by Robert Ludwig, Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Pastoral Studies
The experience of Christ and grace in sacramental community is a path towards liberation–the liberation of individuals from their enslavement to all that is not God and God’s reign through a lifetime process of conversion, and the liberation of all creation from indifference, injustice, and violence through the patient witness of the sacramental community in solidarity with the unloved, the poor, the oppressed, the violated. These two dimensions of liberation go together–personal conversion and social transformation. One is set free from one’s small ego-encapsulated self and embraces the larger self, the whole self, the self that is imaged in Christ. The experience of liberation is a turning to others in compassionate service, identifying with the marginated other in one’s recognition of one’s own marginated status.
The origins of the Christian tradition, in fact, lie in a peasant movement for justice grounded in the compassion and wisdom of God active in life and history. Biblical historian Dominic Crossan has “[Jesus] had both a religious dream and a social program, and it was that conjunction that got him killed…. Indeed, if Jesus had been only a matter of words or ideas, the Romans would have probably ignored him, and we would probably not be talking about him today. His kingdom movement, however, with its healings and exorcisms, was action and practice, not just thought and theory. (The Essential Jesus, p.3). (more…)