Called to Become Ministers of Liberation and Consolation

On January 23, 2022, Pope Francis was instituting some lay catholics as readers and catechists, gave them this mission of ministers of liberation and consolation, and said “this is also the mission of each one of us.” As a basis for reflection, he used Luke 4:16-21 which is the official start of Jesus ministry. In Luke 4:17-21, Jesus gave us the good news, i.e. the true, full gospel of Consolation (proclaim release), and Health/Healing (recovery of sight), and Liberation (set free) and Prosperity (year of favor). If you watch Christian TV, you will see proclaimed the gospels of either Consolation, Health or Prosperity only, because people like to hear it, feel good about it, and just be passive recipient of grace. Rarely, is the message of Liberation proclaimed because that is what people may not like to hear, not feel good about, and need to actively work on it in cooperation with God’s grace. They need to “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” [Rom 12:2]

Let’s note also that Liberation is more than going for inner healing or deliverance services. These could also be just feel good, passive experiences we love to have, but do not intrinsically touch our whole heart (emotions, intellect, will, conscience) and therefore do not effect lasting change. May be, we feel we do not need to change, but in fact have fallen into what Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium 93, called “spiritual worldliness, which hides behind the appearance of piety, and even love for the Church, consists in seeking not the Lord’s glory but human glory and personal well-being.”

Let’s now go deeper into the Pope’s homily and examine how the Pope teaches us about what is the ministry of Liberation and Consolation, what to do about it and what to avoid. This is a model homily in the way it is constructed. Note his use of 1) QUESTIONS, as in quotation above, 2) REPETITION of concepts in different ways, e.g. God as “God of mathematics” and next paragraph “an accountant who keeps a record”, 3) BALANCING BOTH SIDES of the picture, e.g. God as cold bystander and God as lover of mankind, 4) RELATING TO OUR PERSONAL LIVES, e.g. unmasks our projections, seeking an angelic spirituality, and 5) CONSOLING and LIBERATING, e.g. after expanding on the consoling “good news”, a “God of closeness, of compassionate and tender closeness”, he warns us against being a modern rigid pelagianist or a modern gnostic “seeking an angelic spirituality … that puts you in orbit, unconcerned about caring for our brothers and sisters.”

The Word Reveals God

• Who is God to you and how does this image drives your life? padrone = Overlord, aloof and on high, cold bystander, detached, impassible, a “God of mathematics”, neutral and indifferent? Or padre = God-with-us, passionately concerned about our lives and engaged in them, even sharing our tears?
• If God is Father to you, have you experienced what His Spirit can do for you? defends us, counsels us, sustains us and partakes of our pain. Always present, close at hand, wants to care for me and for you, for everyone?
• Are we converted to the true God by reading, studying and meditating on his Word, Jesus who became flesh and lived among us? Have we experienced what the Word can do for us? Live the story of God’s love for us, liberates us from fears and preconceptions that stifle joy, overthrows false idols in our life, unmasks our projections, destroys our human images of God and brings us back to see his mercy, nurtures and renews faith? Is the word at the centre of our prayer and spiritual life?

The Word Changes Us

• Is the Word penetrating our soul like a sword [Heb 4:12]? Does it console us and at the same time challenge and disturb us, reminding us of our inconsistencies? Shakes us up, does not bring us peace at the price of accepting injustice and hunger, challenges the self-justification that makes us blame everything that goes wrong on other persons and situations?
• Are we coming out into the open or do we hide behind the complexity of problems, behind the excuse that “nothing can be done about it” or “it’s somebody else’s problem”, or “what can I do?”
• Are we combining worship with care for man? Is Scripture for us entertainment, to coddle us with an angelic spirituality, or a call to action, to make us go forth and encounter others, drawing near to their wounds? Do we fall to the temptation of Gnosticism  that proposes a word of God that puts you “in orbit” and does not make you touch reality?
• Is the Word removing us from life [Jesus and me holiness], or does it plunge us into life, into everyday life, into listening to the sufferings of others and the cry of the poor, into the violence and injustice that wound society and our world? Does it challenge us not to be indifferent, but active, creative Christians, prophetic Christians?
• Let us ask, then:
• do we want to imitate Jesus, to become ministers of liberation and consolation for others, putting the word into action?
• Are we a Church that is docile to the word? A Church inclined to listen to others, engaged in reaching out to raise up our brothers and sisters from all that oppresses them, to undo the knots of fear, to liberate those most vulnerable from the prisons of poverty, from interior ennui and the sadness that stifles life?
• Isn’t that what we want?