Expect to get dirty

If we have to be practical in life, exerting effort to attend and resolve all our issues and challenges, not to mention, to be faithful and consistent to the living Christ who continues to be with us in the Holy Spirit, then we need to be tough, creative, flexible, and willing to get dirty without compromising the essential.

And what's essential is simply to be with Christ who was willing to go through the mess of our redemption. He was willing not only to get dirty, but also to offer his life on the cross. If we truly follow him, we cannot expect to experience anything less.

He himself said that if we want to follow him, we have to be ready not only to deny ourselves, but also to carry the cross. (cfr. Mt 16,24)

But Christ has reassured us that “in this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (Jn 16,33) So let's just strengthen our faith in Christ, enliven our piety, and be sport.

Pope Francis warned us that we should be ready to get dirty if we truly want to reach out to those far from Christ and his Church, those who are lost, those in the peripheries, those who have been neglected or inadequately attended to by the Church.

That Synod on the Amazon that stirred a lot of controversy was one way to tackle the challenge of reaching out. The issues, problems, challenges there are complicated. They have to be faced, and the Church has to find new ways since the status quo clearly isn't working.

In this task of finding new ways and new paths, there definitely is great need for discernment of what the Holy Spirit is telling us. This isn't an easy task. This is where we can get dirty, where we can get confused, even commit errors. But again, God is on top and in control. We just have to sharpen our skill of discernment that requires genuine sanctity from us.

We shouldn't be afraid to tackle the pagan practices in certain parts of the world, and to engage in a dialogue with the different ideologies that can even be openly opposed to Christ and his Church. We have to reach out to everybody the way they are and see what things we can do to bring Christ to them and vice-versa.

We have to avoid ignoring them, to be aloof and indifferent to them, and much less, to consign them already to the definitive category of the lost and hopelessly irredeemable. That would not be Christian.

Remember that Christ is alive through the Holy Spirit and continues to redeem us in ways appropriate to the circumstances of the times, place, and people. While we already have articulated a lot of his will and ways, we can never presume we have everything already mastered. That would straitjacket Christ into our own ideas and legalisms, much like what the Pharisees of old did.

There's a need for constant discernment, which doesn't mean we completely do away with what we already managed to define as God's will and ways. And to be truly discerning, we should earnestly look for Christ, always asking for the light of the Holy Spirit. In other words, let's be truly holy, always working on our sanctification, since that's the only way we can listen clearly what the Holy Spirit is prompting us.

Our problem today is that many people want an easy, fast, and fantasy-like trouble-free kind of life, and are afraid even of the word “sanctification.”