Human God

Now that the Christmas season is over, and after keeping our belen safely in our closet, we may be tempted to keep the very reality of Christmas locked in our memories. By habit and tradition, we may go back to a perception of God as being up, up there in heaven – somewhere beyond the clouds. And to reach Him, we must struggle step by step, climbing the spiritual ladder. Ahead of us and looking over us are our ecclesiastical authorities. The Pope, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests and Religious. The ordinary lay people are supposed to look up to them, obey what they say kiss, their sacred rings, or make mano to them.

But the divine-human Jesus, Our Lord, did the very opposite. He did not go up, up there – but came down, down here to be with us. To be one among us, so that we could look into one another’s eyes from the same ground in loving equality, and not from a status of superiority or inferiority.

To celebrate life as well as suffer through life together in mutual compassion and interdependence – with Jesus, our human God, as our constant companion. Jesus as loving us, so that we may also love Him and one another in return.

Thus, Jesus became one among us, "to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners, to announce a year a favor from the Lord." (From today’s Gospel reading, Lk. 1:14, 4:14-21).

The human-divine God who serves among us, and not a God up there who is served from down here. The God who washes the feet of his followers, not the other way around. The spirituality of Jesus is the spirituality of Amongness, not Upness, as one spiritual writer puts it.

This is where we in the institution of the Church need to continually work for reforms in terms of governance and lifestyle. Most people, especially the poor, still experience the authorities of the Church as being up there, and they as down here (with good reason). They identify the Vatican and the institution of the Church in general with the wealthy and powerful elite. There remains a big gap between the Church as an institution and the great majority of God’s people especially the poor.

From a layman’s eyes, governance from the Vatican is still monarchical and autocratic. The laity have no real, active voice and participation. The late Fr. Bernard Haring, an eminent moral theologian of Vatican Council II, referred to this as "spiritual authoritarianism". Up till his death some years ago, he had been appealing to Rome for a major reform in ecclesiastical governance and other moral issues. Let us continue to pray and work for this.

In the meantime, the redeeming side of the picture is the growing number of individual clergy, Religious, and NGO’s, both men and women, who are immersed among the people and ministering to them in such loving and self-sacrificing ways. From the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta, all the way to our young, Argentinian priest, Fr. Luciano, who with several fellow-religious, now live among the poor in Payatas. Let us not forget the growing number of Religious Sisters and priests, from Palawan to Bicol, who live and work among the poor, including those at the Tala Leprosarium, al the way to Leveriza, Pasay – where the late Sis. Cristine Tan dedicated the best years of her life till the very end.

And there are priests, too, and a number of bishops, who actively share the governance of their parishes with lay leaders and parish councils in a truly participative and democrative way. Consultation and dialogue with lay people are an integral part of decision-making. Priest and laity relate to one another in close, apostolic fellowship and interdependence.

All these and more are incarnations of Christ in our contemporary world. In God’s own time, may the institutional Church and her ecclesiastical leaders, all the way up, come down from that ladder of authority and power, liberated from medieval trappings and structures. The power of powerlessness. Amongness. The spirituality and leadership of Jesus Christ. Amen