Touching Through Barriers....
I just left this month's talk for First Tuesdays: Spirituality
in the City. The speaker today was Dr. Martha Orphe. She made a very important point. As good
as it is to have compassion and sympathy for those in difficult situations and
those on the wrong end of crime and violence in cities like New Orleans, it is
only when you “feel their pain” that you really can understand what their lives
are really like. It means you have to get close enough to the realities of
tough situations to feel the real struggles. It is then that sympathy becomes empathy. Although Pope Francis said this to priests in
his 2013 Chrism mass, it is something for all of us. We need to be “shepherds living with ‘the smell of the sheep’, shepherds
in the midst of their flock”
Pastor at the First
Street Peck Wesley United Methodist Church in Central City Dr. Orphe told us
about a recent shooting where a teenager was killed. Her point was that you
have to feel the horror and grief, in this case over a senseless loss of life.
You have to understand the conflict between horror, the kind of anger that wants retribution,
and the struggle to answer it with faith. Only in reaching for faith
while trying to act in forgiveness and mercy can a cycle of violence be broken.
To me this is the art of Pope Francis. He reaches out and touches people where they
are. Oddly enough I see this reflected
in Vatican II documents. To me what is revolutionary about the Council is that
it broke down some of the barriers that had built up in the church. “it is much
more the necessary that priests, under the leadership of the bishops and the
Supreme Pontiff wipe out every kind of seperateness” (Lumen Gentium 28). Not
only was the church monarchical at the time, its clergy was treated, and
sometimes expected to be treated as royalty. Yet the gathered bishops wrote that they are
to use “their authority and sacred power…remembering that he is greater should
become lesser and he who is chief become as servant (LG 27) . They echoed the
words of Jesus to his disciples in (Luke 22:26, Matthew 20:26).
So we all need to be willing to smell like sheep, reach out and
touch, and shed tears. Willing to help carry the cross………………..
Please join us for First Tuesdays: Spirituality in the City
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