My apologies, I wasn’t clear… my Priest’s point was John was the battleship and Christ was a lighthouse… Christ was love.
…But I see Christ bringing a sword in the Gospels. A sword and love. And justice.
He’s been very disturbed by the divisions from the recent US elections, I think that was where this came from.
A couple weeks ago he preached an awesome homily with a myth about how Satan clawed the Earth and created divisions, and the angels made bridges to span the divides, and to try to knock the angels into the chasms and widen the divides is the work of the devil.
I think that’s where he’s coming from. Our church, like our nation is divided.
I see Christ bringing mercy in the Gospels. I suggest reading Pope John Paul II’s encyclical
Dives in Miesericordia. Here are a couple of quotes from it:
“In this way, mercy is in a certain sense contrasted with God’s justice, and in many cases is shown to be not only more powerful than justice but also more profound. Even the Old Testament teaches that, although justice is an authentic virtue in man, and in God signifies transcendent perfection nevertheless love is ‘greater’ than justice: greater in the sense that it is primary and fundamental. Love, so to speak, conditions justice and, in the final analysis, justice serves love. The primacy and superiority of love vis-a-vis justice–this is a mark of the whole of revelation–are revealed precisely through mercy. This seemed so obvious to the psalmists and prophets that the very term justice ended up by meaning the salvation accomplished by the Lord and His mercy.”
“Especially through His lifestyle and through his actions, Jesus revealed that love is present in the world in which we live–an effective love, a love that addressed itself to man and embraces everything that makes up his humanity. This love makes itself particularly noticed in contact with suffering, injustice and poverty–in contact with the whole historical ‘human condition,’ which in various ways manifests man’s limitation and frailty, both physical and moral. It is precisely the mode and sphere in which love manifests itself that in biblical language is called ‘mercy.’
On the basis of this way of manifesting the presence of God who is Father, love and mercy, Jesus makes mercy one of the principal themes of His preaching.”
It is well worth the read. Do you not see Christ as love? Do you not see Christ as proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand? That the gathering of the tribes has begun? I see Christ in the Gospels as calling us, as gathering us, as extending his mercy to us, meeting us where we are and calling us to Himself. Of course we have to accept.
Do you really disagree with the comparison of Christ as a lighthouse and as love? Does not John the Apostle write of Christ: “and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not over come it.” Christ is indeed the light that cannot be overcome, He is our light in the darknes, he is our guide to keep us from sin. Is that not somewhat like what a lighthouse is to a ship?
The peace of Christ,
Mark**
