Alison Cisneros

Theology

Written Report

October 28, 2021

Instructor: Justo Gomez

Written Report:

Solidarity of God and Blessed are the Persecuted

In the solidarity of God, Brackley focuses on Jesus’s sacrifice and his profound love

for us sinners. There were several quotes from the bible that stood out to me. One being, a

quote from Hebrew (10:5-10) that mentions, “His death crowned a life of love”. This is an

interesting quote from the bible because we learn from scriptures that Jesus was not forced to

die for us. He willingly set his faith to die for us to set a life of love. To add, I think it is a

reminder of Jesus’s sacrifice, so that we remember to be thankful and spread love to each

other. At the end of the day, we are his children and he has showed nothing but love and we

should follow by example to do the same.

In addition, another quote that stood out to me was where Brackley claims that God

exalts the lowly and humbles the exalted. This was another interesting idea, because it

expresses God’s love for the poor. We are caught up in all the materialistic things that the

world has presented to us and we need to remember that, as Brackley mentions, God exalts

the lowly. In other words, we need to let go of the mundane things and allow ourselves to be

humbled, and to help each other out by spreading our love.

Moving forward, another idea that stood out in the passage whereby Dean mentions

“the source of humanity’s great suffering is greed and contempt, idolatry of power and
violence, addiction, culpable blindness, refusal to welcome the stranger or to forgive.”

Interesting enough we are the cause of our suffering. As humans we have created a world of

violence and greed for power. We are going against the teachings of Christ by harming

instead of embracing one another. This has also prevented world unity because of awful

grudges that we fail to realize that is solely damaging to one another.

Furthermore, Brackley presents the segment blessed are the persecuted. “All who

want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”, a scripture from the bible

presented in the book. We are allowed to have an opinion, even if that opinion is against the

majority. Jesus was no exception because he followed his beliefs no matter the crucial

criticism. As followers of Jesus, we all endure the wrath of the opposition, and embrace it.

Thus, allowing God to care for us, and having faith that in him.

Finally, the last bible scripture that caught my attention was Romans 5:3-4 stating

“Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope and

that produces the love that casts out fears”. Re-enforcing on what was said above, this

scripture prompts us to face hardships. This is because the se hardships only makes us

stronger. This, as mentioned in the book, teaches to love our enemies. Loving our enemies

allows us to overcome evil with good. Instead of creating resentment we are only promoting

the word of God and Spreading love.

To conclude, all together these five scriptures and idea re-enforces God’s purpose.

Which is to love one another eternally no matter. It also mentions the endurance we need to

face in order to practice our faith in God.

 References:

Dean, Brackley. The call to Discernment in troubling Times: New perspectives on the
Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola. New York, 2004.