Saturday in the Octave of Easter
…rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart it…
Mk 16:14
CHAPTER 5
A BETTER KIND OF POLITICS
Social and Political Charity
Effective love
183. “Social love”[172] makes it possible to advance towards a civilization of love, to which all of us can feel called. Charity, with its impulse to universality, is capable of building a new world.[173] No mere sentiment, it is the best means of discovering effective paths of development for everyone. Social love is a “force capable of inspiring new ways of approaching the problems of today’s world, of profoundly renewing structures, social organizations and legal systems from within”.[174]
Now that I have finished part of my experience with this “the few” I need to address you who are not part of them. I now speak to all the rest of you, the parishioners of St. Mary’s Cathedral Parish. You are the faithful and loyal disciples that the Lord Jesus desires. I am so sorry that you have to experience this awful bashing against other members of the Body of Christ manifested here. I cannot thank you enough! I am proud of you; your Rector, your Associate Rector, all my brother priests are very proud of you.
Bishop Patrick J. Zurek, A Reflection on Christian Life
It was not “the few” that Jesus is rebuking in today’s Gospel; it is the Eleven, the ones that Bishop Zurek places among, “the faithful and loyal disciples that the Lord Jesus desires.”
What kind of love does Jesus desire?
I think that , “I love you for sentimental reasons”, sounds great when Nat King Cole is singing, but paragraph 183 of Fratelli Tutti tells us that “Effective love”, “is a ‘force capable of inspiring new ways of approaching the problems of today’s world, of profoundly renewing structures, social organizations and legal systems from within'”.
“Effective love” is what what Prince Phillip lived: “In his powerful advocacy for conservation, his was a prophetic voice for over half a century, as he brought people from around the world to a new concern and commitment to action for the future of our planet,”.
“Effective love”, “involves reaching out in solidarity to build trust and also to challenge those who seek to control and imprison us and our young people in the past.”
“Effective love” is opposed to situations where, “people are excluded”, as Bishop Zurek has done at St. Mary’s Cathedral.
Catholic Bicycle 