October 2, 2016
“Servants don't deserve special thanks for doing what they are supposed to do. And that's how it should be with you. When you've done all you should, then say: “ Jesus says this to the apostles, to his closest friends (Luke 17,5-10). Does he want to tell them: “You are good for slavish services; you are supposed to sacrifice your-self?” Does Jesus want to say that there is a better afterlife for them if they have a good perfor-mance in this life? I know that time and again this text has been used, has been misused to keep people down in the Church, to claim self-sacrifice and slavish services with the promise of a better afterlife. This is not what Jesus wants to do. He talks to his friends, to the apostles: they have given up eve-rything – so are they entitled to claim anything from God? This is certainly what the then main-stream of the Jewish religion thought: “We make a deal with God, we perform well and God grants us a good life. I give something to God and God rewards me.” Faith becomes performance. And Jesus makes it clear: “No, you have no right on which you can insist when dealing with God. You have no claims when it comes to God’s gifts to you. Faith is not a performance for which you can claim anything from God.” Jesus brings a different image of God: the loving father, the good shepherd – a God of uncondi-tional love. God gives more abundantly than we can imagine – and he gives perhaps more abun-dantly to those who - in faith - “perform” less than we. This we sometimes do not understand; this is sometimes quite hard to accept for us. Jesus also shows us a danger in this master-slave-relation. If I perform better than someone else, then I may begin to feel superior to the other person, then I may begin to feel like a master over others. This contradicts the fundamental message of the Bible that all human beings are equal, have the same dignity, the same value as sons and daughters of God, as images of God. If we make ourselves or others slaves of this performance thinking, then we take away the dignity of others, then we try to squeeze God’s infinite and unconditional love into human norms and rules. God does not want spiritual athleticism – God invites us to collaborate in his creation, invites us to take responsibility, to hand over to others what we received from God. All this, knowing that for our life we depend upon God and his love. This reminds me of a sentence by Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. The content is: “Put all your trust in God without ever forgetting co-operation in his creation. This co-operation is precisely what your trust in God requires. But in your activity be profoundly aware that only God is powerful.” Or: “When in action, never rely on your own contribution; when trusting, always realize that you are a collaborator co-operating with God." Or in the original words of Ignatius: “Trust in God, as if the whole course of events depends on you and not on God, but fully implement your plans as if nothing needs to be done by you, but only by God.” Difficult to understand? Try to meditate this sentence a bit – “chew it”, I am sure you can get some profit out of it.
Fr. Wolfgang Felber SJ