The Church only has a future when it tries to follow Jesus and is as a servant Church, according to Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga.
Delivering the keynote address at Friday’s opening of the University of Dallas Ministry Conference in Las Colinas, the Honduran archbishop and chairman of Pope Francis’ circle of advisors, told the conference the church must break down the walls between the ordained hierarchy and the laity, with all Catholics becoming “the suffering servant.”
“There is not a dual classification of Christians,” he said.
“The church as a society of unequals disappears. … We are here to serve, and that requires lowering ourselves to become servants.”
“Jesus was not rich. He lived as a poor villager. He didn’t want to ingratiate himself with the powers of the world,” the Cardinal told the packed hall at the Irving Convention Center.
“If the church has a mission, it is to manifest the deeds of Jesus”.
“As Pope Francis said, we have to reach out to the periphery of the world and proclaim the Kingdom of God,” he said.
“Even Jesus didn’t proclaim himself. He proclaimed the kingdom.”
Cardinal Maradiaga said the church must show herself as Samaritans on earth.
“The church should always come equipped with faith and with generosity to humanity,” he said.
This puts the church at odds with a world where “financial capital wields over a billion human beings a power of life and death – who has the right to live on this planet and who is doomed to die.”
In closing, Cardinal Maradiaga spoke of the “cardiac of selfishness” that afflicts so many.
“Many of us are guilty of cardiac insufficiency,” he said, but God offers the pacemaker that will make hearts strong again.
“We have to ask the Holy Spirit to give us a spiritual pacemaker,” he said, “and then woe is me if I don’t go and preach the gospel.”
Sources
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