Good people line up against each other --- and for all the wrong reasons, Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father Ronald Rolheiser said at the Religious Education Congress March 2.

The washing of feet and "being servant" must dwarf our divisions, the well-known spiritual writer and syndicated columnist told a large crowd in the Anaheim Convention Center arena.

"If Jesus were here," he said, "he would have pro-life advocates and pro-abortion advocates line up and wash each other's feet. The need to 'be right' has hardened our hearts."

In addressing his topic, "Keeping a Mellow Heart in a Bitter Time," Father Rolheiser --- president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio --- referred to the parable of the prodigal son.

"The real struggle at the end of our spiritual life will be with God," he said. "The greatest struggle of the spiritual life is not to end up like the older brother of the prodigal son --- angry, resentful, bitter."

And all, said Father Rolheiser, have seen how intense, morose people with causes are "always mad about somebody" or something. They can be very hard to live, work and deal with. Knowing oneself and one's own 'emotional metaphysics,' as St. John of the Cross called it, gives one a mellow heart."

Father Rolheiser said that the early church fathers believed that inside of each person are two souls: "a large, big-hearted soul and a petty, mean soul. At any point of the day we are hooked into one or the other.

"We don't live in the easiest of times. We live in a highly polarized church --- liberal and conservative, anger this way and that way, blue states and red states, tension in our workplaces. It is not easy to be vulnerable, to be mellow inside of that."

The answer, he said, can be found in the words of Jesus. In Matthew and Mark all are told to "be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect." In Hebrew the word "perfection" is very close to the word for "compassion." Taken with that meaning, it is, "Be compassionate as your heavenly father is compassionate."

The Jewish mind was caught up in formulae, laws and rubrics. Jesus told us, "God doesn't care about rubrics. God cares about the poor," said Father Rolheiser. "If Isaiah were here, you know how he would judge the religiosity of the United States, the Catholicity of North America? Not by how many people go to church. It wouldn't be about rubrics, it would be about how the weakest in society are faring? How are the immigrants faring? How are the poor faring? How are the orphans, widows, and strangers doing?

"What God really wants of us is to have a mellow, compassionate heart that shapes how we do justice, shapes how we do dogma, catechesis. That's where the Old Testament ends. Then Jesus comes along and talks about the importance of catechesis, commandments and justice."

The story of the Prodigal Son, he said, is really about the command to be compassionate. "It is not a parable about the two sons," he said, "it's really about a compassionate father, or God, who has a heart to embrace all. That shapes everything. Or as Jesus said, 'God makes the sun to shine on the good and, as well, as the bad.'"

Acknowledging how the sun shines, and on who, can take us beyond liberal and conservative. In other words, said Father Rolheiser, do not be a liberal or a conservative. Jesus was neither. Be a man or woman of faith and compassion.

In the washing of feet before the Last Supper, he continued, the emphasis is not on the breaking of bread, but rather on Jesus' "gesture of compassion." Jesus' message: give up your right to be right.

Jesus' greatest gift to us, says Rolheiser, is "that he [Jesus] gave himself up in mellowness of heart" in the garden before his death. The evangelists dwell less on Jesus' physical suffering and more about his emotional suffering.

How do we adopt Jesus' mellow spirit? Through affective prayer, said Father Rolheiser. The prayer of affectivity is found in John's Gospel where Mary Magdalen comes looking for the body of the dead Jesus. He sees her in the garden --- a place of love in Scripture --- and says to her, "What are you looking for?" Then Jesus says her name, "Mary."

"Ultimately," said Father Rolheiser, "what we are looking for is to hear God pronounce our name in love, because before that we don't have any substance. We need to pray affectively, with the prayer of the disciple, because the person who has an affective relationship with Jesus is, like John, resting her or his head on Jesus' chest and hearing his heartbeat, speaking to Jesus. Only affectively can we connect with Christ."