Pastoral theology should challenge people about their understanding of the identity of Jesus, and how that affects their lives as individuals and as the Church, according to the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin. Fresh back from the recent Synod on Sacred Scripture in Rome, he gave the opening address at the Pastoral Theology Conference which was held over the last weekend at the Milltown Institute.
The topic was Challenges and Opportunities for Ministry.
He took the phrase from the Gospel of St Mark as his keynote and got the listeners to try and see the various answers to the question Jesus asked his disciples; “Who do you say that I am?”
He developed the question that Jesus put to his disciples – what they thought, what those that had some knowledge of Jesus thought, his enemies, his relatives, those who grew up with him.
He continued: “The disciples who heard the question ‘who do you say that I am’ thought they had it definitively right. Jesus’ questioning was however only the beginnings of a process which would indeed take the disciples on a path they never imagined and found hard to accept.
“Jesus’ revelation about himself shocks them and only very slowly do they begin to realise that they must open their minds and the hearts in such a way that not just their minds but their whole way of life was about to be changed and turned head over heels.”
Pastoral theology was a theology able to reach out and challenge people about their understanding of the identity of Jesus and how that challenge affected the way they lived, said Dr Martin.
“The first thing that we have to stress then is that the response we are talking about is not something of our own construction.
“It comes from the self-revelation of God who appears in Jesus Christ as a God who loves us with an infinite gratuitousness.
“On our own we can never totally fathom such a love. It is a self-giving love which will never allow us to be smug and self satisfied about our fully knowing who Jesus is.
“It is a love that challenges us day by day in a deeper manner to be gripped in our being by the person and the life of Jesus himself.”
The Archbishop presented his challenge:
- Faith must be inculturated, but faith must also be de-culturated,
- It must always have that freshness which allows it challenge the underlying cultural values of any age in the light of the Gospel,
- also in areas where that will make us unpopular and even experience rejection and ridicule.
- Every culture is invaded by false Gods which distort and defile true faith.
Returning to the recent synod, Archbishop Martin said that in its final message it referred to the Church as ‘The House of the Word’.
“Pastoral theology must be a realisation of that reality, the Church as the place where the word is preached, broken and accepted, especially in the context of the Breaking of the Bread and in a spirit of prayer and brotherly love.”+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: CNI)