Top 15 George Soares-Prabhu Quotes

CWG 4: Soares-Prabhu, George M. (2001). Theology of Liberation: An Indian Biblical Perspective, Collected Writings of George M. Soares-Prabhu, S.J., *Vol.4. D’Sa, Francis X. (ed.). Pune. Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth Theology Series.

CWG 3: Soares-Prabhu, George M. (2003). Biblical Spirituality of Liberative Action, Collected Writings of George M. Soares-Prabhu, S.J., Vol.3. Kuthirakkattel, Scaria. (ed.), Pune: Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth Theology Series.

CWG 2: Soares-Prabhu, George M. (1999). Biblical Theology for India, Collected Writings of George M. Soares-Prabhu, S.J., Vol.2,Kuthirakkattel, Scaria (ed.), Pune: Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth Theology Series.

CWG 1: Soares-Prabhu, George M. (1999). Biblical Themes for a Contextual Theology Today, Collected Writings of George M. Soares-Prabhu, S.J., Vol.1.Padinjarekuttu, Isaac (ed.) Pune: Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth Theology Series.

The world of today is full of refugees. We live among thousands of "guest-workers" driven by need to work as unwanted aliens in the affluent Egypts of the Western world. We hear of tens of thousands of political refugees hunted out of their homes, to sit hopeless and forgotten, by the rivers of dingy Babylons in the vast refugee camps of Palestine or Cambodia. We know of the many million victims of caste or race discrimination, who suffer as harassed aliens in their own land, living a constantly threatened life in the "harijan" (ex-untouchables) quarters of half a million villages in India, or the segregated black townships of South African cities. We rub shoulders with hundreds of millions of the desperately poor, denied access to the "land", eking out a precarious existence on the margins of their society in the endlessly sprawling shanty towns of the Third Word or the squalid "inner cities" of the West. For all of them, and for us living among them, the story of Jesus in Egypt read in this way may cease to be just another Christmas story and become a Christmas gospel of challenge and of hope.

What makes a person a Christian is not professing certain beliefs, nor practising particular rituals, nor undergoing an initiation rite, nor belonging to a recognizable social group, nor even confessing the name Jesus, though these are inevitable stages in the evolution of a religious tradition. To be disciple of Jesus means to experience God the way that Jesus experienced God.

Liberation is an experience of unconditioned freedom resulting from an experiential realization of the radical relativity of the empirical world, a state of absolute freedom from psychological and sociological bondage, which finds its concrete, institutionalized expression in the Buddhist monk (bhikku) or the Hindu wandering ascetic. Liberation for the Asian psyche is liberation which leads to that poverty which is freedom from illusion, attachment and greed.

Jesus did not come to rescue a few individuals from a condemned mass; but to open up a new future for man, thematized by him as the New Israel, this is as a universal community of love, leavened by the values of freedom fellowship, and justice. Such a community is possible only when the oppressive structures that hinder its growth are overthrown. His miracles are complemented by his controversies in which he stands up against the established structures of institutional oppression: the law, the cult, priesthood, and the Temple.

In places like India Jesus brings something radically new. A new experience of God, which allows him to rename Yhwh as ABBA. God is experienced not so much as 'holy' but as gracious and compassionate; and people are not just members of an exclusive tribe or a separated 'clean' caste, but as members of an open family, marked by freedom from consumerism and an attitude of radical service.

The Christian response cannot be that of a spectator, exhorting from the side lines. It must be the response of the committed participant, involved in the struggle for justice and identified with his struggling brothers and sisters - even as God is involved in his history, and as Jesus has identified himself with humankind. An incarnational response will thus always be an active and an involved response.

Jesus (1) identifies himself with the poor, in order (2) to show them an active and effective concern. Such a concern looks to (3) the ending of their "social" poverty, while calling for (4) a "spiritual" poverty that will set them and their rich exploiters free from "mammon", the compulsive urge to possess. Together, these four elements spell out the "compassion" of Jesus (Mt 9:36; Mk 6:34; 8:2) — that active, caring and passionate love which defines so sharply his life-style and sets a pattern for the life style of his followers.

The poverty of most Asian countries, and the alarming extremes of social and economic inequality to be found in them, derive from and are maintained by their stagnant social and religious institutions (like the caste-system in India), which as popularly understood and practised, are often "a tremendous force of social inertia". But it would be unfair and unrealistic to stop here. For Asia's underdevelopment is at least equally the result of induced socioeconomic processes.

“Poverty in India is not just an economic category, it is a religious value as well. Caste, even in its most degrading form of untouchability, is legitimized by India’s dominant religion and tolerated by others, Christianity included!” (Soares-Prabhu, “Interpreting the Bible in India Today,” CWG 4, 6.)

For a change of structures without change of hearts will lead to new forms of oppression; while a change of hearts without change of structures will leave the present crushing form or oppression intact. Attitudinal and structural change are both necessary, because ultimately attitudes and structures are dialectically related.

Jesus appears in the Gospels as non-clerical, even as a somewhat anti-clerical figure. He is not a priest, for he does not belong to a priestly family; and he is shown in continuing conflict with the priestly establishment which ultimately arranges for his death.