Fathers of the first Six Ecumenical Councils
The readings assigned for this sixth weekend after Pentecost are interesting indeed. On the one hand we hear the words of Paul which exhort us to “fraternal charity,” and one the other we hear of a cure for “paralysis”, that inability to truly function in any positive way to our brothers and sisters. This stark contrast, I believe, is the message I received.
Paul exhorts us saying:
Your love must be sincere…. Love one another with the affection of brothers. Anticipate each other in showing respect…. Bless your persecutors; bless and do not curse them…. Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.
In contrast to Paul’s exhortation, we hear the story of Christ curing paralysis. In this story we hear that the scribes believed that Jesus had blasphemed because He told the man that his sins were forgiven. They harbored evil thoughts about Jesus and His thoughtfulness toward the paralyzed man.
As I listened to these readings, I thought of the fact that it often is extremely difficult for us humans to be “loving” toward others. It seems that we are paralyzed in our efforts to unconditionally love others because we need others to positively respond to us before we can love them unconditionally. We seem paralyzed to respond in an unconditional manner. We seem to base our response to others based on how they respond to us. This, of course, negates any efforts we make to actualize the potential we have to be like Christ.
Christ’s message to us is: Base your way of living not on how others treat you BUT on how you want to be treated. This means that you love your neighbors as yourself, regardless of how they treat you. We do not spiritually grow if we base our way of living on how others treat us. I know that in our modern world this does not seem to be the approach. We base our treatment of others on how they treat us. Which, I would hazard to say, makes us no different than them.
Christ called us to a higher standard. He exhorts us to treat us in the manner that we want to be treated, regardless of how they treat us. Why? If we live this way, then we become children of God – we actualize our potential to be like Jesus, the Christ.
We cannot live this way, as you might guess, if we don’t believe in God’s coming into the world – His incarnation.