“I am not so concerned about empty temples or the abandonment of religions. I am concerned that where there is no God, idols end up triumphing,” says Father Raúl Humberto Lugo Rodríguez, rector of the Candelaria church and head of the Faith and Social Commitment dimension of the Social Ministry of the Archdiocese of Yucatán.
The priest believes that organized religions, particularly the Catholic Church, which remains the majority in the country, have a treasure to offer and that treasure must be made accessible to new generations.
—And I’m not just referring to a question of forms. Yes, we have to change languages and achieve a different approach to writing, so that it is no longer used to discriminate, as is sometimes done on many occasions.
—This is not only a matter of languages, but also of moving from place to place. In this sense, it seems to me that the Master of Nazareth, Jesus, was absolutely ahead of his time, he glimpsed, for example in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the key was.
—In the parable, the representatives of organized religion, the priest and the Levite, pass in front of the brother lying on the road. The parable does not say why they did it. He is not demonizing religion. He is not saying that they were evil, the parable is very brief, he only says that they did not stop.
—Actually, the contribution of the parable is the third character, the Samaritan, who is the example of those who do not want anything with religion. The Samaritans had that characteristic, they did not go to the temple in Jerusalem, they were against the priestly caste, etc. And yet he is the one who stops.
—The Samaritan does not stop there because he is against the others. Maybe he didn’t even know what the others had passed. He stops for a simple reason, his insides tremble when he sees that man lying on the road and says “this is not right (…) I pass by here every day, it could happen to me”.
“Then she stops to help him.” She doesn’t ask him who you are, doesn’t tell him what party you belong to or what religion you are. She simply sees that he is in need, puts him on her horse, cures him with oil and wine, takes him to the inn, pays a part and says “if anything is needed, I will pay when I return”.
—It seems to me that this parable hits the nail on the head in this discussion of spirituality and religion. The fundamental message of the parable is: what opens access to God is not necessarily religious practice, what opens access to God is the compassionate heart. Whoever has a compassionate heart, when he goes to the Bible, he will understand it; when he goes to church, he will do things right, but not vice versa.
not guarantee
-He who knows a lot about the Bible and is a lot in the church, does not necessarily have a compassionate heart. That is why I say that the parable is exquisite, he is answering the question of who is my neighbor?
—God’s commandment is to love your neighbor. And the Pharisees said “You see, the commandment does not say that you love everyone, it says that you love your neighbor. Therefore, only those who are close. That is what God commands”, they said.
—Getting stuck in the letter of the law, interpreting it in its details, turns it into a weapon of death and not of life. Jesus says that instead of asking yourself who is your neighbor, see that the neighbor is anyone, the neighbor does not depend on the other, but on you. You are the one who approaches, you are the one who approaches.
—Jesus’ wager is that one must become a neighbor, have compassion. These kinds of teachings from Jesus would be absolutely welcome by the new generations, but we, the organized religions, have to have our own conversion process.
—We have moved a long way from that message, we are bordering on the terrain of irrelevance. I am not so concerned about empty temples or the abandonment of religions. I am concerned that where there is no God, idols end up triumphing, where there is no loving relationship with the source of life, which is the Father and a fraternal experience, then the strongest ends up ruling, the one who can prevail ends up triumphing. That does scare me a bit.
—I am getting older, I am going to be 65 years old, I realize that there is little time left, relatively speaking. I see that the task that the Church has to undertake is very great because it has to make its announcement relevant again and for that it has to remove the pile of rubble, of cobwebs, of things that have adhered over the centuries.
—We have to learn to look with new eyes —says Father Raúl with conviction and a luminous gaze during the talk he offered to the newspaper in the inner courtyard of the Candelaria church, in the heart of Mérida.— (To be continued).— Luis Alberto de Jesus Luna Cetina