to do God’s will is to love; to keep the words of the Lord of the Worlds is to love; to obey the commands of God is, again, to love. It is those who love have faith. When there is faith there is love.

When I love - I may not speak of faith. But still I have faith. Love that which lives and dies for the other, for sake of the other is that which marks a life of a Christian. This is precisely what Jesus offered the world at the cross. It is this love that I receive as I gather, with others, around the Lords Table.

John confirms the same elsewhere: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16b) Or, in the same chapter, John said: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who love is born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4:7)

Perhaps, not strangely, the opposite is also true. “Whoever does not love does not know God.” (1 John 4:8) Still further down in the same chapter John has some very hard stuff. He said: “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20)

From this I learn that the only way to love and serve the eternal, unseen God, is to love and serve the mortal brother and sister whom I see in my every day life; now the brother and sister, as we all know, refers to every single human with no discrimination of color, race, or creed!

Earlier, I said, to have “faith” is simple. Because all that means is “to love”. Intellectually, it is a simple truth. But in reality, as we may very well know, it is the most difficult task. And perhaps that is why Christians as frail as they are fail to live up to their faith.

A reason for the failure to “love” is “forgetfulness”. At the beginning of the day, or on Sunday, at the beginning of the week, I say to myself I will worship and serve God by my love for my neighbour. But when I really encounter my neighbour, I see my neighbour not only as a threat to my interest but also as one who pricks my bloated ego. And I forget that love in my heart and replace with hate.

But I am not left alone to struggle without any support from above. The Gospel, the Christian Scriptures, speaks of the gift of the Holy Spirit, to “remind” (John 14:25) me of the need to love! Interesting aspect in this “support” from above is my actual doing love. When I “do love” then I “receive” this “support” from above. Love is given from above to those who love, not to accumulate but to spend. So it is not magical. Neither is it something that I do with my own strength. And therefore I cannot take credit for my loving. I love because I am loved first, and I am given to love.

It is grace and the power of the Holy Spirit that makes me and enables me to love, but that grace and power is experienced and realized only in my effort to love. They are both intricately connected. That is receiving love from above and spending my love are both inter-connected.

The love in the New Testament is not an expression of love from the “left-over” of my self-love. It is, as I said earlier, a love for the sake of the other; a love in which the other takes precedence to my own self. It is a love where the needs of the other is put before ones own need. It is, therefore, a costly love.

“For God so loved the world…” is the beginning of my faith. The “eternal city of love and light”, is the goal of my feeble and fragile faith. And this city has “riches beyond imagination” for those, and for only those, who love, and live this earthly life by loving!

Gibranian Spirituality

Gibranian “spirituality” is a concept not unconnected to “morality”, a very practical aspect of day-to-day human life. Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) is a “reformer” and a “people’s philosopher” – very different from, and perhaps, opposed to the philosophy of the philosophers (often in their ivory towers). What Gibran said and advocated is moral philosophy. Ghougassian, a Gibran scholar, was of the opinion that Gibran through his writings and paintings attempted to reform “the social woes caused by injustice, ineffective traditions, and the unnatural laws that hurt the innate laws of human nature”. (Joseph P. Ghougassian, Kahlil Gibran: Wings of Thought – The People’s Philosopher, New York: Philosophical Library, 1973.)

For Ghougassian these are the chief concerns that Gibran expressed in his Spirits Rebellious. This was translated into English by H.M. Nahmad, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948; London: Heineman, 1949). The basic message of this book is put through four stories – “Madame Rose Hanie”, “The Cry of Graves”, “Khalil the Heretic”, and “The Bridal Couch”. These stories inform that the laws of the Church and the State are human made, and at present, these social laws are much decayed.

Elsewhere Gibran wrote about this social decay, dirt and deterioration thus: “If you wish to take a look at the decayed teeth of Syria, visit its schools where the sons and daughters of today are preparing to become the men and women of tomorrow.”

“Visit the courts and witness that acts of the crooked and corrupted purveyors of justice. See how they play with the thoughts and minds of the simple people as a cat plays with a mouse.”

“Visit the homes of the rich where conceit, falsehood, and hypocrisy reign. But don’t neglect to go through the huts of the poor as well, where dwell fear, ignorance and cowardice.”

“Then visit the nimble-fingered dentists, [metaphorically the leaders], possessors of delicate instruments, dental plasters and tranquilizers, who spend their days filling the cavities in the rotten teeth of the nation to mask the decay.” (Quoted from “Decayed Teeth” of Kahlil Gibran, Thoughts and Meditations, translated by Anthony R. Ferris, New York: The Citadel Press, 1960).

And Gibran poetically proclaimed that these laws of the Church and State prevent growth, “the individual to develop a self-identity”. For according to Kahlil Gibran, there can be no spiritual wellness, or health, and the human spirit will not be free if these areas of our society are not renewed and made to serve the needs of humans.

For Gibran, to be closer to God necessarily amounts to be closer to people. And he saw that religious and political leadership with all its structural paraphernalia of his time was far removed from the people and their concerns. And he perceived these institutions, both religious and political, as self-serving, prompting in him a rebellion against the leadership and revolting against the institutions, including his Maronite Catholic Church.

As for Gibran’s followers, according to Ghougassian, Gibran is a prophet, like the prophets of the Hebrew tradition, playing the “same effective social role in educating the minds in spirituality”. And Gibran’s writings on social woes are similar to that of the Hebrew poetic literature. For Gibran, like William Blake, was very much influenced by the Bible. And his spirituality was pragmatic and firmly rooted in compassion towards the more “feeble” segment of the society, whom Jesus called the anāwim, the needy ones, demanding more equity.

Gibran’s Spirits Rebellious, according to some of the early biographers, whom Ghougassian used in his study, was burnt in Beirut by the then ruling Turkish Government, and Gibran was exiled. The Maronite Church too joined the state in punishing Gibran by her own excommunication. Later biographers, however, do not seem to find evidence for this inhuman acts of the Church and State!

Gibran saw in those organizations of his time, which he was critiquing, a sense of hypocrisy, shallowness, lack of love and forgiveness, leading, to a dearth of freedom for the human spirit. He believed human spirit was endowed with a forward thrust and toward the infinite. And Gibran saw how these self-serving institutions were enslaving the human spirit from leaping towards limitless expanse of life.

At the end what I hope to communicate is that Gibran despite his rebellion, particularly against his own Maronite Church, remained an intensely spiritual person promoting, joyously, spiritual values. In fact, Gibran himself said that he was deeply spiritual though we do not see him as a practising Christian, refusing even a Christian burial at the end.

As for Gibran a person who is spiritual “does not embrace a religion” and one who embraces a religion really “has no religion”, meaning is not spiritual. In this sense Gibran is a mystic who had no inclination for any “formulated” or organized religion. He was inclined towards an intrinsic spirituality that is often described as “esoteric” religion, different from, if not opposed to “exoteric” religion. Gibran had no space for any extrinsic religion in his psyche. Gibran believed that “the extrinsic religion”, like that of any organized church, including his own Maronite Church, “promotes racial and ethnic bigotry, religious prejudice” leading the followers not only towards a religious competition but also “to discrimination, segregation and denials” of other beliefs and practices.

Ghougassian is not wrong in considering Gibran’s condemnatory stance of the religion too harsh. But what Gibran condemned was only the forms of “extrinsic” religions while upholding and even promoting intrinsic religion even when it came from beyond the Christian boundary. However, the Maronite Church that condemned Gibran was harsher and irrational in her dismissal without considering carefully Gibran’s thought on the “intrinsic” nature of religion.

In a letter to his cousin Nakhli Gibran, Kahlil Gibran wrote: “The people in Syria are calling me heretic, and the intelligentsia in Egypt vilifies me, saying, ‘He is the enemy of just laws, of family ties, and of old traditions.’ Those writers are telling the truth, because I do not love man-made laws and I abhor the traditions that our ancestors left us. This hatred is the fruit of my love for the sacred and spiritual kindness, which should be the source of every law upon the earth, for kindness is the shadow of God in man. I know that the principles upon which I base my writings are echoes of the majority of the people of the world, because the tendency toward a spiritual independence is to our life as the heart to the body.”

Gibranism, I maintain, that in spite of its anti-institutionalism, including anti-clericalism, still carries with it a sensible and a relevant spirituality to induce renewal. And this renewal is essential for the continuing safety and health of human life. Hence, Gibranism proclaimed through parables – prosaic and poetic - despite its ambiguity deserves a closer examination.

[More on this subject could be found in Henry Victor, “Scarecrow Spirituality: Exploring Gibranianism”, Religious Studies and Theology, Volume 24, Number 2, (2005), pp. 59-80.]

Pondering my Path!

I am in the latter part of my middle age! I realize I have the inclination to do what I did in the latter part of my teen – walking and wandering in the wilderness.

My walking trail, this morning, as I had been doing since the beginning of this summer, is the east of Cummings Lake in Fairview, Alberta. On the west of the lake is the well-driven road to Hines Creek and beyond into the Beautiful British Columbia. My work takes me frequently on that road. My leisure, however, directs me in the opposite.

This morning, as usual, again I secretly hoped I would encounter a black bear to make my day. Perhaps my hope was not strong enough that to happen. If it were, I would have carried my Canon PC 1130!

My preference to the backcountry has always remained steady. Now perhaps it is at the peak. This is perhaps strengthened by my sexual dysfunction, probably created by my diabetes with that additional catalyst, my inclination to becoming a hermit, at least in heart!

Not that I have acquired all the intellectual skills and physical muscles to promote my preference. I have tried in the past to learn more of natural life, exploring bird life, animal life, and wild flowers. I have also equipped myself with expensive books, telephoto lens and binoculars and so on. None of these have enabled me to see a black bear in this region.

But I did see this morning, for the first time, a newly born fawn, perhaps, born early this morning or last night. She was beautiful with her spots. The doe that looked very well fed left the fawn and started moving towards better security from an intruder. And the young one appeared confused and perhaps wondered why the mother in this desert has deserted her.

I am, I realize, is not in 60’s of the last century. On those days I would have walked towards that new beauty to make her my own no matter whether there was a road, or not! Since I will soon be 60, I decided to leave the fawn to find her mother and the doe to fend for her fawn while I retraced my path to my computer that is ready to listen to my adventure with hope for nothing.

My Journey to Emmaus!

“Emmaus never happened; Emmaus always happens” says John Dominic Crossan, a contemporary New Testament scholar of great repute! I too have made that journey! No. To be exact, I have not made that journey. I am in that journey right now.

In that journey Jesus often comes as a stranger. He, then, nudges me to take him as a fellow traveller, walking with me, listening to all my questions, feeling my fears and anxieties. Gradually, and sometimes suddenly, he turns into a kind of a wandering rabbi, a guru, teaching the obvious and dispelling that darkness. By the time it is late evening and the journey not over, I almost always consider him as a good friend to invite him into my tent.

Jesus, that wanderer, is a unique personality! He, whom I invite as my guest, ends up being my host. And the aura around him as he breaks the bread and passes the cup always unsettles me making me to want him more. But then he disappears leaving me unable to close my eyes for a very, very long time in the night.

The images of Jesus in my mind are never static. They keep changing. Sometime I look at him as a great hero mighty in word and deed before both God and human. Him as a Crucified Prophet is one that is foremost in my mind. He, of course is a puzzling mystery who appears and disappears. But when I exchange notes with his earlier disciples Peter, Cleopas, Mary Magdalene and other disciples in Jerusalem, Jesus becomes a resurrected Lord in my heart!

I am learning, now, to change my notion of Jesus, as I continue to travel Emmaus, then, is not wrong. I walk, I go through changing scenes of life, I encounter new events, I meet with new people, I read, I talk, I debate, I hear new accents, I sing new songs, I eat new food, and I am transformed both in my thoughts about Jesus and my life with him and in him. And that is the way God of the Holy Spirit, or the risen Christ, works within me. I realize, for sure, I must without any hesitation remain open to such transformation!

Spirituality, I am gathering, is a journey. Spirituality is a long walk. It is not a “one shot performance”, either in the Sunday school, or Confirmation Class, or reading a single book on spirituality, or reading all the books of a single author, or attending a conference or a single seminary training. It is a continuous Emmaus journey! I learn; I re-learn like Cleopas and his friend. I am re-trained in my discipleship to Christ, the risen Lord!

And in that journey, I am convinced, I must leave a little space for a companion to walk with me and talk with me! And that companion may, as I grow in my spirit, become an “angel” or “Jesus”!

That journey, I am learning, is training for me, where my mind and heart gets cultured in “hospitality”. This hospitality enhances my “seeing and perceiving” the “risen Christ reality” around me, present in a concentrated manner in that which I long to dismiss as “others” and “strangers”. This hospitality includes my careful listening to the outsider demanding that I put away from my faith and culture concepts and words such as “stranger” and “outsider”. Without that renunciation I cannot retain and rejoice within my circle that “risen Christ reality”!

This hospitality presupposes humility to listen. In this hospitality I am not the one, like that padre, provides the answer. I raise my questions and wait for the answers; I am willing to be corrected! In this I do not ask questions to prove my point. I ask questions. And I am open to the answers, even when it comes from a stranger.

This hospitality does not try to control my guest; in this I getting used to letting my guest controlling, if necessary, switching roles; putting me completely vulnerable in the hand of the stranger! There is “vulnerability” in being open to a “stranger”! With God, I know, I must be prepared to “loose my control”!

In this journey I am learning to enjoy such “incredible events” to take control of me and the rest of my life. I let it guide my next move, or my continuing journey! I have no plans. In fact, I have dropped all my plans of work, rest and relaxation in Emmaus. And if I return to Jerusalem I return only to exchange notes with those who are on the journey.

And that journey is impossible without that hospitality, which interferes with my comfort zone! Yes, it is a kind of hospitality that calls for a letting go of my self, my ego, my plan, my hidden agendas; it is a kind of hospitality that expects from me to cease micromanaging others; it is a kind of hospitality that readily and spontaneously switches roles; it is a kind of hospitality that is dictated and directed by the “risen Christ reality”; it is a kind of hospitality that prays, truly, “may your will be done”.

Prioritizing the Poor!

Giving priority to the poor and their concerns within the Church, at least, is as old as Christian religion. The Greek Scriptures, the New Testament, which contains the life and teachings of Jesus, portrays him as an advocate of the poor and the marginal people. Jesus’ manifesto, a quote from Isaiah that he proclaimed at the beginning of his roughly three years of ministry puts into a nutshell his concern and commitment to the poor. This reads: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”. (Luke 4:18f) Later, summarizing the life of Jesus Peter said: “… God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him”. (Acts 10:38)

Jesus’ “going about doing good”, serving the oppressed, marginal poor and the sick become the model for the life style of the early Christian community. At least this is how the later Christians perceived it. A prayer that is used in most Churches in Canada – Roman, Episcopal, and Lutheran Churches – reads: “The earliest Christian community held all things in common, and no one was in need. May we recommit ourselves to hold the goods of this world in common and to work to eliminate hunger and homelessness. For this let us pray to the Lord.” (Gail Ramshaw, Editor, Intercessions for the Christian People: Prayers of the People for Cycles A, B, and C of the Roman, Episcopal, and Lutheran Lectionaries, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1990. p. 103.)

In this we see a link between the professed faith of the contemporary church in Canada and her perceived vision of the early church, connected by this “concern and mission” to alleviate, if not eradicate “hunger and homelessness”.

The church of the Acts of the Apostles, in order to increase the effectiveness of their services to the widows and orphans, the early Christians even institutionalized that most important aspect of Christian faith by establishing “diakonia”, serving or service, particularly, “to care for orphans and widows in their distress”, along with their already established kerygma, the proclamation of the Gospel, and koinonia, the fellowship of the Christian believers. If kerygma and koinonia were fundamental, then diakonia too was. That is how the early Christians saw the spirit and structure of the newly emerging movement. For these people God is the Lord “who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who love the strangers, providing them with food and clothing”. (Deuteronomy 10:18)

Following the teachings and the living example of Jesus and deriving inspiration from the early Christian community, Christians now can learn from a long list of great champions and movements worked towards the cause of the poor and the marginal people.

Bishop Remi De Roo commending similar faith commitments to the Canadian Christians, in eighties wrote: “Concern for the poor and action on their behalf have remained the criteria for authentic Christianity throughout the ages.” (Remi De Roo, Cries of Victims-Voice of God, Ottawa/Toronto: Novalis in association with James Lorimer & Company, 1986, p. 68). And for him this “authentic Christianity” includes, among many other, the religious faith of St Ambrose (339-397), St John Chrysostom (349-407), St Augustine (354-430), and St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153).

St Ambrose, Bishop De Roo says, always taught his people “that when the rich give alms they are only returning the property they have stolen from the poor.” And for St Bernard of Clairvaux the only way the rich can enter heaven is by befriending the poor. We may also note that many of these champions of the poor also got into the bad books of their rich parishioners. And De Roo reminds us how St John Chrysostom was accused for continuously attacking the rich.

And we know even during our time Oscar Romero and many others have paid with their lives for taking up the cause of the poor in the name of their Christian faith. Such radical views of Christian caring of the poor are all part of the Christian heritage! Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and Jean Vanieer are only a few among the many that we may cite as examples for this radical Christianity from whose life and commitment we may receive greater inspiration for this concern. And what we need to note, now, is that this concern for the small and the oppressed was always kept alive throughout the Christian history.

From this discussion we learn that Christian concern for the poor, the oppressed and marginalized is in no way an innovative concern, or as some of the critiques of Christian social activism consider, it is not a newly politicized Christian faith. But rather that Christian faith demands Christians take issues of poverty, development, justice, and so on as fundamental to their faith concern.

Recognizing the increased consciousness of “justice and peace”, and writing in the eighties about the church of the future, Walbert Bühlmann said: “Christians have to learn that the option for justice, for development, for disarmament, is not the same thing as ‘going in for politics’, but an essential part of evangelization”. (Walbert Bühlmann, The Church of the Future: A Model for the Year 2001, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986. p. 108.) Christians, therefore, have begun to move beyond that unproductive, divisive dichotomy of the “spiritual gospel” versus the “social gospel” and to see that “humanization” of the poor and marginalized as the “total evangelization”.

With Eyes of the Poor!

There is some discomfort in my heart with much that happens in the contemporary Church with regard to the poor and the nations that are yet to develop. I see a lot of irrelevance in the way we go about. If our concern for the poor has to become relevant there should be a shift towards the perspectives of the poor. “Justice” not “charity” that should be the priority. C.S. Song, a prominent Asian Theologian once said, “compassion that does not oppose injustice is not true compassion; it becomes an accomplice of unjust power” (C.S. Song, Theology from the Womb of Asia, London: SCM Press, 1988. p.156).

Christian concern for the poor must enhance the self-worth of the poor by working towards justice. Feeding, clothing, housing, teaching, counselling, training, loving, and so on that fills our Christian activism must transform the “doer” to accept the recipients of our doing as humans and equals.

The “doing” in our Christian concern for poor must decrease “dependency” and increase “self-reliance”. Christian activism must move towards finding more “permanent” solution, addressing the cause of poverty instead the symptom by constantly challenging false answers, overcoming prejudices, and eventually moving towards one community – no rich, no poor.

And this requires, first, a vision of the reality of the poor through the eyes of the poor. Therefore, Virgil Elizondo and Leonardo Boff, two prominent Latin American Liberation theologians, calling this as the Church’s preferential option for the poor, wrote: “When we enter the continent of the poor and try to think through their eyes and from their social position, we discover their strength, their resistance, their courage and their creativity. It then becomes clear that the society within which they live and suffer and from which they are marginalized has to be fundamentally transformed. From the position of the poor the urgency of liberation is beyond doubt.” (This and other quotes below are taken from their “‘Editorial: theology From The Viewpoint Of The Poor’” in Concilium – Option For The Poor: Challenge To The Rich Countries, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd, 1986.)

Second, they argued, in preferential option for the poor, we take up the cause of the poor. For Elizondo and Boff: “The cause of the poor is the cause of life and means of life such as work, bread, clothing, housing and basic education. The cause of the poor is a new society in which the vital questions which concern all citizens without distinction are given priority, in which relations of collaboration and equity prevail over exploitation and domination.”

Thirdly, Elizondo and Boff affirmed that in preferential option for the poor we take up the struggle of the poor. They wrote: “It is the oppressed who bring about liberation. They become aware of their dignity, organize their action, form links with other groups, which, like them, want a different society. The churches should join this struggle, make their specific contribution as religious bodies, reinforce the power of the poor to enable them to press for changes and participate in their implementation.”

Fourthly, they believed that option for the poor means taking up the life of the poor, as they wrote: “The option for the poor is not authentic unless we participate, at least a little, in the life and suffering of the poor…Support for the struggles of the poor frequently means suffering misunderstanding, persecution and even moral and physical injury.”

Fifthly, for Elizondo and Boff, preferential option for the poor, involves an identification of the mechanisms, which produce poverty. “The poverty of the poor is a result of a combination of causes, and first the international capitalist system and the relations of dependence and oppression it establishes between the nations at the center of the system and those at the periphery…The benefits are, on the whole, accumulated by the countries which are already highly developed or by the social classes in the poor countries which exercise social control in association with the multi-national interests of capital. The sacrifices are borne by those who are already poor and exploited. Development and underdevelopment are linked by a causal connection which makes them two sides of the same coin…If the churches and the theologians do not develop a critical attitude towards the socio-economic system within which they live, they run the risk of becoming mere reformists, reproducing the system in slightly improved form, rather than allies of the poor, who are demanding a once-for-all replacement of the existing system by another which makes possible more equality and life for all.”

And finally, they see preferential option of the poor redefining the task of theology for them and others who are committed to the poor, the oppressed, and marginal people in the world. “A theology today which does not place at the center of its concern the poor, justice, freedom and liberation will have difficulty in refuting the accusation of alienation and even cynicism, and will in the end become totally irrelevant…Without the poor the church loses its Lord and theology its evangelical content.”

Catholic Latin American Liberation theologians generally accept Pope John XXIII as the source of this revolutionary concept. For Pope John XXIII even prior to the Vatican II viewed the Church to be “the Church of all, but principally the Church of the poor.” And it is also accepted Pope John Paul II keeps repeating and reaffirming the same when he says: “The option for the poor is my daily concern.”

Thus, we may note, the Christians committed to the concern for the poor and the marginal today have been moving towards a bias towards the poor accepting the broad conceptual leadership provided by the Roman Catholic Church. This is very clearly reflected in the prayer used by the Canadian Christians following the ecumenical lectionary. Hence one of the prayers set aside for fifth Sunday after Pentecost reads: “We thank you, O God, that you favour the poor, the meek, the oppressed, the homeless, and the hungry. Make your compassion contagious that the rich might share with the poor, the strong befriend the weak”. The pastoral stance for the option for the poor is actually a response to a theological realization that God favour’s the poor, an aspect that is a guiding thought to the liberation theologies that takes the cause of the poor with utmost seriousness.

However, those who used the phrase “option for the poor”, particularly the Latin American Liberation Theologians, were aware that this was no small concern but one that involves large shifting for the Church that was not poor and hitherto had the sympathies and appreciation of the rich. These theologians were aware that this phrase was not for a mere announcing to the poor: “God loves you by preference” and do nothing. But closely connected with the words of Jesus to the learned lawyer to whom Jesus related the Parable of the Good Samaritan and said: “Go and do likewise”. In this regard Berryman makes an obvious but important point recognizing in it a call for a “change of heart” for the non-poor, for it is only the non-poor who can opt for the poor.

From this we learn that the challenge before the Christian community in Canada is, as Alfred T. Hennelly, another Jesuit commentator of liberation theology from United States puts it, “not only to accept and embrace this preferential option, but above all to translate this theoretical commitment into a creative and effective action on behalf of the poor majority of humanity”.