Sermon on the 25th Sunday after Pentecost (2011)
Beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord, Who is our remotest? Who is so far from us that we want to approach him to us? Anyone, who is unknown, and that we understand him as necessary for us.
But the evangelical necessity is a necessity of conscience. The remotest is a necessity just for that we can not live without personalizing relations.
We are avid for new, for the ontological novelty, because we live from realrelations.
And this is the motive, in definitive, for which we opt for relationship, for love, forfriendship.
In today’s Gospel [Luke 10, 25-37] the Samaritan the Merciful is exactly the Lord. He is the Unknown, Who is different to us but the One has made Himself like us, apart from sin.
And from Hisinfinite mercy for us, we must learn that we must notlook back fromany joys andsorrows of the people. We must look right, carefully, with consideration, with christianconscience, for that so beholdand God at us.
But the remotest become our neighbor not because we consider him thus from point of view theological. Approaching people is real or not at all.
And for to be real, we need to know the other. The other is our neighbor if it’snecessary for us daily. If we can not live without him, without words, and his eyes…means that we began to know him.
Knowing our neighbor, therefore, is also the knowledge of God: progressive. On each day we find another and we find and us.
After how, on God, we see only if, we forget ourselves for Him.
In His parable, the Lord tells us that He forgets Himself for us, that He is lost in the love and attention for us. And this is the love: to put in forefront on the other.
Of course, here, the Lord changes the narrow paradigm of social relations. Not only our family, neighbors and our countrymen are our neighbor but all with which we have real relations.
And so, relations are beyond the gender, ethnicity and religion…but they enrich the interior of our person.
The fear of others, with other words, is unorthodox.
For that the Church means the care for all. And the Fathers of Church havefocused to all in the words and their work, because they wanted that all to be one.
But the unity is in faith and love. And to those of other faith we must show love andrespect even if we are not in accord with their heresies.
For those who are not like us, we must show care and attention, because these arethe oil and the wine poured on wounds [v. 34].
And how to convince people that we are faithful, the deep orthodoxies, if we do not have love, care and attention to all? And what greater love we can have than tolead them all at Inn, ie at the Church?
Undoubtedly, we can not bring someone to Church without God’s will and in spiteof him. But if we do not try to do that, all our good intentions, which are not put in plan, remain mere fantasies.
And the Church’s life is not formed from good intentions but from realities that can be experienced. And who lives the glory of God he illuminates his mind and he sanctifies his body and soul.
And namely the orthodox life is something palpable, is a change toward the betterand not a catastrophe in motion.
Thus standing the things, rudeness, callousness, lack of compassion, ignorance, carelessness is unexplained at an orthodox. They show that he is orthodox onlywith the name.
For that this says the Lord through words: „Go and do the same” [Luke 10, 37, acc. NAS]. Not just to know what to do…but also to do what we know.
That is to have values in a postmodernity where everything is for sale.
To have common sense where everything is pornographic.
To see in humans the lost beauty and to rely on their return…
And all these things are not possible without that Church’s people to know the truthand preach it to others.
Church is the light of the world and salt of the earth! It is the school of humanity!
Church’s Tradition testifies irrefutably that seeds of all christian knowledgeunderlie the culture and modern science.
The christian morality is a moral theological for that this is distinguished from God’s relations with people.
And God does not exclude anyone, nor causes anyone to sin, and is not envious to someone…but He wants as every man to be saved and come to know the truth, which is He Himself.
It is a non-example to pass on near other…and to pretend that you’ve not seen him. If you can do this with another…then you do this and with God. And this is a sin crying at heaven…
The insensibility to God manifests as insensibility toward people and vice versa.The test of our religiosity is a practical one and it is seen in direct relation with other.
If we abandon the relation…we show that our words have no value, that our gestures have no value, that we do not appreciate anything.
Who is our remotest? The one who we do not appreciate.
Who is our neighbor? The one who is always a novelty for us, the one who entertainus, who calls us continually to large projects, value.
Who puts us in value is our neighbor.
Who shows us who we are is our neighbor.
Because our neighbor is who treats us with respect, which is responsible to our salvation, which enjoys that we are more beautiful and more holy every day. Amen!