Think and Feel with the Church

Fourth Sunday of Easter Year C
Good Shepherd Sunday
Pilgrimage 13 - (Anticipated Mass in Lisbon)

As we come to the end of our pilgrimage, I would like to thank all of you for being good sheep that have listened attentively and obediently to the voice of your shepherd. Some would call it blind docility. Others would call it basic survival skills. Whatever may have been the reason for your exquisite cooperation, it has been a blessing and a privilege to have guided you through this entire journey of faith and discovery. We are thankful that we have lost no one on this trip.

What has been the secret of us staying safe, staying focused, staying on the right path? Our Lord provides us with the answer: “The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice.” Listening is at the heart of the Christian life. But if we wish to listen, we should start with obeying. Obedience comes from the Latin “to listen” (obedire). Obedience, according to St Augustine, is “the mother and guardian of all other virtues.” It ensures a life of goodness because it entails hearing and following God, the source of all goodness. This obedience is not for some in the Church but for all, from the child kneeling in the pew to the Pope presiding in Rome.

God alone is this obedience owed and given, but it is given to God through the Church because God gives Himself to us through the Church. Here is where many begin to engage in hypocritical casuistry. Some would claim that they are obedient to God but not to men, like the Pope or bishops, or man-made institutions like the Church. But God places us in a Church as a part of the body where Christ is the head, and we are the parts. This is why our Lord chose not to appear to Thomas in the gospel of Divine Mercy Sunday until he was prepared to return to the community of believers, the Church. As much as the Church is maligned and judged for the failures of her shepherds and members, there is no denying that our Lord instituted the Church to be the redemptive tool of the world, to continue to shepherd His flock, with Him as the Head and the body, with all its different parts working together to bring redemption to the world.

One phrase that captures this principle of listening to the voice of the Shepherd through His Church is, “to think with the Church;” or, in St Ignatius of Loyola’s formulation, sentire cum ecclesia. “Sentire”, of course, is not simply “to think,” which in English is often meant in a cold, rational way. Other words that are used to translate sentire are sense, feel, and perceive. “Feel” is a great translation that can also carry connotations of “think” except that “feel” can also imply the lack of rational thought.

What does it really mean to “think with the Church”? For one thing, thinking with the Church means giving a unique respect to our bishops and to the Pope. A filial love for our shepherds is a necessary expression of wanting to listen intimately to the voice of the Good Shepherd. We must, however, acknowledge that sometimes shepherds speak with their own voices rather than with that of Christ and the Holy Spirit. And this is the reason why confusion, heresy and even schism can break the unity of the Church and disrupt her mission.

We must, therefore, make a distinction between what is and is not meant to think and feel with the Church. First, it might be helpful to describe what the Church is not. The lay faithful are not pawns who are to take marching orders from their priests and bishops, nor bishops from the Pope. The Church is not a secret organisation where information (or revelation) is possessed in full only at the top and then is distributed selectively and imperfectly throughout. To think with the Church does not mean “to let the Church think for you.” Discernment is required.

But discernment without a guide or standard may lead us to error, that is to substitute Christ’s teachings with our own personal opinions. This, then, is precisely why the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church as a guardian and servant of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, is so necessary if one desires to think with the Church. Magisterial interventions serve to guarantee the Church’s unity in the truth of the Lord. They aid her to ‘abide in the truth’ in the face of the arbitrary character of changeable opinions and are an expression of obedience to the Word of God. The Magisterium exists precisely for the purpose of ensuring that the Church can authoritatively distinguish what derives from faith and what is merely an opinion. Even Popes and bishops must submit to the Magisterium as faithful servants as much as they are the very teachers whose teaching authority flows therefrom.

Episcopal and papal authority depends on obedience to what has been revealed and handed down by means of the Holy Spirit. To be a teacher of the faith is first and foremost to be a learner of it. Though bishops and the Pope have specific teaching roles, the whole Church is a listening Church, a learning Church and so the whole Church is the teaching Church. Our mission is to conform to what has been taught so that we in turn may be true teachers of the word. A person ceases to be a teacher of the faith when he ceases to let himself be instructed by universal tradition. Our teaching must be shaped by our obedience to universal tradition and never by our own ideas, by our own standing, or by our own times. This is what it means to listen to the Good Shepherd instead of talking or shouting over Him.

During his papacy, Pope Francis proposed that we follow the synodal path of becoming a listening church. That is indeed a noble idea. But to be truly listening, we must first be ready to listen to our Lord who has spoken through scripture and Tradition through the ages. If not, we will end up listening to the spirit of the world, instead of the Spirit of Christ and be misled ourselves and in turn lead others astray. We can have a listening Church only if we have an obeying Church. Obey; listen; proclaim. God has spoken; our task is to hear that Word and speak from it. We are not to speak from our times but to our times from God’s Word. Only then, can we be assured of being partakers of eternal life and not be lost.

As we depart from Lisbon for home, continue to listen carefully to the voice of the Shepherd in whatever situation you may find yourself. You came here as pilgrims. You will leave here as missionaries bringing the good news of Jesus Christ with you to the ends of the earth. But first, let us start with our neighbourhood and parish!

Listen and See

Thirty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

What connects the first reading to the gospel is that fundamental Jewish statement of belief which provides us with the first part of the daily prayer of every Jew. “Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.” “Listen, Israel: the Lord our God is the one Lord.” If one were to understand the two-fold commandment of love which follows this statement, one needs to unpack and grasp the width and depth of this profound and supreme testimony of the Jewish faith, and by extension, the Christian faith.

The Hebrew word “Shema” translated as “listen” or “hear” deserves our attention. It is no coincidence that the first of the Apostles, Simon Peter, takes his Hebrew name from this word – “Shimon”. That is irony for you. Although, Simon Peter responded to the call of our Lord by listening, it would appear that his listening was often selective and did not lead him beyond a superficial and shallow understanding of our Lord’s identity and his mission as a disciple. His listening would be impaired until he “saw” the Risen Lord with his own eyes. This seeing would complete his listening.

But let us go back to our original verb. Listening goes beyond exercising one’s auditory sense. Listening must lead to understanding and understanding to acceptance. For the Jews, it shaped both their culture and world-view. This is how Moses describes the supreme revelation on Mount Sinai: “Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Dt 4:12). There was a profound difference between the two civilisations of antiquity that between them shaped the culture of the West: ancient Greece and ancient Israel. The Greeks were the supreme masters of the visual arts: art, sculpture, architecture and the theatre. Their culture focused on sight. Jews, as a matter of profound religious principle, were not. God, the sole object of worship, is invisible. He transcends nature. He created the universe and is therefore beyond the universe. He cannot be seen. In fact, it was strictly prohibited to make a visible representation of God.

The God of Israel reveals Himself only in speech. Yes, His presence was sometimes mediated by angelic beings and natural and supernatural phenomena like a pillar of cloud and fire, a flaming bush, lightning and thunder. But though these pointed to God’s power and sovereignty, they were never understood to be a visible manifestation of God, just signs of His presence. Therefore, the supreme religious act in Judaism is to listen. Ancient Greece, on the other hand, was a culture of the eye; ancient Israel a culture of the ear. The Greeks worshipped what they saw; Israel worshipped what they heard. We Christians, thankfully, are heirs of both culture and our liturgy perfectly expresses both paradigms. Both hearing and seeing mark the two pillars of our sacramental economy and the Holy Mass.

When God chooses to reveal Himself to us, He is revealing His will for us, He is giving us His Law. The primary meaning of the word Torah is the Law! It would seem to follow that a book of laws or commandments must have a verb that means “to obey”, for that is the whole purpose of an imperative. Yet there is no verb in biblical Hebrew that means to obey. The closest word to obedience is “listen.” Where there seems to be a lacunae in the Hebrew language, the word for “obedience” in Latin binds the two concepts - “obidere” means “to listen, to submit and to be responsible.”

Despite its intense focus on Divine commandments, the Jewish faith is not a faith that values blind, unthinking, unquestioning obedience. There is no true listening or authentic obedience, if we do not internalise the commandments. The God of revelation is also the God of creation and redemption. Therefore, when God commands us to do certain things and refrain from others, it is not because His will is arbitrary but because He cares for the integrity of the world as His work, and for the dignity of the human person as His image. He reveals His laws to us, He commands us to obey, because He loves us, and He wants us to make love the foundation of our entire being and way of behaving and relating.

This is how we must understand the two-fold commandment of love. It is insufficient that we hear the command to love God and neighbour and profess it with our lips and then claim to know it. Listening must lead to understanding and understanding lead to acceptance, but such acceptance must be shown forth in action. To prove ourselves to be good listeners, it must be “seen” in our actions.

That is why it is not enough that our Lord enunciates the commandment of love and commands us to listen. That is the theory. He then demonstrates the perfect fulfilment of this commandment through an example which can be seen - His own death and resurrection. On the cross, we hear His words of complete abandonment and obedience to the Father and on the cross, we saw the most powerful testimony and evidence of His love.

This is how we should treat the commandment of love as how the Jews treated the Shema. It is the greatest command and the first prayer a Jewish child was taught to say. God gave His people the Shema and instructed them to recite it daily, memorise it, meditate on it, teach it, instruct it, put it on their clothing and post it on the doorframes of their home. God wanted to remind them of loving God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength every time they woke up, put on their clothes and entered or left the home. It is the quintessential expression of the most fundamental belief of Judaism.

Likewise, for us Christians too. Love must be the quintessential expression of the most fundamental belief of Christianity. For the Jews, following the Law or the Torah was their way of expressing this fundamental commandment. But for us Christians, we fulfil this commandment by imitating Christ. Our Lord is essentially saying, “to follow Me is to love God and to love others.” In the Gospel of John, our Lord tells us, “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples…” (John 13:34-35). The newness of this commandment is not found in its content but in its standard. Christ is the new standard. He is the Incarnation of love whom we can listen to and see. And therefore, if we wish to love God and neighbour, we should love as He did.