All religions have used parables which have a spiritual significance. By proposing a path, they invite each listener to hear it from their own story.
I have a notebook with more than a thousand parables that I have gleaned from my reading. In this section of my blog, I propose to report some of them which seem particularly eloquent to me.
Israel’s confession of faith begins: ” You shall love the Lord your God », Which is also the first commandment according to Jesus. What does it mean to love God? An apologue from Islam can help us think about this question.
There was a woman in Basra named Radia. She walked through the streets of the city with a bucket full of water in one hand and a torch in the other. He is asked why: “The torch is to set fire in paradise, and the water is to extinguish the flames of hell, so that God may be loved for himself. »
This apologue questions the motivation of our faith. Why, for what, are we trying to live the Gospel? Is it free, because God is God, or to derive some spiritual satisfaction from it?
To illustrate this alternative, Maître Eckart wrote: “ Some people want to look at God like they look at a cow, with the same eyes; they want to love God like we love a cow. You like this one for the milk and cheese and for your own benefit. So do all those people who love God for external wealth or internal consolation. They don’t really love God, they love their own advantage. »
If the Gospel is a word of grace, I am invited to enter into the logic of grace, and to love God freely, to be faithful freely.
A beautiful illustration of the gratuity of faith is found in the novel by Zvi Kolitz which relates the letter that one of the last fighters from the Warsaw ghetto wrote to God. It ends as follows: “ When I was young, my rabbi told me many times the story of a Jew who, with his wife and their child, fled the Spanish Inquisition. He took to the sea aboard a small boat, and managed, despite the storm, to reach a rocky islet. There, a lightning strike strikes his wife. Then a tornado carries the child into the waves. Alone, unhappy as stones, with his hands raised to heaven, the Jew addresses God: “God of Israel, I have fled hither to be able to serve freely, to observe your commandments and to sanctify your name. But you do everything to stop me from believing in you. However, if you think you will succeed in turning me from the right path through these trials, I cry out to you: You will be rewarded for your trouble. No matter how much you offend me and castigate me, I will always believe in you.” »
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Author Gabriel Tertrais
