Main news for 26 December 2016

Paul characterizes his relations and communication with the brothers of the Corinthian church with a paradoxical phrase. He writes: face to face with you I am timid, but from afar I am bold. At the same time Paul mentions the meekness and gentleness of Christ, which, one may think, condition his own meekness in communicating with the brothers. Here, of course, one could note that when meeting a person face to face, it often happens that the words one had prepared to say to him turn out to be unsuitable or unnecessary, and then one says something entirely different from what one had planned and what, from a distance, it seemed one certainly would have said at the meeting.

A personal meeting always changes a person's inner, spiritual and psychological state: from a distance we are rarely able to remember a person as he is; most often we conduct an inner dialogue not with him himself, but with the image of him that has taken shape in our consciousness. At a meeting, however, the image often turns out to be little like the real person, and then, if we want communication with the real person and not with the picture we have drawn, we have to replace those prepared words with others, more suitable ones.

When the issue is Christians and communication in Christ, in that spiritual space where He determines the quality of communication, the gap between picture and reality can prove even greater. Indeed, sin in any Christian evokes only rejection and nonacceptance. A concrete person committing this sin is another matter: a person can be loved even despite his sins.

In our fallen world, however, loving at a distance is not at all simple, if by love we understand relations that must be maintained, and not emotions experienced by a person. From a distance sins seem so great that they appear to completely obscure the sinner, so that from a distance usually nothing but words of denunciation comes to mind. Face to face is different: here one begins to see the real, living person whom one loves.

From a distance it seems quite easy to strike at sin together with the sinner. Face to face one understands that striking indiscriminately is no work at all, and that helping a person get rid of sin is not nearly as simple as it seemed from afar. Then boldness and decisiveness give way to that very meekness and even timidity of which the apostle writes: the work ahead is almost jeweler's work, and it must be done together with Christ so as to help and not harm.