Open to all

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

“ALL the people were hanging on his words.” (Lk 19,48) Because of that, those leading Jews who wanted to put Christ to death could not carry out their plan. Let’s hope that we too can get so close to Christ that would frustrate anything that would put Christ out of our lives.

And we may ask, what made the people hang on Christ’s words? Definitely it was because Christ was open to everyone. He was not discriminatory of anyone although he, of course, strictly but charitably maintained the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil. Christ is the embodiment of how to perfectly blend the inclusivity of charity and the exclusivity of truth.

This is something that we too should learn if we want to be truly Christian. The secret, of course, is to identify ourselves more and more with Christ. It’s a matter of acquiring his mind and heart, his very spirit, since we are actually meant to be like him who is the very pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity.

The secret, therefore, is to be Christ-like. That’s the only way we can have an inclusive outlook in life in spite of our unavoidable differences and conflicts in the areas of lifestyles, cultures, ideologies, opinions, preferences and even in beliefs, spiritualities and morals.

In fact, not only should we be open to everyone. We should rather also take the initiative to reach out to everyone, irrespective of how they are, even if they are very different from us, or if they are clearly wrong in their ways, in their mentalities, etc.

Remember what Christ said toward those who criticized him because he ate with sinners? (cfr. Mt 9,9-13) “Those who are well do not need a physician but the sick do,” he said. “Go and learn the meaning of the words ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

It is for this reason that we should try to broaden our mind and heart to accommodate as much as possible all kinds of people in our mind and heart the way Christ accommodated everyone. He even went to the extent of asking for forgiveness for those who put him to death on the cross. That’s how inclusive Christ was and is to all of us.

We cannot deny that we have our own share of biases and prejudices, brought about by a number of factors—our temperament, our culture, our upbringing, our environment, etc. We can at least do something about them if we also make an effort to go out of our own shell and try to know how the others are. This, obviously, will always be a work in progress, but we should start it as early as possible and keep to it all the way.

Thus, reading novels, as Pope Francis once suggested, could be helpful. “Literature also proves essential for believers who sincerely seek to enter into dialogue with the culture of their time, or simply with the lives and experiences of other people,” he said. (Letter on the Role of Literature in Formation, 8)

Of course, we should expect that the sailing can be rough and tough, and we can commit mistakes along the way. But as long as we can manage to go back to Christ, using all the means made available for that purpose, we know that we can manage to really have a universal heart, the very heart of Christ!

            Email: roycimagala@gmail.com