Insertion is the most efficient way to reach out with credibility to the slum-dwellers, to get to know them, to share their broken lives, to walk together in their process of liberation. Insertion into the slums means entering into their world and stand with them. Insertion brings a deepening in the mystery of incarnation. It is difficult to realize the full significance of the incarnation unless we grasp it through the world of poverty and oppression. From there we experience Jesus' historical incarnation in the world of the poor.
In words of John M. Waliggo (a Ugandan priest and theologian): "The strategy that is demanded is for the Church to be the first in the slums, so that whoever comes, finds it there."
Jesus became an outcast by choice, in the words of Jürgen Moltmann, "He became the kind of man we do not want to be: an outcast." He opted freely for a marginal existence. With all his richness he understood that the only way to carry his mission was by being inserted in the "underground" of Palestinian society.
To believe in Jesus is to live the way he lived. Therefore we are called to insert ourselves in the margins of today's society. |
