More From Manning

Explaining Dostoevsky's novel, "The Brothers Karamazov," about Jesus returning to earth, Manning says:

After fifteen hundred years the institutional church, instead of proclaiming Jesus, had supplanted him. Ecclesiastical traditions and man-made laws had usurped Jesus, and the Church was living off the success of its ingenuity.

There was too much light and truth in Jesus. His word, "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free" was intolerable. The elders decided that men and women simply were not capable of being free, so the Church ascribed to itself the protections of souls entrusted to it, only to dispense it when absolutely necessary. Ordinary people could not endure the burden of freedom, so the Church took it away from them for their own good. They would only abuse and misuse it anyway. Delivered from the anxiety and torment of personal decision and responsibility, people would feel safe and happy in obedience to authority.

"They will be amazed at us," says the Grand Inquistior to Jesus, "and will think of us as gods, because we, who set ourselves at their head, are ready to endure freedom, this freedom from which they shrink in horror; and because we are ready to rule over them - so terrible will it seem to them, in the end, to be free. But we shall say that we are obeying you and ruling only in your name. Again we shall be betraying them, for we shall not let you have anything to do with us anymore. Indeed, why have you come to disturb us?" The Grand Inquisitor means to take this Jesus, who has come again, bringing freedom once again, and burn him at the stake in the name of the Church.

The question had become not "What does Jesus say?" but "What does the church say?" This question is still being asked today.

Sad but true: some Christians want to be slaves. IT is easier to let others make decisions or to rely upon the letter of the law.

Raised from the dead, Jesus remains present in the community of disciples as the way to freedom. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of freedom. Jesus invites and challenges us to enter this kingdom, to walk the royal road of freedom, to be set free by the Father's love. He calls ragamuffins everywhere to freedom from the fear of death, freedom from the fear of life, and freedom from anxiety over our salvation.