Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter: An Inclusive Church for all Peoples, Cultures and Races
Fr Stan Chu Ilo reflects on the decision of the Council of Jerusalem for an inclusive church where all peoples and cultures are welcome. In our times, we need to ask the Holy Spirit for the openness of heart to welcome all people into our churches, and to embrace cultural diversities and differences as reflections and revelations of the unfathomable love, truth, beauty, and splendor of God. We pray that God may open our hearts to see the harm we do to the faith of people by alienating them from God through the imposition of the painful burden of worshipping God on borrowed cultural robes and foreign rituals and languages. The Church is only Catholic when it is inclusive reflecting the universality of faith, the multiplicity of our human experiences; and the diversity of God’s mission in history.
Fr Stan Chu Ilo (PhD) is a Catholic Priest and a research professor at the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, DePaul University, Chicago, USA
