Journey and Dialogue

[BarbTherese]

At this stage, I am reading commentaries only on Amoris Laetitia.  I think what appears in the quote box below is an important comment by Archbishop Mark Coleridge - Archbishop of Brisane, Australia.

I can forget that The Church and The Gospel is not only the moral laws we proclaim.  It is also to proclaim the Love and Mercy, Understanding and Compassion of God..........and it is more..........it is to be and to live out in my own life the Love and Mercy, Understanding and Compassion of God. 

I too am a sinner!

Possibly all too often I can proclaim the laws of The Church and The Gospel and then more or less walk away leaving the person to get on with it ..... whatever. Like it or lump it can be my attitude - i.e. "Hell or Heaven and it's your choice" and I'm outta here.  If I reflect on my own life, most all of it has been a gradual growth, a journey.  And it has been most often a journey in the dark, not knowing where I will finally end up and I have been richly blest in having a priest or a nun at most every point willing to accompany me into the darkness and the unknown. They might not have had much to say at all but they were there, walking with me.  I am called to "take up your cross and follow Me" and Jesus accompanies every single person on every journey. "In Him, we live and move and have our being". Not only does Jesus accompany them, He Loves them enough to have died terribly for them.   When I accompany another on their own journey, I am in fact walking with Jesus - no matter what the person's state and journey might be.

 

Quote

 

Staying in Touch with Reality  (CathNews Australia)

Of course he (Pope Francis) says the Church must speak the truth. But that isn’t enough. If that’s all we do, then we run the risk of turning the great truths of Christianity into stones that we hurl at those we want to condemn. We also need to walk with people, all kinds of people, especially those who are struggling in their marriage or family life. It’s what Christianity has to offer in an often merciless world.

To walk with people, whoever they are, means to enter into dialogue with them. That means we listen to people, whoever they may be and however far they may fall short of the ideal. For Francis, the ideal does matter; the vision must be kept clearly focused. But if we speak only of it, then we can drift off into some abstract noosphere that doesn’t breathe the air of reality.