God's justice

Today's readings: Isaiah 42, 1-4.6-7; Acts 10, 34-38; Luke 3, 15-16.21-22.

The Cornelius story in today's second reading from Acts marks a definite opening of the Church towards the Gentiles. It took time for the primitive Church and its leaders to understand that salvation comes not from the law but from grace.

There is a rupture between the baptism of John and what comes later. John preached conversion with a sense of urgency, instilling fear in his audience. Jesus, more in line with the prophet Isaiah, is pateint. He "does not break the crushed reed, nor quench the wavering flame".

This is the "true justice" proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah in the first reading and which the world around us continues to expect from the Church.

The Gospel reading from Luke today starts with the "feeling of expectancy which had grown among the people". It is the same expectancy felt by the world today, which is living a moral drama and experiencing a crisis of meaning and a vacuum of hope. People today are tired of rituals that lack connection with the heart's desires.

God's kingdom is not a spiritual reality descending from the heavens but the unfolding of what God has put in the hearts of each and everyone. Wherever people work for justice, and make it happen, there is God. This should sound liberating for us who unfortunately still fail to see God's hand in so many people and situations.

In a recent interview about the Church in Holland, where Catholicism was in danger of disappearing, Bishop Josef Punt explained that today, something has changed in comparison with its crisis of recent decades: "If in 1968, not even a single priest emerged from the seminary," he says, "today, every year in Holland as a whole, 15 new priests are ordained, and a few hundred people each year ask to be baptised as adults". As the bishop says, a new yearning can be perceived, generated by the sense of emptiness.

Throughout much of the 20th century, this profound crisis was experienced in many of the western Churches in secularised Europe. Generations of baptised Christians lapsed and were not bothered to educate their children in the faith. But now there are evident signs of dissatisfaction with this situation.

We are at a similar point to the transition from John the Baptist to Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus in the Gospels is not preaching something that is imminent, but a kingdom that is already present. It's only a question of opening one's eyes to it, of discerning and acknowledging its presence.

With the baptism of Jesus, a rite of passage occurs from the old to the new, from being tired waiting for promises to materialise to the new hope personified in Jesus.

It is the transition from our baptism with water to a baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire. It is the spirit and fire that we need to remedy for our forgetfulness and to rekindle in us what was once a positive force and a source of martyrdom. We have to start all over again, because we are again becoming aware that we are a missionary Church.

As Thomas Merton observed, while we may no longer be facing the seduction of 19th century atheism, we are tempted by a secular indifference to God's presence. The foremost Protestant saint of recent times, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a symbol of Church opposition to the Nazis, spoke of 'the world come of age', meaning a culture that had learnt to function without religious explanation.

It is precisely in this culture that we need to open our eyes for the different categories of 'Cornelius' in our midst waiting 'to be baptised'. As Isaiah says of the suffering servant, he will never waver, nor be crushed until true justice is established on earth.

God's justice is not fire and brimstone. It is a passionate justice, it is not even blindfolded, because God prefers the poor and the oppressed. He is always on their side.