TO pursue this ideal will always be a work in progress requiring a lot of patience and prudence. Obviously, before anything else, it will require that we be more and more Christ-like because only then can we really have this inclusivity of charity. Let’s hope that we be game with that.
The inclusivity of charity for sure is not an anything-goes matter. The truth cannot be compromised, but we have to understand the truth not as a fixed, frozen thing that can be fully captured by our articulated doctrines, laws and principles. The truth is a living thing, as living as God himself who is precisely the absolute truth. As such, it is dynamic and wrapped many times in mysteries and spiritual and supernatural realities.
It’s not that our doctrines, laws and principles serve for nothing. They are necessary, but as a guide to the truth, and not as truth itself. They will always need to be read, understood and followed with the proper spirit that can only come from God. They need to be continually updated, deepened, polished.
It is with these parameters that we have to approach issues like whether we should be dealing with people who are non-believers, public sinners, those in what we call are in irregular situations, and even those who are open enemies to the Christian faith.
If we would just stick to the literal sense of our doctrines, laws and principles, we most likely will miss their proper spirit, the spirit behind Christ’s teaching about loving the enemies, looking for the lost sheep, welcoming the prodigal son, giving more attention to the sick, weak, etc.
If we would just stick to the literal sense of our doctrines, laws and principles, we might end up like the Pharisees and scribes of old, who gave Christ a big problem. They were sticklers to the law and the tradition, but missed the real thing. Remember Christ telling them that they strain the gnat but swallow a camel. (cfr Mt 23, 24)
In fact, in another instance Christ clearly told them, “You neatly set aside the commandment of God to maintain your own tradition.” (Mk 7, 9) We have to be most careful with this tendency of ours.
Sad to say we can see in our midst today many of these so-called pious and church-going people who are acting like the Pharisees and scribes of old. They immediately get uneasy when there is a move to reach out to people who are in some irregular situations, like the divorced and remarried, the gays, etc.
The inclusivity of charity is never a matter of compromising the truth. It is more of maintaining good relation with everybody, including those who clearly are in error. It makes one willing to undertake a continuing dialogue with those who are opposed to faith, done always in a friendly atmosphere. It makes one willing to go to the gates of hell if only to save those who are entering it.
Hopefully, such openness will lead to discovering those nuances where the ray of the hope of clarification, if not of conversion and change of lifestyle, can spring. It will occasion a deepening of our faith, a more prompt and faithful correspondence to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. It will take us away from our tendency to build our own ivory towers and our walls of exclusive elitism.
Of course, in this we should ready to get dirty, and even to be persecuted. But alas, that is how a true Christian should be. We should live out what Christ said as one of the beatitudes: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Mt 5, 11-12)
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Fr. Roy Cimagala is the Chaplain of the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise, Talamban, Cebu City (roycimagala@gmail.com)/PN
