Thursday, January 9, 2014

Chapter Five – What Are We Celebrating?

Chapter five closes out Part One of Rediscover Catholicism. The discussion begins with a question: “What are we celebrating?” Matthew Kelly knows that as Catholics, we do one thing more than anything else – we celebrate. Everything the Church does is centered around celebration: 
  • We celebrate the changing seasons and richness of Christmas and Easter 
  • We celebrate birth and eternal life through baptism and burial 
  • We celebrate salvation 
  • We celebrate pilgrimage – our common journey and our own individual journey 
  • We celebrate forgiveness and reconciliation 
  • We celebrate love and marriage 
  • We celebrate communion with God and community with the Mass 
  • We celebrate . . .

The spirit of Catholicism is one of celebration – which is the genius and fundamental orientation of our faith. Yet we see the Church in decline with parishes emptying, a lack of real contact with the youth, continued high-rates of divorce that is destroying families, dividing communities, and alienating whole families from Catholicism. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life are scarce and the Church itself is facing growing marginalization in the wake of an ever-intensifying secularity. If we are what we celebrate, then what does the above statements say about what we are celebrating?

We have acknowledged that the Church is far from perfect as the humans who inhabit it are not perfect. Matthew asks us to consider that every age has had to deal with challenges to the Church – our time is no different. The question he poses is “do problems occur so that we can solve them?” Matthew says unequivocally - no! We are not here to solve the problems – the problems are here to solve us. When we approach any problem in the right way we become better-versions-of-ourselves. How does he suggest we approach the issues with the Church?

There are many, many people who think the issue with the Church is that people aren’t attending. All we need to do is get them to start attending and we are on the way to resolution. But this is exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught and lived. The challenge is not bringing people to church, but to bring the Church TO the people! We need to reach out and meet people where they are in their need, in their brokenness - just as Christ did. The very essence of the Church’s mission – to spread the Gospel – embodies the spirit of going forth to meet people where they are at in their lives.

Another question we should delve into is “why people do not come to church?” People do not come because they do not see the value in it. Matthew believes if we convinced them of the value, if they really understood the richness and beauty of our faith, they would make church an indispensable part of their lives. If we truly engaged them where they are at – where they exist in their day-to-day life and showed them how Jesus, the sacraments, the Gospel, the Eucharist, and our spirituality can ease their pain, make them whole again, and bring true meaning and purpose to their lives – they would want to be part of the Church's faith community.

The solution, as Matthew points out, is to be people who walk the talk. The most effective messenger is the one who lives the message. Our culture is hungry for authentic lives. We need to let our lives speak to our belief that living the Gospel is life giving. It leads us to a better life and better-version-of-ourselves. We need to be people who celebrate the fullness of our faith and make those around us yearn for this life that is available to all God’s faithful children through his love, grace and mercy. The Church is merely on loan to us for a very brief time. What we make of our time and of the Church is on our hands. The Church will celebrate what we celebrate - because we are the Church.


A Reflection

You may have seen signs along various roads in your community that say this section is being “adopted” by some local group who take responsibility to keep it free from litter through routine trash pickup efforts. What a neat idea - people getting involved by engaging life. I was thinking, what if the Christian community in every city had an interdenominational “adoption” effort – maybe an “adopt a family” or “adopt a school” or “adopt a worthy cause” or . . . you get the idea. This could be anything that would bring us together as a unified faith community, celebrating our faith by living it out. I bet we could even get some pretty signs of our own.


Question


What do you think we are celebrating as a culture? What are you celebrating?

In peace,
Dan

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