January 29, 2017
We distinguish people according to the color of their skin, according to their age, their sex, their for-mation, their social position, their achievements, their political opinion: people come in very different ways. From time to time we may encounter someone who impresses us, not because he or she is white or young or male or female, because he or she is wealthy or sportive or has a university degree. No, just someone who makes an impression on us. Who are these people? In today’s gospel, Jesus shows us people who may make an impression on us. Jesus presents people as models for us: those who are poor, who mourn and grieve, who manage to live their lives without violence, who seek to make the world a more just place. People who ask for God, who can wait for God. People who know that God can fulfill their hopes. Jesus speaks well of those who are humble and merciful, who make peace, who suffer because of their wish that everyone be treated right. This is how the friends of Jesus ought to be: humble, merciful, promoting peace, and working for a more just world. Our faith marks our lives – at least our faith should mark our lives. So, if we believe in a God who is merciful, sincere and just, we cannot be unmerciful, insincere and unjust. Faith finds its expres-sion in our lives, in the lives of people who believe in God. We are certainly people with a sense of reality – otherwise we would not be fit for our modern socie-ties. We do need this sense of reality, but I think people with faith also need a sense of potentiality: potenti-ality – I looked it up in several dictionaries – and I came to like this word: “latent or inherent capacity or ability for growth, fulfilment”; “state of being not yet evident or active”; “an aptitude that may be developed”; my definition would be: “a sense of what is possible, what is desirable, what we can aspire to.” As believers, we do not only see what the world is like now, but we also see what the world could be like, what the world should be like. So, we do thirst for justice, we want everyone to be treated right. We do see the possibilities, the potentiality for change and we aspire to it. In our eyes, the future is not determined and fixed and finished and automatic like a machine. We do not capitulate in front of the future. As believ-ers, we can leave out-trodden ways – without being mere dreamers. As believers, we see hope and future and open horizons where others don’t. As believers, we see the potentiality of our world – and we try to follow and live up to what Jesus says about his friends: we do not use violence, we are merciful, we have a pure heart, we promote peace and justice. At least this is the wish, the vision Jesus has for his friends. People with a sense of reality and at the same time people with a sense of potentiality – this is what we should be or become. In the light of faith, we can see the potentiality of our world. And we know our world embedded in God’s hands. This leads me to the words of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. In a book called “Igna-tian workout”, an American theologian [Tim Muldoon] formulated a thought of Ignatius in modern words: “With regard to any project, we must put ourselves in God’s hands as if our success depended on Him, but with regard to choosing the means and doing the work, we must labor as if everything depended on us.” Isn’t this the good mix between the sense of reality and the sense of potentiality? Choose the means we need to make the world a more just world, or at least a less unjust world with our sense of reality. And at the same time admit that it is God who created everything, who holds the world in his hands, who inspires us this sense of potentiality when we see the world through the eyes of God.
Fr Wolfgang Felber, SJ