GOD, of course, has been around. An understatement. He has been around since eternity. But in our human world, He needs to be made alive, because as image and likeness of God, we happen to have the capacity to shut him off or shut him up. Yes, that’s the sad and painful reality.
Remember that late 19th-century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzche, who popularized the brash idea that God is dead? Many now are the disciples of that thinking, both overt and covert, dominant and recessive. In fact, the world today is sinking in an ocean of aggressive atheistic or at least agnostic ethos.
That’s why the Church has been cogitating deeply on how to face this challenge. For this purpose, the Pope recently opened a synod of bishops dedicated to the task of the new evangelization, a real tough nut to crack. He also declared a Year of Faith.
These are some initiatives at the top level, but I suppose a lot more need to be done. The idea has to trickle down to all the lower levels. Let’s just hope, pray and work that it percolates organically and synergistically.
The problem with how to make God alive among ourselves today centers on how to make our preachers and evangelizers—from the clergy down to the religious and committed lay faithful—credible.
That’s really a tall order. With all the scandals besmirching our ecclesiastics nowadays, even the most basic requirement for credibility is already blown away. This is not to mention the fact that many of these official preachers have spotty doctrinal orthodoxy.
We really need a first-class miracle here.
The world today is so deep into worldly wisdom, what with all the technologies and sciences developed, that it can easily detect whether our preachers and evangelizers are just smart and clever worldlings like themselves or are something else who bring some mysterious, if not sacred message, that’s worth listening to.
Of course, the sector of the uninitiated, unchurched, ignorant and confused, not to mention, the polluted and corrupted, those already immunized from religion, is vast and extensive, and is growing fast. How to contain it, and more, how to convert and transform it requires nothing less than a till-death face-off.
Now is the time to rouse from complacency, and regardless of how inadequate we may feel or how burdened and shackled we are with other side issues, we have no alternative but to rise to the challenge, and do what a state of war would require of us. As they say, all is fair in love and in war.
This, I believe, is the martyrdom expected and in fact required of us in these times. We have to remember that martyrdom, the cross, suffering have always been a necessary ingredient in our lives here in this world. We cannot prosper and develop, in the strictest sense of these terms, without them.
We have to be prepared for this martyrdom. It has never disappeared from Church life. And for this, not only should we be doctrinally well-grounded, already a tough proposition. What is more important is that we should be spiritually healthy and vibrant, and to keep it that way all the time.
And mind you, that is always possible because unlike in our physical and material life, our spiritual life has no limits and in fact has the capacity to receive God’s grace that makes things always new and us always young. Our spiritual life has the capacity to transcend our very limited earthly conditions.
That’s what is called in philosophy as the obediential potency of our spiritual soul. Our soul has the capacity to be raised to the supernatural order. But things also depend on us. And so we just have to constantly look for ways to “keep the music playing,” as one love song would put it, amid the vagaries of life.
In the opening of that synod of bishops for the new evangelization called by the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI mentioned two themes that need to be thoroughly discussed: the passion for announcing Christ to the world and the knowledge that God acts in the Church.
These themes, I think, are crucial given the temper of the times. To proclaim Christ, his words and deeds, his presence and guidance, should be a dominant passion in our preachers and evangelizers. This has to be done with gift of tongues supported by credible lifestyle.
The conviction that God acts in the Church should also be reiterated to reassure everyone that we as preachers and evangelizers are not just acting on our own.