The following post was posted on July 1, 2011 on the Lord of the Powers blog (the blog for St John the Compassionate Mission):
What is the Way here at St. John’s Mission?
by Fr Roberto Ubertino (St John the Compassionate Newsletter Christmas 2002)
What is the Way here at St. John’s Mission?
by Fr Roberto Ubertino (St John the Compassionate Newsletter Christmas 2002)
WHAT is the “WAY” of St. John’s?
I have often read and reflected on goals, visions, ideas, ideals, issues, morality, radical stuff, stuff we want to implement…all the necessary questions of a committed Christian life. But, once in a while, something hits me totally by surprise, something unexpected, unplanned for – GRACE!
At St. John’s, grace – a particular grace of the Mission – has been for some a scandal and for others a door to a deeper experience of being loved. This specific grace, in my observation, permeates everything…and all that come to St. John’s are slowly initiated into it.
We come to the Mission to do, to heal, to serve, to merit…. Nonetheless, we are all sooner than later led to a radical experience of our own poverty through our contact with the poor, the wounded. The moment of ‘crisis’ comes when I deeply realize that I am no better than the person I most despise or loathe. My poverty, my leprosy. is not reflected in the beautiful icons but in the disfigured face of this brother or that sister. The grace is to then discover that healing, my healing, my salvation, comes by my association and solidarity with those I consider wounded or damned!
The harshness of St. John’s and its grace are the paths of communion in a life that faithfully reflects to me my own woundedness and nakedness. At St. John’s, we are called to live this daily, for our healing, the healing of the poor and the healing of our broken wor1d.
Healing comes not for the poor, nor outside this experience of my own healing comes through this bearing of the burden within and outside of ourselves.
Healing comes in loving concretely day by day, struggling to know how much I am loved with those who have never felt love.
There are many paths, many “ways” of holiness, but this one is the particular grace God has called St. John’s to live. My experience has shown me that, for many reasons, this grace is the least desired and most resisted.
Glory to thy deep compassion, O lover of each one!
