Today’s readings: Jeremiah 1, 4-5, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 12, 13-31, 13; Luke 4, 21-30.
The core of religion is love. Honestly, it was not always like that, or at least this was not always what transpired from the way religion was lived and perpetuated. At times we find it difficult to read comprehensively entire pages of the Old Testament Scriptures where violence is rampant. Religion without love is terrible, horrible even. In his 2004 book The End of Faith, Sam Harris was partly right when he spoke of the connection between religion, wars, violence and terror.
It is in itself contradictory when in our history books or in the history of the churches, we go through entire chapters about so-called wars of religion. Even in our times, all those who are reasonably in their senses refuse to acknowledge that religion can ever be the motivation behind what Islamic State is perpetrating. Yet, it has not always been that clear for one and all. Religious beliefs, when disconnected from reason, love and mercy, can inspire the worst of human atrocities.
This is what Pope Francis is struggling to put in order now, particularly with the Jubilee of Mercy. He is trying to put love and mercy back at the centre of religion, because when religion does not liberate people, they would be better off without it.
Today’s Scriptures speak loud of the need to put ourselves back on the right track. In the second reading from his first letter to the Corinthians, St Paul shows how love is religion’s soul and how without love, religion is “simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing”. We can do a lot in the name of religion, but if the inner force is lacking, it is to no avail.
From a cultural standpoint, religion always tends to settle down in rules, structures, customs and in traditions that in some way or other can be mistaken for what should be the very core of religion. St Paul writes: “Be ambitious for the higher gifts.” These higher gifts stand for the way of love, which is the only way that opens for us the possibility of grasping the mystery of life.
In the first reading, God’s words to Jeremiah are very reassuring at a time when words tended to remain simply words, void of meaning. This was the reassurance Jeremiah was given as one appointed by God to be prophet to the nations at a time of turmoil. This is also what marks the shift in the gospel text from Luke where Jesus was indicating the opportune time for the words proclaimed to come true. The people in the synagogue of Nazareth take Jesus as being offensive to their religion simply because Jesus was being “ambitious for the higher gifts”.
It is only the way of love that can reveal the mysteries of life and that can contrast seriously the darkness around us. Religion is the framework we are born and brought up into. The passage from religion to faith is not automatic, faith being the higher plane we should aspire to attain. The mystery of love can never be imprisoned or subjected to the rules or to the legalistic framework represented by religion. It is unfortunately what very often happens in our way of dealing, for example, with the theology of marriage or when we come to acknowledge that there is the primacy of conscience in the way people discern on choices to be made.
What scandalised the people in the synagogue of Nazareth was simply that Jesus was showing them a better way to discern God’s ways that differed from the one they routinely used. Religion can become so closed in upon itself that it leaves no space for God. This was also the experience of Jeremiah who, in a way similar to Jesus, was confronting boldly the religious status quo of his time.
When religion is no longer open to the transcendent, it suffocates the true spirit that instead it should promote. Then, as Jesus said to the people of his hometown, “no prophet is accepted in his own country”. This means that the hearts of people become rigid and not even God’s word or voice is powerful enough to penetrate it. We need to put things back on track, to put our house in order, because religion is basically about love, about true love that makes possible in life what otherwise seems impossible or unreachable.