English
EspañolJesus Christ did not come as a prosecutor, judge, jailer, or executioner. He came as a redeemer, savior, and liberator. He came for all without exception. He did not do so by writing a treatise on theology, philosophy, or morals; he did it through “Loved truly lived” in his own life.
Text
“I would like to reiterate something I sought to make clear to the whole Church, lest we take the wrong path: “There are two ways of thinking which recur throughout the Church’s history: casting off and reinstating. The Church’s way, from the time of the Council of Jerusalem, has always always been the way of Jesus, the way of mercy and reinstatement… The way of the Church is not to condemn anyone forever; it is to pour out the balm of God’s mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart… For true charity is always unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous”.326 Consequently, there is a need “to avoid judgements which do not take into account the complexity of various situations” and “to be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience distress because of their condition.” (The Joy of Love, n.296) It is a matter of reaching out to everyone, of needing to help each person find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial community and thus to experience being touched by an “unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous” mercy. No one can be condemned forever because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves. (The Joy of Love, n.297)
Commentary
Some have focused on chapter 8 of The Joy of Love as the main chapter. This is not so. The most important texts are in the seven previous chapters, for the simple reason that the diverse bonds of love born within a family are discussed—the loving relationship between spouses, between parents and children, between siblings, between grandparents, and grandchildren; and the love of a family as a whole, as a unit, especially present in its most fragile members, its children and the elderly, the sick and the needy. The family is the first hospital of life, and its medicine is the best because it administers unconditional, faithful love with an intimate embrace and devotion for their whole life.
How could these first seven chapters not be the most important ones if they show us the enormous and profound richness of familial love, compared to the eighth, which deals with “irregular situations, that is, certain defects, drifts, and absences? How can the first seven, which are like a lighthouse, not be more decisive if it is under their light that we must discern irregular situations, accompany marriages to avoid further shipwrecks, and help them reach, as much as possible, a safe harbor?
The reading of The Joy of Love requires a clean, upright intention, inspired by the Spirit of the Gospel. That is to say, a tender heart that looks at its neighbor through the heartbeat of love, not a heart of stone.
However, the obsession with solely concentrating on chapter eight and, to put it bluntly, to reduce and ground Pope Francis´ whole effort by affirming that he has changed the traditional doctrine regarding access to the Eucharist for those divorced from canonical marriage and civilly remarried, seems to be a wrong and biased approach, which risks walking on the edge of disloyalty to the Magisterium of the Primate and the Church and can lead to attitudes and proposals contrary to the Gospel.
There are innumerable passages in the Gospel in which Jesus, instead of moving away from people with irregular lives, approaches them to the point of touching them, puts his fingers in their ears and his saliva in their mouths, and cures them of their “ailments.” Moreover, he makes it very clear that the Sabbath – the rules – is made for the good of man, not man for the good of the Sabbath. Meaning, categorically, that man – bringing him closer to his true good – is the meaning and purpose of the norms, since these are channels or means, but not the final goal, which is a real encounter of each person with God.
The New Message of freedom and salvation over the slavery and destruction of sin, which is the Gospel, does not consist primarily, and principally in a doctrinal system, nor a moral list – as Benedict XVI asserted with clear lucidity in his Encyclical Letter, God is Love – but in a personal encounter with God. In the Gospel, truth, the way, and life are not ideas, concepts, or doctrinal principles. The truth, the way, and the Life are a real, concrete Person who gives himself to us and embraces us intimately: he is Jesus Christ. Moreover, the Word of God did not become incarnate in our human nature in order to accuse, judge, condemn, imprison, exclude and execute, but to liberate and save. He did it out of love and to teach us to love, as the Son and the Father love each other in the bosom of the Holy Spirit, and as the Trinity loves every human person with infinite mercy and faithful love. Jesus Christ, to free and save us from sin, loved us even to death and death on the Cross.
No one, least of all in the Church, has the right to stand between the love of Jesus Christ and people who, whatever their life situation, sincerely seek and open their hearts to Jesus Christ. No one has the right to prevent Jesus Christ himself from searching for the lost sheep. This is the fundamental perspective of The Joy of Love for “irregular” situations. As in the parable from the Gospel, it is a matter of “knowing” the particular and singular circumstances of each concrete case of “the lost sheep,” as well as “discerning” the path, the possible steps for each case in order to bring those lives closer to Jesus Christ. However, let us not forget the method Jesus Christ uses: he leaves the 99 sheep in a safe place and goes personally searching for the lost one.
