So Sad

Read carefully the Gospel of tomorrow's Eighteenth Sunday of the Year B. The follow up of last Sunday's Gospel. But this time we do not ask ourselves if we follow real Jesus or prefer to create a fake Jesus according to our expectations or convenience. This time we ask - what are we looking for in our life of faith? Do we look for Jesus and the truth He revealed to us? Or we follow Him because He gives us something - food, money, things we desire... "Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled."

This is a very painful statement. It was also a critical moment of setting an identity test for His disciples. With all its consequences. Who are we and what are looking for, exactly, by claiming we are followers of Christ.

You can sell the truth for money. Judas showed us how this can be done. In our world so many so called Christians sell the truth for the convenience of their compromised lives that have very little in common with Christ and His Church. 

But you cannot buy the truth back with money. Impossible. We can buy information, we can buy silence of people, but we cannot buy God's truth.

The truth is given free by God to all those who come ever closer to God, getting rid of that manic submission to worldly goods. Distancing oneself from lust for money and things creates a world of freedom in oneself in which the truth may reside and reign. That is why the Gospel calls us so many times to spiritual poverty in which you are able to control your desire for money, things, power etc. 

It always abhors me when people see in me a treasurer, manager, managing director, sponsor, benefactor, you name it. But not a priest. People knocking on the door looking for money and things, and so many times having nothing in common with the Church and Christ.

It abhors me when people in the parish, including my sisters in the convent in Kiabakari, know where to find me when they need something. It takes so much effort and resolve to bring them back to the truth about the priesthood and of the role of the pastor, the parish priest in the parish.

But not only in the parish. In the family, among friends, volunteers, people I happen to come across in my priestly and daily life - think and treat me likewise. It so painful to think when they totally misread my status and my vocation, treating me as someone else, depriving me of the divine perspective and dimension, bringing down to the role of just another manager, facilitator of things, sponsor and so forth...because they need something from me. And this is not Jesus' truth, this is not Gospel, this is not prayer or sacraments...

"Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled."

So sad.