How blessed are you who are poor:
the kingdom of God is yours.

Luke 6:20

These days people are teetering on the edge of an abyss, with the threat of terrorism in the background. The security to which most people cling is mere illusion. We are not secure walking the streets of a large modern city. In planes, we never know if we’ll stay up or not. Wars flare up in almost every part of the world. So where is the security that we seem to value so dearly?

God doesn’t give us this material security. He offers instead faith, a faith which begins, in a sense, where reason ends.

Security begins when we love God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, and our neighbour as ourselves.

We must, like Christ, be paradoxical. Christ said, “All who draw the sword will die by the sword,” (Matthew 26:52) but he also said, “It is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) Paradox!

Nothing upsets our civilization more than the paradox surrounding security. We don’t want risk and insecurity. But choosing a security that doesn’t follow Christ can be killing us, spiritually.

God offers us risk, danger, and an insecurity that leads to perfect security. His security begins when we start loving God with our whole heart, our whole mind, and our whole soul, and our neighbour as ourselves. This can never be overstressed. If we do not clothe our lives with his love, we shall perish.

To love one’s neighbour is the ultimate risk. It may even mean death for my brother’s sake. For this kind of loving, we have the Holy Spirit in us. With his help, we shall be able to love our neighbour. With him, we shall have the courage to risk loving our neighbour. It is a tremendous risk, because we are also asked by Christ to love our enemies. Once we have entered into Christ’s command to love as he loved us, (John 15:12) we have the power and grace, the charisms, to change enemies into friends and beloved neighbours.

All this sounds very idealistic and perhaps quite unobtainable. Christ assures us it is attainable. It is through little steps taken day after day that one slowly accepts the other as he or she is, and begins to love totally, tenderly, compassionately.

Why settle for a pale reflection of Christ’s teachings?

Christ calls each one of us. He calls us directly. There is no compromise in his call: “Anyone who is not with me is against me.” (Matthew 12:30) “You are my friends, if you do what I command you.” (John 15:14) We can find umpteen quotations in the gospel that will vividly bring to our minds and hearts how simply and insistently Christ calls us to become like him and to accept his law of love without compromises.

Why do we not try the way of love, the way of the gospel? Why do we not apply the gospel without compromise to our personal, national, and international lives?

To solve our problems we seem to have tried everything that our intelligence and genius can come up with. But so far, if we are to be judged by the fruits of the tree, (Matthew 7:16–20) we certainly have not succeeded. Nor are we leaving our children a better world to live in. On the contrary, we are leaving them an even more chaotic world than the one we inherited.

The answers to our problems, however, rest in the gospel. How simple and how timely it is! It is like a light shining in the darkness. Why is it then that we who are Christians refuse to even try the clear answers of the gospel? Why do we wish to constantly compromise, water down, and eliminate from the gospel whatever is too hard for us? Why settle for a pale reflection of Christ’s strong words and loving teachings?

It is imperative that we go back to the source of all things—the gospel. Many people read books about the gospel much more than they read the gospel itself. Their knowledge of the Glad News may be fairly superficial. Before we can proclaim the gospel with our lives, we need to know the gospel, to read the gospel.

The gospel can be summed up by saying that it is the tremendous, tender, compassionate, gentle, extraordinary, explosive, revolutionary law of Christ’s love. Christ calls us to become like him. But what did he do? In the gospel, we hear that the people wanted to make him king, because he gave them material things—fed them bread and fishes, raised the dead, cured the sick. But he fled, out of their way, for his kingdom is not of this world. (John 6:5–15) To the contrary, Jesus did his greatest work when he was nailed to a cross, helpless, unable to give anyone anything except love and his life. This redeemed us.

Do not hide the price that you pay for living the gospel, because this gives hope to others.

Whether living in humble apartments, suburban homes, or palatial dwellings, people are talking about God. Their minds are preoccupied with his strange and eternal fascination. Do they deny him? They cannot do it calmly. Do they accept him? Some accept him with great passion. Alas, in most instances, those who say they believe in him are lukewarm and far from passionate in their expression, as if they were not quite sure of themselves. There is no dynamism, no Pentecostal fire burning in them.

But certain signs of an awakening are becoming visible. Today many Christians are coming to the poor more as servants than as benefactors. And many people are turning to prayer.

Yet something seems to be still missing—a vibrant, passionate totality of commitment. What is missing is a cry out of the very depths of our souls for an increase of faith that would transcend all limits of time and space. What is missing is the vision that faces every event of life in the light of Christ’s teaching. What is missing is a discernment that distinguishes between a security that depends on ourselves and the security of faith which is the heritage of the Christian.

Cast your eyes around the whole world. So many people still don’t know Jesus’ name. Let’s face it. If the world is atheistic—if much of it has not yet heard the Good News or has not accepted it, then the main fault lies with us Christians who have not lived the gospel. We have watered down the gospel message.

Christianity became an affair of ethical, moral behavior; of going to church; of learning rules to get to heaven. The gap between the reality of the gospel and the watered down teaching is reaping its harvest of damage.

The Christian problem is not that we seem to be living in diaspora. The problem is that we Christians do not understand that the world is always hungry for the reality that is Christ. There is a massive search for God taking place—the God of Christians. People are searching for the carpenter of Nazareth, the poor itinerant preacher, the God-man who died for love of us.

Perhaps it seems a bit farfetched to say that young rebels are pilgrims of the Absolute, that those who take drugs are searching for God. But many of us know this is so, because we meet them constantly and listen endlessly to their hunger for spiritual things, for a meaning in life. We see in their confusion the eye of the hurricane.

Today, across a confused world, people seek the real Christ, the Christ of the gospel, the one people have read about but cannot seem to find. In their seeking, people ask, “How can I find Christ? Why does he seem to be so illusive, so unreal, so difficult to meet?” It seems to me that the answer to these questions is exceedingly simple—we meet Christ in a real Christian.

What a strange and seemingly simplistic answer. Yet, it is the true answer. I don’t think there is another. People have to be shown. The time of mere talking is over.

After his resurrection, Christ showed his disciples his wounds and they believed. These wounds were visible signs of Christ’s love for them and for all of us. No one needed to say anything, least of all Christ. Thomas the Doubter was the only one who spoke. (John 20:24–29)

We must likewise show the wounds of Christ to others, for then they will believe. This is what people are seeking today—someone who will show them the wounds of Christ so that they may touch him and be reassured. How do we get those wounds? By living the gospel without compromise. For we who follow a crucified God, are also called to be crucified. It is important that we do not hide from each other the price that we have to pay for living the gospel, because this gives hope to others.

Empty your heart of all the things that are not God.

Yet we ought to go further. Christ prepared breakfast on the beach for his friends. (John 21:12) We, too, by our service, can show how much we love our brethren, all those who are seeking the Lord.

But even all this—to show the wounds, to prepare meals—is not enough. One can symbolically open one’s heart with a lance, by taking that lance into one’s own hands, so as to become able to accept all human beings as they are, without wanting to change or to manipulate them. That we are together is a benediction and a joy in itself.

People will not know God unless we, their neighbours, their brethren, show Christ to them with his own tremendous love. Then they may once again say what was said of the early Christians, “See how these Christians love one another.”

We are called to open the doors of our hearts and to open the doors of our homes. It is essential that we accept people as they are, and that we serve them, and that we show them the wounds of our love. Love is always wounded because love and pain are inseparable. Even as a young woman barely falling in love is worried about her boyfriend traveling on a snowy road to Chicago, so in the love of people for each other, pain is interwoven. There is no love without pain.

But how do we acquire these wounds that we are called to show? Where do we get the strength to cook supper for someone when we ourselves are already exhausted by the day’s toil? How do we get strength to open the doors of our heart which we so readily want to close against the noise of our incredibly noisy world?

Let’s face it. We cannot love the way we ought to. God alone can love us that way. So we need to empty our hearts of all the things that are not God. By emptying ourselves according to his commandments of love, and with his grace, we can allow God to love in us.

The Lord commanded us to love our enemies. Until we do, we cannot show Christ to others. We are asked to lay down our lives for our brethren. Words are not enough. But a loving glance, a word, a breakfast cooked for a friend, a welcome through an open door into an open heart, these will do it. It is only then, when my brother has been filled with my supper, when he has beheld my wounds of love for him, when he has experienced a totality of acceptance, only then will he be open to glad news.

Humanity today is the “Doubting Thomas” who wasn’t there when Christ appeared to the apostles after his resurrection. Humanity today needs to touch the wounds of Christ in order to believe, to be converted. Then, people will come to the Lord in thousands, perhaps in millions.

Does living the gospel mean demolishing our comfortable way of life?

The only way to show these wounds of Christ to others is to live the gospel without compromise. Does that mean that we must turn our lives upside down? Does it mean a complete change of values? Does it mean breaking up, demolishing our comfortable way of life? Quite simply, yes, it does.

It would be better to stop calling ourselves Christians—followers of Christ who is Love—than to scandalize our brothers and sisters by going through the motions of being Christians, rendering lip service only.

When we who call ourselves Christians show forth the gospel in our lives, then the searchers for God, these pilgrims of the Absolute, will see him and touch him, and they will believe.

It is time that we show people the face of the resurrected Christ in whom we and all creation have our being. It’s time that we cease to bemoan our miseries and begin to love one another, to form communities of love to which all others can come—communities where people can touch, see, and feel the wounds of Christ. We who work in the front lines of spiritual warfare know that this is the only answer for a world which seeks so desperately for meaning in life.

People are bewildered by the insatiable greed of the military complex. We find intolerable the monotony of the assembly line that kills our spirit. Bewilderment continues as we see the waste of world resources. These and other questions have coalesced into one: “Who is God?”

People are slowly beginning to understand that only through God and only by living his command to love will the problems of our tragic days be solved—only by a love that is face to face, person to person. This is the moment for us who call ourselves Christians to begin facing one another on a one-to-one basis. Each person needs to know that he or she is loved, loved as a friend, loved as a brother or sister in Christ. This can only be done person to person. It cannot be done en masse.

It is only in the eyes of another, in the face of another, that we can find the icon or image of Christ. There are many ways of praising God, many ways of praying to him, many ways of searching for him. But today there is one great way, one profound way, one gentle, tender, and compassionate way. It is by a person-to-person love. We can make the other aware that we love him. If we do, he will know that God loves him.

Following Christ means living dangerously.

We are required to openly declare either our allegiance to Christ or nonallegiance to him. The story of the disciples who had to choose repeats itself among us. Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15) Peter, replying for himself and the other apostles, openly declared himself for Jesus. It is time we do likewise and stop fooling around.

Many of the disciples found Christ’s words too hard, admitted it, and left him. (John 6:67) It is time for us to face God and tell him either, “Yes, Lord, we are with you, for where else can we go?” or, “No, Lord, your sayings are too hard, and we will not follow you any longer.”

A sense of deep sadness comes over me when I think of how Christians sit on the fence. What is the matter with us? Have we forgotten that we are followers of a crucified Christ? Have we forgotten that from the moment he began preaching, he walked in the shadow of death? Have we forgotten that following him means taking the greatest risk that anyone can take? Have we forgotten that following him means living dangerously?

It seems that we have spent centuries trying to eliminate the risk and the danger of his call. It seems that we have cushioned the risk and practically eliminated any and all danger by drawing up a set of moral rules that allow us to feel a human security instead of the holy insecurity Christ calls us to—rules that lull our conscience to sleep instead of making it wide awake and ready to undertake the risks of being a Christian.

Christ said that if we are not with him, we are against him. (Luke 11:23) How do we measure up to this saying of his? Are we really with him? Are we ready to give up father, mother, sister, and brother, in the sense he means it, as following him demands? Are we ready to lay our lives on the line of his law of love with its fantastic dimensions of dispossession and surrender? Do we truly love one another, beginning with ourselves? God is not mocked. How long can we sit on the fence of compromise?

When you are rejected for Christ’s sake, you become one with him.

The gospel of Christ is magnificent in its beauty and inexorable in its demands. The gospel of Christ is also gentle as a breeze in the spring but terrible as the cross. The gospel sometimes becomes for me one single sentence: No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his fellowmen. (John 15:13)

The immense problems of war, of social injustice, of the thousand-and-one ills that beset our world can be solved only if we begin to love one another. When people begin to see love, respect and reverence in the eyes of another, then they will change and society will change, also. If ever there was a time when humanity needed followers of Christ and fewer fence-sitters, that time is now.

The world is crying for the Bread of Life, for the living waters that Christ promised—for God himself. But Christians who possess the bread and the living waters do not know how to share the bread they eat. They forget that whoever eats the Bread of the Lord is required to be “eaten up” by others. Having received God who is love, we must give love. Unless we love and show Christ’s face to those around us we have wasted our lives.

You and I cannot say that we did not hear the gospel, that we do not know it. We did hear it, but we do not want to act on it. One reason is that if we do we shall be rejected by our peers. But the person who is thus rejected becomes one with Christ.

We must begin to love one another in the fullest sense of Christ’s teaching. To do so it is urgent that we pray. It is only through prayer that we can follow Christ to Golgotha and end up being suspended on the other side of his cross, that we can become free through this “ascension.”

Christ is still being crucified in his Mystical Body, in his people, but he is alive. He was raised from the dead. He is God, and he lives in us and will continue to love us until our last breath, no matter how we feel about him. Christ reigns supreme over everyone, over all the world of creatures, over all the universes that man has discovered or will discover. The Galilean will conquer again and again.

Christ’s commandments imply that we need to let go of the security that we still cling to.

Charity, or love, can be resurrected in the hearts of persons if only they will stop and think about love, about God, about the incredible fact that God loved them first, and that all they have to do to banish strife, wars, bombs, suspicions, doubts, and fears, is to begin to love him back and to love all their neighbours. Then the light and fire of charity will be so immense that no one will have to fear either bombs or the hatred of his brother.

It is time we Christians awoke from our long sleep. It is time we shed our indifference toward God. Then, we shall know true peace, true joy. The answers to our international and national problems will become clear in proportion to our love.

Christ’s call is revolutionary, there is no denying it. If we Christians would put it into practice it would change the world in a few months. The gospel is radical, and Christ indeed is the radix, the root from which all things spring. His commandments require risk, great risk. They infer an absence of that security that most of us so tightly cling to.