AT HIS FEET, WEEPING
“The ever
increasing clash between the sacred and secular is slowly pulling European
society apart.” These are the words of The
Tablet a year ago (27.06.15) introducing an article on the thought of
Olivier Roy, who tells us, “The concept of human rights is now the dominant
normative concept” in the culture of that continent. In other words, what
drives people is no longer religion, or even the inherited culture that
religion left long after people abandoned it, but a secular agenda which has
human rights as its gospel.
Pope
Benedict tried to counter this secularist surge by reminding Europe of its
Christian roots but he was not listened to. He was like a man calling to a ship
that had already left port and is far out at sea. Pope Francis, coming from
another continent, doesn’t even try to fight the swell of secularism. He simply
says that it is an agenda that is missing something: it is losing the capacity
to bind up wounds and to heal what is broken. He is not saying that secular society
does not have a compassionate heart. You have only to think of the food convoys
the UN sends beleaguered Syrian cities. Or the advanced therapies that
professionals offer to traumatised and suffering people.
We can be
grateful for all this. But we need more: we need a form of compassion that
breaks down the divisions that caused the suffering in the first place. We need
conversion: a change in thinking and acting. There is a story in Luke’s gospel
of a woman who goes to a house where Jesus had been welcomed by Simon, a
Pharisee. She knows that she has been healed and her life has been completely
turned around. She is overcome by gratitude and pours out her feelings in
tender acts. Simon is baffled and retreats into convention. The woman is not
behaving “properly.” But the woman has been changed utterly and does not care
what people think. She is a sign of the task of the Church in the modern world.
The “secular
agenda” forges ahead regardless. It sees religion as childish – something the
world needed at one time but has now outgrown. And it seems likely that what is
happening in “developed” countries will influence societies everywhere. Sooner
or later such trends will affect us too in our part of Africa.
While the traditional
role of the Church in many societies is in tatters, something new is being born.
Francis calls the Church a “field hospital,” a place of hands-on compassion and
healing, a place for the “healing of the nations.” (Rev 22:2) What happened to
that woman in the house of Simon (Luke 7:36ff) will happen too among us and in
our families and nations. Weeping is a sign of breaking down, letting go. We
know it has a purifying effect. We can no longer hold on – to our relatives and
friends who die or even to our old life, when we suddenly become aware we were
living blindly and selfishly. And when we are broken down we can build
something new.
Perhaps this
is what our secular culture lacks: an awareness of sin. This little three
letter word has been banished from the secular narrative together with the evil
spirit. The culture speaks of mistakes, unhealthy choices and it has a sense of
evil, for example, the drug trade and human trafficking. But it seems to lack a
sense of the helplessness of people to change. Paul was so aware of this: “I do
the very things I do not want to do.” (Romans 7:20)
We do not
weep, we are not broken, by mistakes. We only weep when we get in touch with
our utter helplessness.
12 June 2016 Sunday 11 C
2 Samuel 12:7…13 Galatians
2:16…21 Luke 7:36-8:3
