CANCELLING
UNPAYABLE DEBTS!
they try to kill him.
But when we speak of 2025 as a
Holy Year,
nothing happens.
Luke 4:16–30
By: Eloy
Roy
Dear Yeshua: (“Yeshua” is the name of Jesus in Aramaic,
his native tongue)
We are gathered in the synagogue of Nazareth, the village where you grew
up. Everyone is present.
You are invited to read a text from the book of prophet Isaiah.
Carefully, you choose verses 1 and 2 from chapter 61 of that book, which reads
as follows (to better grasp the meaning
of the words in the original context, I provide here an interpretative
translation based on Leviticus 25:8-11and
Deuteronomy 15:1-2):
"The
Spirit of God is upon me. He breathes in me. He moves me to bring good news to
the poor: to proclaim that all those who have been imprisoned by our oppressors
will be set free! All those confined to the darkness of dungeons will finally
see the light of day and liberty! All the inhabitants of the land who, unable
to repay their debts, have had their possessions seized, and those who, in
order to survive, have been forced into slavery by their creditors—they will be
'forgiven'! In other words, their release, their pardon, their grace has come.
They will recover their freedom, their rights, and all the property that was
taken from them! Consequently, we declare THE YEAR OF GRACE OF THE LORD OUR
GOD, A YEAR OF JUBILATION, A HOLY YEAR!"
You roll up the scroll. Not a sound is heard. Everyone looks at you with wide eyes... Then you open your mouth and, weighing every word, you declare:
"What you have just heard comes into effect
THIS VERY DAY!"
The oppressed
are crazy with joy, and the oppressors, with rage.
From the group
of usurers and big landowners a hyena-like howl rises:
-
Who
do you think you are, Yeshua? Have you lost your mind? While you wave in our
faces a scripture from old times, we are the ones who are looking forward! You
are nothing but a country boy who roughs up boards, and you think we’ll let you
block our path? If God is really with you, perform a big miracle here in your
own village. Prove that God speaks through you!
Mockery jeers and spitting ensue, but you do not waver.
Straining to be heard above the clamour, you
reply that God does not perform miracles in a village where people refuse to
listen to his prophets. He prefers to make them among foreigners and pagans.
The fury intensifies, but instead of lowering your voice, you raise it even
higher:
-"You heard about the prophet Elijah,
didn’t you? One day, he met a poor widow burying her child who had died of
hunger. She too was about to die in the same way. Elijah brought the child back
to life and saved the mother. Where did Elijah perform this miracle? In Israel,
in his own village where many children were also dying of hunger? No! He
performed it in Zarephath, a pagan territory! Why there and not at home? Simply
because that desperately poor woman had friendly welcomed the prophet under her
humble roof”. (1 Kings 17, 10-16).
A heavy silence falls over the assembly. You even press on:
"There were many lepers in Israel in the
time of the prophet Elisha, but the prophet healed none other than Naaman. Who
was Naaman? He was the army commander of the king of Aram, an old enemy with
whom Israel was constantly at war! (2 Kings 5:1–19)."
No sooner have you spoken these words than the
enraged mob let out a high-pitched scream and jumped on you. They dragged
you out of the synagogue and took you up to the top of a hill to throw you down
the cliff and kill you.
Fortunately, slipping like a snake between the legs of the dinosaurs, you
disappeared.
You've had a lucky escape, but with nothing to lose by waiting.
Modern Missionary Send-offs
My dear Yeshua, this fiery setting marked the launch of your "mission
to evangelize the nations," during which you also inaugurated the first "Holy Year" of our era.
As you know, things have changed. We have progressed. We’ve become less
rigid about religion, more tolerant, less radical and less fundamentalist. We
call it evolution.
For example,
that overly emotional reaction to your speech in the synagogue, of course, we
take it into account, but as an unfortunate incident along the way. And as we also
consider the 25-year debt forgiveness scheme to be an outdated measure that
hinders progress, we talk about "forgiving offenses" instead.
That’s why we modified the Lord’s
Prayer. Instead of the
"dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus
debitoribus nostris" from the good old Latin version of the
past—translated as "forgive
us our debts as we forgive our debtors"— instead of “debts, we put
"offenses”... It sounds less militant and
more pastoral, and it doesn’t cause any upheaval. The priority, you see, is to
avoid conflict and maintain peace...
Peace
According to our doctors
of discernment of spirits, PEACE is the unequivocal sign of the Voice of God
and of His Spirit… There’s no arguing with that. It’s a kind of dogma.
However, the two
verses that precede the synagogue episode specify that Yeshua had returned to
Galilee "with the power
of the Spirit" (Luke
4:14). And so, it is through the Spirit that Yeshua finds himself that day
in the synagogue of Nazareth to read the text of Isaiah, which begins with
these words: "The
Spirit (or the Breath) of God is upon me." This means that
everything Yeshua embodies in this episode—everything he thinks, says, and
does—is the work of the Spirit of God. Now, this work of the Spirit did not end
precisely in peace but in nothing else than an attempted assassination!
Whatever the doctors of discernment think, the Voice
of the Holy Spirit may often be like a whisper in the heart, but sometimes it can
also be a hurricane wind that throws lightning bolts in the shape of tongues of
fire as it happened later on the Pentecost day (Acts 2:1-13).
When we send off our missionaries, we no longer kiss their feet as we used
to, which is to our credit. As always, we loudly celebrate their courage,
selflessness, and generosity, which is well-deserved. Yet, when it comes to the
"Year of Grace", we never say a single word about it. Why?
It seems that the oppression endured by most of the peoples to whom we are
sent, the crushing debts that ensue, and the slavery that dare not speak its
name escape our missionary sensibilities. We go to announce Good News in these
countries, but not exactly the one you proclaimed in the synagogue of Nazareth...
Our mission may not be to wage crusades against every rogue on the planet,
but we should at least strive, in the spirit of Yeshua, to foster a
consciousness, a mentality, an authentic spirituality and a great dream of
"liberation", not just from pernicious regimes like Soviet, Chinese,
or jihadist models, but also from our hypocritical and insidious capitalist,
materialist, imperialist and bourgeois model.
A Global Mission Campaign
In a kind o permanent global campaign, we should through all means of
communication join our voices with millions of Christians and non-Christians
who care about the fate of humankind. Together,
we should consistently bring back to the forefront of human consciousness the
necessity, the duty, the obligation, and the urgency of the cancellation of the
heavy, unjust, and unaffordable debts that crush the most vulnerable peoples of
the planet. Special attention must be given to most of the peoples to whom
we are sent.
It is true that we have long believed in a gospel that improves the lot of
the poorest.
We believe, indeed, in a gospel translated into schools, health centers, in
popular education, in small and large communities of faith, charity, and
fraternal solidarity, in a gospel of social communication and social aid.
In a gospel that digs wells, opens roads, builds churches, welcomes
refugees, and recruits successors so that our mission may not die.
We believe in a gospel of small and large actions. In short, a gospel that
makes people grow. We do all this, and more.
These are our miracles.
But what we do little or not at all, is to directly address the root of
poverty, as Yeshua did in the synagogue of Nazareth by proclaiming that
"the Year of Grace" dreamed of by the prophets began the very day he started
to proclaim his Good news.
Is Silence the Solution?
Under the pretext of charity and peace, would Yeshua remain silent about
the harsh reality that our predatory countries are still enriching themselves
at the expense of the poor?
Whether we like it or not, we, the Canadian missionaries, are part of the
exclusive club of the rich countries. By doing nothing to change the situation,
we fill the pockets of the crooks that, very often, are at the head of the same
countries we aim to evangelize.
That this is largely done under the honourable guise of trade and
international aid should not surprise us. According to experts, this practice
is widespread.
Let’s add to this the fact that we also burden these countries with debts
by selling them weapons (so they can kill each other) and selling them
overpriced technological gadgets (and others) that intoxicate them, making them
increasingly addicted to us.
We are not blind. We know that these countries continue to be colonized and
looted by us, the more privileged, but we remain silent about it.
No, we do not speak of these things in our missionary send-offs or in any
of our liturgies, obviously
for ideological reasons that would not be denied by the extreme right, and also
in order not to displease our benefactors who are, or could possibly be, from
the wealthy class...
This is why, in our cozy chapels and in our ever-clean publications, our
missionary dispatches do not cause riots and no one risks being thrown off
their chair.
Holy Year
Every 25 or 50 years, the famous "Holy Year" comes around without
fail. The current year, 2025, happens to be one of those.
In fact, it is the "Year of Grace" from the Bible, but carefully
updated for modern sensibilities.
This jubilee year, which should be the perfect Missionary Year
dedicated to the cancellation of debts of the world’s most impoverished
peoples, has miraculously been rebranded as an international religious tourism
year, with a thinly veiled trade in indulgences, papal blessings, and cheap
devotional trinkets.
All excellent things, it seems, to remove the sins of the world, but which
do nothing to relieve the crushing debt that hangs over the so-called Third
World countries, a burden that, on their scale, surpasses the highest peaks of
the Himalayas.
Poor Yeshua, after the synagogue incident, you managed to stretch your life
two more years (another miracle!), after which you met your end on a cross in a
dump reserved for the cursed, ravens and stray dogs. There was the great cliff
that awaited you.
It was to this "cliff" that your beautiful program of
evangelization, as described in Luke
4:16–30, led you.
But it doesn’t end there.
After the longest night in the world, believe it o not, a dazzling light rises behind the mountains,
heralding a new day. "There will be no more death, no more sorrow, no more
crying or pain, for the old world has passed away" (Revelation 21:4).
Because our eyes are not made to perceive such brilliance, we certainly see
nothing of that famous new world emerging on the horizon.
We lock ourselves in like sulking children, clinging to the reasonable, the
plausible, the practical things, and the ordinary affairs of life.
We give up on the dream, the passion and the beautiful madness to which,
from within, the Infinite has always called us.
In short, we settle for being merely "good" dinosaurs, thinking
of life as a kind of food to be canned in a tin.
But, if we close our "reasonable" eyes and let our hearts open,
it may happen that we glimpse a flash of that clarity.
A spark may begin to shine and eventually burn like a fire within us.
Without warning, this spark could take us far. (Luke 24:32–33; Exodus 3:1–10; 13:21; 14:24–31).
BREAKING NEWS: Today, February 7,
2025, Pope Francis, a native of Argentina (a country burdened with one of the
most unaffordable external debts in the world), has just published Spes non confundit (Hope Does Not Disappoint).
In this document, Francis makes an "urgent appeal" with a view to the
Jubilee Year. This appeal "is addressed to the wealthiest nations, urging
them to recognize the gravity of so many decisions made and to decide to cancel
the debts of countries that will never be able to repay them" (n. 16).
This afternoon, in our house of Foreign Missions, there will be a workshop on
this topic. Here emerges a "shining spark" as I referred to above.
Duc in altum! Let’s put out into
the deep! (Luke 5:4).
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