Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable

As Jeremiah relates (Jer 38:4-10), prophets generally discover that challenging people, particularly powerful leaders, out of their comfort zone is thorny. Jesus’ teaching of his Father’s Kingdom was viciously rejected by the powerful and comfortable of his time too.

Famously, in the twentieth century, Dom Helder Camara, known as “the archbishop of the poor” remarked, as those in church and civil authority became more and more hostile to his support of the oppressed in Brazil: “If I give alms to the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” Similarly Archbishop Saint Oscar Romero of El Salvador, a prophetic sign of possibility to the poor, was such a threat to oppressive powers that they had him assassinated in his own cathedral while he said Mass. Our prophetic Pope, applauded for charitable action, is frequently disparaged (even by some Catholics) for his challenging prophesy.

Jesus’ message in today’s gospel (Luke 12:49-53) is that prophetic messengers demanding change to out-dated ways will always disrupt the comfortable. Just as Jesus’ prophecies were rejected by authorities and those resistant to change in his time, twenty one centuries later, adherence to Jesus challenging message creates fire and division in our society and in our church. As in Jesus’ time and in the time of the apostles, some are inclined to favour the complacent path, clinging to old ways and rules, even shunning Jesus’ core teaching of open hearted love.

“As the poet Charles Peguy warns us, “We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.” When we fail to recognise the injustices of society – to smell them and to bind them, to carry the lame and shelter the homeless, we will never bend our hearts to hear them and shout out their cries for all to hear. And change!”[Sister Joan Chittister p36]

Deacon Mark Kelly