Wisdom's authority

Today's readings: Amos 7, 12-15; Ephesians 1, 3-14; Mark 6, 7-13.

José Marti, a notable Cuban thinker of the 19th century, wrote: "It is not possible for God to put thoughts into someone's head and for a bishop, who is not God, to forbid him to express them." I find these words worth recalling today because this is what actually happened to the prophet Amos in the first reading, and what has continued to characterise Christianity since its beginnings.

Jesus summoned the Twelve and "gave them authority over the unclean spirits". This refers not just to exorcisms. The unclean spirit is whatever hinders in the Church, the true Spirit of Jesus Christ, to speak out and be heard. Every era has brought new perils for the spreading of the Good News. The dominant cultural perspectives of any era inevitably produce accommodations and contamin-ations in our understanding of God and how He works.

But the worst that can happen to the Church is when it loses its mystical power, when it becomes too sure of itself, when the scaffolding surrounding it permanently hides its real face. The prophet Amos was silenced by the temple functionaries and accused of just being a 'seer', a dreamer.

Jesus too was a dreamer and a radical, judging from his behaviour and from the instructions he gives the Twelve. No wonder he was mocked, laughed at, and eventually killed. Those were the origins the Church can never afford to forget.

We can't afford transforming the Church into a royal sanctuary where prophets and seers are mocked and laughed at. When in our temples there is no space for prophesy, that would be the end of it all. Christianity without prophesy is just a fundamentalist sect where nothing new is ever foreseeable and nothing new can touch our hearts.

The Church today is in need of both greater cultural self-reflection and a significant transition in its understanding of mission. Not even "the seal of the Holy Spirit" with which we have been stamped, as St Paul writes, is to be taken for granted. That can at times serve as an easy accommodation for our strategies.

Today's Gospel may sound oversimplistic in a world where things are so complicated. The modern Church seems more like a multinational than the community of those sealed with the Spirit of Christ and empowered to combat unclean spirits that transform life's oxygen into all sorts of deadly gases.

Decades ago, the Brasilian Bishops issued the document entitled 'The Church People Need', which I still consider very pertinent. If the Church is for the people, as Jesus surely meant it to be, then it should be more focussed on people's real needs and less on its self-preservation as an institution. The more difficult it becomes for the Church to let go of its past with the foregone power struggles, the more the Church will continue to fall victim of its own feudal and authoritarian style, be it at international or parochial levels.

The essential is always invisible. It is only seen and understood with the heart's eyes. Today's Gospel reading is a summons to go back to basics. In the perception of many, the Church is too much about what is secondary, and too little about essentials. We're losing the forest for the trees.

In his Cairo speech last month, President Barack Obama recalled the words of Thomas Jefferson who said: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be." Very significant words indeed. In today's secularised society the Church is facing situations whereby it no longer holds any power on the ground and the only true authority it could still have can only come from its wisdom.