Community July 24
(The Crosier) has a healthy measure of flexibility and the capacity to adapt to persons and circumstances (Profile of the Congolese Crosier).
To call them, he was a Jew among Jews without fear of contamination by the Law. May the Jewish people enter! Without fear of losing his Gospel orientation, he was a pagan with the pagans when it helped to attract them. May the unbelievers enter! To invite them to Christ, he was weak with the weak, all things to all people, without his conviction being uprooted, without diminishing his personal integrity. May the masses be saved! Content with humiliation in poverty, he was equally at ease with abundance. Hungry or full, welcomed or mistreated, he continued to work. It was not otherwise with Christ, who walked in the company of the pious and sinners, of the poor and rich, of the insignificant and powerful, making himself close to them to draw them to himself. Paul, once a man rigid in the practice of his beliefs, became in the end the incarnation of apostolic flexibility. What an example for us of Christian freedom, of missionary adaptation, of pastoral suppleness. What encouragement for the Order, already 800 years old in its comings and goings for Christ, in calm and turbulent times, among people of every color, race and nation! What an inspiration for the Crosier today who witnesses in a world become the “global village”!
When the prey zigzags, the crocodile must also zigzag. (Mossi)
No comments:
Post a Comment