Description
WEEK 4
Care
Moral passion
There is one feature common to these different examples of care. It is passion. Care is not seen as just a part of one’s job, something that can be codified, or (even worse) as an arbitrary life-style choice. This is passionate care, driving remarkable people such as Chad Varah and Cicely Saunders to devote their whole lives to it. Passion is evident in many of the stories about Jesus and in some of those that he told himself. Mark’s story of the ‘leper’ contains the sentence: ‘After sternly warning him [Jesus] sent him away at once.’ The Greek word used here for ‘sternly warning’ is full of passion. In ancient Greek it was sometimes used to denote the snorting of a horse. Some have suggested that a more passionate translation of the sentence here is: ‘Moved by deep feeling towards him, immediately he drove him forth.’ Jesus was passionately concerned for this man and for his welfare...