I wish to thank all those who commented on the pastoral letter that we bishops issued for Advent 2009; those who agreed with it, as well as whoever wrote expressing his or her difficulty in accepting the reason behind it. Whatever one's opinion, it is good to have these debates in the media on important ethical issues like this one.
It was an invitation to make the decision to live this beautiful Christian message more profoundly, letting it develop into a great desire to share it with those who have not yet experienced it. The Lord knew that change could come principally through the individual. He meant to change people so that they would in turn change the ethos of social structures. This is what we bishops proposed. Hopefully, the offer will be taken up by many.
It was never meant to exclude anybody: every person is loved infinitely by God, even those outside the Church; perhaps even more so, because He wants His Love to be known also by them. It was not meant to belittle 'cultural religiosity'; it was meant to go beyond, to experience the Lord personally, rather than just through a culture.
It was an invitation to enter into this vision of faith, of being a Christian member of the Church, because otherwise we would not have the full benefit of understanding why Christ came to Earth.
It would surely be a better world if every member of the Church took it as his mission to better the world by living according to Christ's example. Marriages and families would surely be better if couples were inspired by Christ's mode of loving faithfully. It surely would be a contribution to society if every believer looked at the world around him through God's eyes: the image of God in every human being; the beauty of the Creator in Creation.
There is much good done by members of other religions and by non-believers in our society. What we bishops wanted to share in the pastoral letter was that there is a specifically 'Christian' way of being 'citizen' in the world. We were inviting the members of the Church especially to embrace it. It is this contribution that the Church can give to society. This is what we meant by entering into a 'collective conscience': the faithful choosing and following of the Lord and his teachings within a believing community; nothing else!
We have just celebrated the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are still celebrating it 2000 years after it happened, not just because Christ was born, but because he founded a Church which continued to preach this good news during all these years. The way he died - crucified, alone, rejected even by his disciples - shows that He who died on the Cross, like so many others who were crucified, was doomed to oblivion. That is why Jesus and His Church cannot ever be separated. The Church celebrates His birth, and His life, in the context of a believing community - the Church Community.
The Church has this inheritance: it has to pass the message to the present generation, and future ones. This inheritance from our Lord makes it easier, on one hand, to follow Jesus because his life and his teachings become a map of discipleship; after choosing to accept the Lord as the Master, one has only to follow His teachings in trust.
On the other hand, it is a great challenge because it has to begin with an act of humility before the Divinity as presented by Our Lord. It does not make sense to say that one believes in the Lord if he then chooses the way himself: he would be losing the fruits that arise from accepting the whole Gift of the Lord. Our Lord showed us that believing in God means also believing and following the 'Way', who is the Lord, where Truth and Life abide: "I am the Way; I am Truth and Life" ( John 14:6).
Our reflection on the Church must not begin from the Church itself as a community of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Church begins from the great love that God the Father has for each and every human being, whoever he is.
God the Father sent His Son so that he could show and explain this great love for us. Even in his life, our Lord began to lead his disciples to understand that they could not limit God's love just to the Jewish people. The stories of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark, 7: 24-30), of the centurion (Matthew, 8: 5-13) and of the good Samaritan (Luke, 10: 29-37) show this pedagogy of Our Lord towards his disciples.
At the same time, he was teaching his disciples to be a community which is distinguished not by excluding somebody from its love but because it had experienced the special love of God as shown in Christ. Its mission was to mediate and share this love of God towards all others. It is not the role of the Church to be exclusive; it knows that it has received this grace through Christ not to confine it to itself but to share it with others. Those who are 'outside' the Church are not a threat to it, but an opportunity to show God's love to them.
This is true of the whole Church community, but it should be true also for each of its members. The person who believes truly is the one who sees the image of God in every person previous to other considerations of race, colour, religion or lack of it, nationality, sexuality and so on. This is the basis of the love that the Church wants to be witness to in our society.
The image of God the Father that our Lord presented to His disciples was that of a God who is 'man-centred'. He is not a God who remains aloof, but a God who stoops down to us, who is ready to become a human being like us and be a part of our reality. In Christ, the human being becomes the centre of God's Love (see his 'mission statement' : Luke, 4:16-22).
Our Lord's washing of his disciples' feet at the Last Supper was meant to convey the idea of a God who is prepared to wash men's feet. Peter's reaction shows us how difficult this idea is to accept. But it shows us the profound dignity of each person before God.
However, Christ's words: "If I then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you must wash each other's feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you," (John 13: 14-15) show us that it carries also the responsibility of responding to this Love in like terms before the dignity of others.
The words of the Lord: "It is not anyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord', who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in Heaven" (Matthew, 7:21) shows us the kind of response that God wants from us. He does not want us just to give him glory, but to become God's glory. When we take Jesus as our model and try to imitate him and become like him, then God the Father can recognise us as his sons and daughters.
For the believer, this is not an imposition. The 'Good News' that Our Lord taught us begins from the Love and Wisdom of God the Father in knowing what is good for us. This is what Jesus invites us to follow. If He shows us that we need to forgive, if He tells us to invest in the stability of marriage, if He invites us to a greater closeness to Him, it is not for His sake, but for our, (and my own), sake!
Our pastoral letter was an invitation to take an active part in the building of the Church, and through it, also our society, in this vision. May many respond to it!