Miséricordiae et Misère (Mercy & Misery)
Dear Friends,
Happy Women's Day to you! Let me
add some beans into your soup.
It is the human mechanism of the mind
that, when given an occasion wherein one party is more at the receiving end
than the other, it tends to accuse the mightier while having pity over the
weaker. For example, in the case of marital abuse, it is often the man who is
made the culprit while the woman is justified. Or in the case of abortion, the woman
is always accused while the silent cry wins over sympathy always. Or in the case
of rape, the muscle-makers are often condemned while the life-bearers are sympathized. Likewise, when it comes to moral issues concerning the Church and
the larger society, the former is often accused to be conservative while the latter
is being flared up as pro-liberalists. In this way, when it comes to the
Church and women, Church is always given masculine treatment while Mary is
hailed as an icon of the feminist movement.
But the difference between the
Church and the above-mentioned human tendency is that the Church refrains from such an exercise of dichotomizing power which fundamentally gives the green card to one party while the other is condemned. Instead, in that place, the
Church is occupied with creating a more win-win situation such that none of the
party is left abandoned and wherein prevails, to use the Augustinian term, only two
inclusive possibilities: miséricordiae et
misère (Jn 7, 53 – 8, 11). This way, the church is neither traditional nor
progressive, but it tries to be more human in preaching the Incarnated Message of God who was bent on becoming one like us. The Church is therefore evangelic
in its approach than falling prey to any categorical thinking or construction,
I believe.
Secondly, the term Ecclesia in Greek means the assembly
from which derives the term Church. While priests make up only one element of
the assembly, it includes the people of God (for where there is no people,
there is no assembly), rites, rituals, customs, etc. In brief, assembly is the people of Alliance who are greater and larger
than priests, the should-be-servants-of-Christ following the words of their
master, “No servant is greater than his
master” (Jn 15, 20). Hence while the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Religious, and all the clergy are not the Church in themselves. Mind you that this
position is very different from the ‘Not All Men’ purification. It simply
asserts the point that the ‘Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts’. In
short, even if we say all priests, to make it all-inclusive as it is applicable
to other denominations as well, they still make only one constitutive part of
the Assembly.
Finally, it might be consoling to
notice that, theologically speaking, the Church has always identified itself as
‘She’ and not ‘He’. And in the liberation theology of Asia, when speaking
of the compassion of God, Aloysius Pieris, a Sri Lankan Jesuit, and a theologian
speaks of the Incarnated Son as ‘She’ when he says: “Mercy is the sacrifice that pleases the Lord and makes us most like her”
(A. PIERIS, “One
of Francis’ Many Dreams for the Year of Mercy”, Vagdevi, N°19, January 2016, 5).
All that was said would sum up therefore
to say that the Church, when faced with the incidents that wound her with
cutting edges such as that which is being reported in Kerala on 6th
of March, 2017, is neither passive nor does she maintain silence. But she is
reading and discerning her signs of the time at hand ever more fervently than
before. Either in Asia or in Africa, either in Europe or in America, or in any
seen or unseen corner of the world, she is trying to be more compassionate
because she is becoming increasingly aware of her humanness and, in that, her rightlessness
to judge. For, “there is only one lawgiver
and he is the only judge and has the power to acquit or to sentence. Who are
you to give a verdict on your neighbor?” (Jm 4, 12) It follows that all our mundane judgments, as a
result, are according to the human-maid laws and, therefore, they lack
compassion.
Faced with such incidents as
recently being reported, would it be said that the God of Christianity, the God
of compassion, would give up His own essence – ‘compassionate’? No! God cannot
but be compassionate. And it is in this steadfast compassion that God
establishes His Justice which human justice is incapable of grasping. For,
“The King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world…Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’. Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me’. Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Mt 25)
Happy Women's Day to All Who Recognize Their Animus Within!
[Image: Courtesy Google]
