Today a friend and I were talking about the way to evangelize young people; I suppose the conversation arose from our feeling of total failure at last nights vote in the commons. Over the last few months we have decicated ourselves to working hard so that people could see the reality of what the HFE bill was all about and working to try and get through ammendments which would have signalled a significant shift in our culture.
The culture of death is indeed here and growing stronger day by day, but how do we respond to this? How do we in our faith respond to our culture? Is it by painting the liberal vision of the man Jesus who was a good guy, or another position is the uberdox vision that we should nod our birettas and swan around worrying about how many candles are on an alter? Or is it by saying to people that the Catholic faith is a liberation of mankind from death to new life, a daily struggle in the temporal, everlasting joy in the eternal?
As I reflected on this I came across a passage a friend sent me by the founder of the Communion and Liberation movement Msgr Luigi Giussani... I think this is a moving account of the vision in our faith:
"There are deep needs that give a goal to living, to reasoning, and to moving.
When something corresponds to the criteria by which everything is judged and
lived, when it corresponds to the criteria with which life is lived, should be lived,
when it corresponds to the deepest desires of the heart, when it corresponds to
what the School of Community calls “elementary experience,” when it
corresponds to the deepest needs of the heart, that is, those for which
everything is lived and judged, when it corresponds to the most natural and
fully present needs of the heart, when it brings to fruition what life has been
awaiting, then it’s exceptional."
(Fr. Giussani - Is it possible to live like this - "Faith" - p.31)
What's my opinion? Well we need to look outside ourselves for a change, because young people and politicians do not understand all the bickering which goes on in either the pro-life movement and in the Church itself. Maybe when we start worrying about souls in need of saving rather than wetting ourselves at the latest LMS fiasco or the liberal minded nutters dressing up as Potato heads for mass, then we might get somewhere.
2 comments:
I think a big problem is that people are distracted. Entertainment is what most are living for. To lazy and scared to reach for something more. God is tenacious though. He will break through to people even if it means that people will have to face their emptiness without God. We are called just to plant the seeds. Anyway that is how I see things in the States.
Also I wanted you to know that U.S. Catholic have your backs.
Yes; to a large degree we never have the time to listen to God because we are so consumed with our IPods, TV, E-mail, internet and so on.
But on the other hand I think one of the serious problems is that we are focused inwardly rather than presenting our faith to the world and living in the world as faithful catholics, not ruling with world using Christ as a pannel to batter people over the head with. You're right, we plant the seeds, yet seeds need to be nurtured slowly with Love and Dedication.
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