Yes, the world needs the Church.  And the Church, to fully be Church, needs the mission of her members.  The Church needs the full, conscious and active participation of her members – all of her members!

A body having some paralyzed members can survive, and can potentially do many things, but with handicaps that make the full activity of the body more difficult.  Some activities may even be impossible to the body, because of the unresponsiveness of some of its members.  So it is also with the Church, the Body of Christ upon this earth.

Each of us, all of us, are called to holiness.  This is a truly awesome calling!  It lies at the foundation of all other vocations in the Church.  Every bishop is called first to holiness, and then to episcopal service in the Church.  Every priest is called first to holiness, and then to the priesthood in Christ for His Church.  Every deacon, every monk, every nun, every religious brother and sister, and every lay man and woman and child – all are called to holiness in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Imagine the power of a Church so sanctified in Christ!  Imagine the unction of such life-witnesses, the influence of such temples of the Spirit, the effectiveness of such undeniable Christians, the fruitfulness of such laborers in the vineyard of the Lord!  Imagine the light of Christ so radiating in this dark and confused world, that unbelievers could only say, “What do they have, that I do not have?”  Then, Christ would be glorified in His people, the people for whom He died.

I am called to be a saint, as you are called to be a saint.  Nothing less will satisfy our hearts, but such full self-gift to God.  You and I were made for holiness, for sanctity, for divine intimacy in God the Holy Trinity – glass beads, hollow trinkets and empty suits will never substitute for the life He came to give us!

When will we begin to truly trust Him, and live in Him, and obey Him?  When will we take the Faith in absolute and complete seriousness, and believe, and live what we believe?  When will we say “Yes!” to Him, no matter the cost?

The Church needs saints, and the world needs a Church of saints.  Let us resolve to be a better Christian today, than we were yesterday.  Let us resolve to participate in the offering of each Mass more completely, to make each Holy Communion more fervent, to make each prayer more sincere, and each moment more aware that Jesus is so very, very near.  Let us begin, brothers and sisters; let us begin.

Thomas

Pope Benedict XVI has strongly encouraged the use of Lectio Divina. He wrote, “I would like in particular to recall and recommend the ancient tradition of Lectio divina: the diligent reading of Sacred Scripture accompanied by prayer brings about that intimate dialogue in which the person reading hears God who is speaking, and in praying, responds to him with trusting openness of heart (cf. Dei Verbum, n. 25). If it is effectively promoted, this practice will bring to the Church — I am convinced of it — a new spiritual springtime.”

Yesterday I wrote a post describing Lectio Divina, a traditional method of listening to, meditating upon, Holy Scripture. Why did I do this? Because we in the Church need that “intimate dialogue” with God. The Church and the world need a “new spiritual springtime.” We need to awaken, and learn to listen to God. We need to treasure and hold His revealed light in the midst of this dark and darkening culture.

We need to hear God because He has given us a job to do, and many of us are sleeping. The world needs living witnesses of the saving truth of God in Jesus Christ – and if we are to be His witnesses (and we have been sent for that very purpose), then we need to take hold of that mission with a fervor, a sincerity, an urgency and an authenticity that have so far escaped us. If “mission” is our work, our vocation as Church, then many of us are asleep on the job.

So many, so many in the Church are asleep. The ruler of this world is not asleep! The kingdom of this world is advancing, becoming more organized, spreading its network by all the modern means available. This “post-Christian” culture paused for a moment in recent history to welcome a sort of inter-religious unity and equivalence, giving lip service to all the faiths and belief systems around the whole world – but not for long. Belief in anything greater than man must give way, because man will exalt himself above God, above anyone’s God, to fully reveal the man of sin. The world that hated and crucified Jesus will hate and persecute His followers also.

Who is safe from the hatred of the world, in a world that rejects God? Only those whose god is content with mere ritual and ceremony, with mere pretty but sterile words, with believers who are drunk with the pleasures and powers and toys of this world, with believers who are asleep.

Struggling within Himself, within His humanity, in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus Christ prepared His soul for the martyrdom that was to come. He prayed to His Father, in what we have called “the agony in the Garden.” Seeing His disciples sleeping, He said, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.” (Mt 26:45)

The Church needs to awaken because we have a mission to the world. This confused and drunken world is peopled by God, who created each person in His own image, and for eternal life. The Church needs to awaken to get to work, to do what God has sent us to do, while it is still light. As Jesus said, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work.” (Jn 9:4)

Christ is light. The light of the Son is brighter than the light of the sun, on this poor and decaying world. The interior dawn of Christ in the soul is a greater awakening than any sunrise can bring. When a person begins to hear – to really hear – His Word that “pierces to the Heart,” then persons change – and a new springtime can come upon the world.

This will be a long post! Please read it all, even if you need to read part at a time. The ancient method of Lectio Divina can help us “cross the bridge” to the place of our deepest yearning: true fellowship with God in Christ.

The Broad River Bridge

Lectio Divina – a way to “pray Scripture”

The ancient method and practice called “Lectio Divina” (Latin for “sacred reading”) is a way of praying Scripture. The traditional four steps of Lectio Divina are:

lectio – the reading itself;
meditatio – “meditation” upon the Word, hearing and reflecting upon its meaning;
oratio – prayer concerning the Word heard;
contemplatio – “contemplation”, or resting in the Word.

1. Lectio
Praying Scripture is different from merely “reading” Scripture, as we might read a common book or magazine. “Praying” Scripture is different from simply “praying,” as we might pray for this or that worthy petition to the Lord. No, “praying Scripture” is an act of relationship, a person-to-Person communication. We could even say that it is a communion, or at least it is ordered toward that blessed communion with the Lord that is our true vocation.

Praying Scripture begins with listening. This is not a trivial statement! Listening is not such an easy thing to do, that we can take it for granted. Listening is a discipline to be learned by practice for many people, because many people usually do not listen. For many, in the time when they could and should be listening, they are merely waiting – waiting for the other to stop talking, so that they can resume expressing their own much more important thoughts and opinions. When we take up the Holy Scripture, when we read Scripture in the first step of “lectio,” we need to listen.

To listen is a truly human act. It is the gift to the other of one’s own presence, one’s attention, one’s regard, respect, or even reverence. When we listen, we offer to the other our debt of love. In this way, listening is truly human – listening recognizes our call to true relationship with others, and with the Other who is God. To listen requires an openness to another who is not myself, an openness to the gifts of the other. To listen requires of me an openness to experiences and knowledge that were not given directly to me – yet perhaps were intended for me but only through the interaction, the mediation, the relationship with this other.

Praying Scripture begins with listening to witnesses who were entrusted to pass on their trustworthy, authentic experience with the Holy, with God. Praying Scripture insists upon listening with a stance of profound reverence. The irreverent person, the mere scholar, the curious dilettante or dabbler, the man seeking only himself who prefers novels of fiction to eternal truth – such persons will become quickly bored with only “listening.” Such persons will not listen, will not hear, will not believe so as to find life. Their cups are too full; they already know all they need to know.

The act of offering oneself in listening to the other is an act of humility – a child-likeness that is offensive to “the strong”: the self-reliant, the independent. Yet we must “turn, and become like children,” to enter the Kingdom of God. (Mt 18:3) We must embrace our actual spiritual poverty, and cast aside the masks so many of us hide behind. We must be willing to listen and to learn that which we do not know. This is the stance of a disciple: a listener, a learner, one who hungers and thirsts for something that is not his own. We need to listen in order to hear, and to hear truly, all that eternal God would say to us! We need to hear God, whose Word is life and light and truth itself.

We listen so as to hear;
we hear so as to believe;
we believe so as to live.

2. Meditatio
We prayerfully read – we listen – so as to hear. To hear is not merely to hear words, but to hear what is actually being said. To hear is to hear meanings, actual and authentic meanings – the meanings intended in the words. When we apply Lectio Divina to Holy Scripture, so as to pray the Scripture, we want to hear what God wants to say in fact, in truth. We do not want to hear only what we want to hear! We are not looking at the Bible as a mirror of our own projections and opinions. Rather we are listening to another, to The Other, listening to hear what He intends to say to us.

This step of Lectio Divina rightfully includes an aspect of study. A Scripture author, for example John in writing John’s Gospel, wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. John wrote as a free human person, as a “true author” and not as a recording robot or mere unthinking secretary. John used his (God-created) humanity to compose and articulate his experience of God in Jesus Christ, under the guidance and inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, to write the Gospel according to John. Yet the writing is also rightly said to be authored by God who inspired John, who “consigned to writing whatever He wanted written, and no more.” (both quotes from Catechism 106)

Thus the Church rightly understands Scripture as having two authors, the human author and the divine Author. Because there is a human author who wrote in a certain culture, time and place, it is helpful to use modern critical methods of study to probe his writing and seek the meaning he had in mind: what he intended to say in the words he chose and used. This scientific exegesis is essential to gaining a full understanding of Scripture, and guards us against the relativism and subjectivism that so confuse our present times. This kind of analysis keeps us real, and safe from our presumptions, biases and preferences. Thus we need to listen to faithful Bible scholars who devote their lives to such valuable analysis of Scripture.

Thank God for faithful Bible scholars! We do not need to become scholars ourselves, but we do need to listen to them, and thus gain from their labors on our behalf. God has raised up faithful men and women in this way, to help the whole Church listen, and hear, and thus believe and live.

It is crucial that we are guided by faithful scholars, as well as by true saints and holy doctors of the Church, and by the trustworthy teaching authority of the Church, the Magisterium. This rule follows the truth that besides the human author there is the divine Author, God the Holy Spirit. God inspires and leads the Church He formed and sent out to the world with the mission: “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Mt 28:19-20)

3. Oratio
Following a time of lectio (reading, of intentional listening to Scripture), and following a time of meditatio (reasoned meditation, study and reflection), we begin a time of oratio (or formal prayer). Prayer in its general meaning is relationship, it is communion. In this time of “formal” prayer, we seek to put into “form” and actual expression our developed and developing relationship with God. Our relationship with Him is to be vital, living, growing and maturing in the Truth – and in particular, it has grown now because of this time in His Holy Word.

In the light of our time in the Scripture, we want to offer Him in prayer our obedience to all we have heard from Him, to all that He would have of us and from us. We want to consecrate ourselves in His Truth, to the living of His Truth on earth and among men. We want to commit ourselves to His will, His intention, His purposes and plans. We want to be actual disciples of Jesus, actual followers who actually follow. We want to be obedient to the Word that we have heard, or have begun to hear, in the words of Holy Scripture.

It is so important to be “not hearers only, but also doers of the word”. (James 1:22) Paul wrote, “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.” (Rom 2:13) If God has entrusted us with precious insights into His eternal wisdom, through listening to Holy Scripture, how important it is to put that wisdom into practice – to enact in this world, His eternal wisdom! How important and beautiful it is to put into human expression, the divine Truth! How precious it is in the sight of God, when we participate in the Incarnation in our fully human ways.

Thus in oratio we pray for grace, for courage to live what we have heard. We make specific resolution, we fully intend in prayer to do the truth we have found in our time with the Word. Our faith is growing, and we know that faith without works is dead. We pray for perseverance, and for faithfulness in our growing and maturing faith.

4. Contemplatio
Following a time of prayer and consecration, we take time in silence and interior solitude to simply rest in the Truth we have heard from the Lord. We know that truth is like a seed in the soul – it can take firm root, or it can be forgotten and lost. In this busy and noisy world, we need to give the Word of God time to take root in us, deep in the interior of our hearts and souls. Apart from Him we can do nothing! (Jn 15:5) Our life in Him requires that we remain in Him, and He in us. (Jn 15:4-7) We need to take time to allow the Word time to find place in us, and take root in us.

The Parable of the Sower offers us much to ponder, on this matter. Seeds were sown upon different kinds of hearts, in souls of differing receptivity to the Holy Truth.

Mt 13:3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow.
Mt 13:4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.
Mt 13:5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil,
Mt 13:6 but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away.
Mt 13:7 Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
Mt 13:8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
Mt 13:9 He who has ears, let him hear.”

Not in the busyness of the path, not in the hardness of rocky ground, not in the confusion of thorns – but in the good and fertile ground of an obedient heart: let your saving truth find welcome in my soul, Oh Lord!

Thus in a time of contemplatio, we wait and rest in Him.

Thomas

The Lord said to Francis, "Rebuild my Church, for as you see it is falling into ruin."

2010. A new year has begun, on the world’s calendar. In the Church, our new year began with Advent of 2009. “Advent,” for many Catholics these days, needs explanation. Indeed, “waiting in expectation” needs explanation! Swept up in a 24-7 culture of fast foods, credit-card lifestyles and instant gratification, “waiting” for anything at all is a bizarre concept.

But “waiting” is exactly what we all are doing, in this brief and transient life on this earth. The big question is, and it is a defining question for each man and woman, “What are you doing while you wait?” We were asked for no input about our birth – we were born, and now we are – we have life – we were given life. We have been and will be asked nothing about the fact of our death: we will die, each of us, without question. This time in the “waiting” room, however long it is to be, is pure gift. How are we using the gift? How will we use the minutes, hours, days or months remaining to us here? Are we preparing for the Christ who is to come? Are we living in Advent? Are we living in the Christ who is here?

Yesterday evening, as we waited in church for the Vigil Mass to begin (The Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God), as I often do I was reading and prayerfully pondering Scripture. And also, as often (or usually) happens, I was fighting inside myself to concentrate on the Word against the constant and loud words of worldly conversations going on around me. One would think that a church would be safe! One would think that a church would be quiet, in prayer, focused on God and not on what Alice said to Alfred yesterday or how Melissa feels about that. One would think that “How’s it going?” might be information that could wait for more appropriate times or places. Maybe all these apparently urgent topics could be entrusted to the Lord in prayer while in church, since there He is in the Tabernacle – Body, Blood Soul and Divinity – listening and waiting for our notice and attention.

We need to discover that we are in the presence of the Holy in every moment! We walk on holy ground, we are surrounded by witnesses, and we are entrusted with a mission! There is a purpose that deserves to permeate our lives in this time of waiting.

Another way of saying this is, we need to grow in the life of prayer. We need to develop and mature in that love-relationship, that holy communion with God, that is our life of prayer. Yesterday I put in the mail the manuscript of the revised edition of my book, The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father. Alba House, the publishing division of the Society of St. Paul, published my first book The Ordinary Path to Holiness, and my hope is they will publish this second one also. Please pray with me that God will use my humble offerings, that they might be seeds planted with the water of His grace.

Both of these books are devoted to growing in the life of prayer; I believe the need among Catholics for help in this is crucial, foundational, essential – and urgent. The world needs the witness of life in Christ!

This is the vocation of the Church: to be His sacrament in the world, to be Christ among men! A great darkness is growing, a true and spiritual famine among us, an impoverishment within us, a horror of solitude, a running from silence, a desolation in the soul – and so many are rushing to tranquilize this growing disquiet with noise, and more busyness, the 24-7 culture of fast foods, credit-card lifestyles and instant gratification. And even with nervous and pointless chatter while in the Holy Presence of God. They are hungry! The world is hungry; the Church is entrusted. Let us, this new year, live the life He has given us.

Thomas

Over the past few years, I have had some experience with churches struggling with budget issues. How are we to meet Budget? Yes, somehow the word itself deserves special print – in bold, in italics, somehow it must get special prominence, since so much time and attention is paid to it. “Budget.” Inside I weep, when staff meetings take up this inevitable topic. Anger is not far from the deep sadness in me.

The Church was given a mission, and yet she seems to find a thousand diversions instead. She was given a mission, a destination and a work to do, yet she wanders through other concerns like a tourist on vacation, and not the apostle on his mission that she should be.

Every church I become involved with seems to think it has not enough money. I submit they all have had too much money, and the problem has been the absence of right priorities in using it. Local churches major on the minors, and overlook that which is essential. Much time and money is spent on externals, to the neglect of the necessary interior and spiritual needs of God’s people. The Church has one central mission given her by Christ: make disciples.

What happens when the people are not led to become strong disciples of Jesus? What happens when they are not led to grow in Christ, so as to come to know Him more truly, so as to love Him more fervently, so as to follow Him more faithfully and so as to be Church in the secular world? What happens is, the people become weaker and weaker in Christ, and more and more like the world they are sent to evangelize. The people of God become evangelized by the world, instead of evangelizers for Christ in the world.

And why should worldly people give to an ineffectual church? It does very little for them, so why should they (in the “wisdom” of the world) support it generously?

Suppose, instead, we were talking about churches filled with strong, faithful and zealous Catholic believers whose entire lives were focused on living the Catholic Faith! Do you think the parish would be lacking in means to fund programs that would exist for one reason: to evangelize, to make disciples, to live the mission given by Jesus? I say they would have no problems funding any program that deserved and needed to be funded!

My passion – which I believe I share with the Lord, and which I believe was given me by the Lord – my passion is for adult education and formation in the Catholic Faith.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Mt 28:19-20)

The US Bishops have, on paper, written that adult formation holds a high priority in the work of catechesis in the Church. Here are some portions from their document, “Our Hearts were Burning Within Us,” which focused on the need for solid, on-going and lifelong adult formation in the Faith.

§ 5 §    Adult faith formation, by which people consciously grow in the life of Christ through experience, reflection, prayer, and study, must be “the central task in [this] catechetical enterprise,” becoming “the axis around which revolves the catechesis of childhood and adolescence as well as that of old age.” This can be done specifically through developing in adults a better understanding of and participation in the full sacramental life of the Church.

§ 6 §    To make this vision a reality, we, as the Catholic bishops of the United States, call the Church in our country to a renewed commitment to adult faith formation, positioning it at the heart of our catechetical vision and practice. We pledge to support adult faith formation without weakening our commitment to our other essential educational ministries.

§ 13 §    Such lifelong formation is always needed and must be a priority in the Church’s catechetical ministry; moreover, it must “be considered the chief form of catechesis. All the other forms, which are indeed always necessary, are in some way oriented to it.”

Describing what ought to be the norm for a catechizing parish:

§ 129 §    The pastor establishes parish policies and procedures that give priority to the vision and practice of adult faith formation.
§ 130 §    Other parish staff members promote and support the faith formation of adults, and they encourage parish adults to participate in basic and continuous education in the faith.
§ 131 §    The parish places adult catechesis at the center of its stated mission and goals, and it promotes the importance of adult faith formation at every opportunity.
§ 132 §    The parish gives adult faith formation a priority in the allocation of financial resources, in providing learning space, and in parish scheduling.

How we need parishes to put these fine words into practice! How we need pastors who take seriously the need and the priority of adult faith formation! May the Lord awaken us all to the obligations of the life He has entrusted to us.

I pray that the Lord will rouse and awaken the Church here in America, before paganism (or Islam) totally overruns the last remnants of Christianity here. Christ is the one light that can save us from the darkness that is growing around us.

A quiet tragedy is growing among us: men and women, Christians – Catholics – insensitive to the presence of God so near, deaf to the thunder in His whispered Words, blind to the traces of divine light in signs He has placed for our journey. We have become desensitized, numbed, unresponsive to either the holiness, or the blasphemies around us.

In the Book of Revelations, we read:

Rev 3:15 “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot!
Rev 3:16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.
Rev 3:17 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

What kind of “lukewarmness” produces such spiritual blindness? How can a “believer” have such lack of discernment, to confuse prosperity with abject poverty, awareness with spiritual blindness, rich garments with humiliating nakedness?

Can a believer be so cold-blooded, so internally adapted to the temperature of his surroundings, that he has no rightful passion or authentic heat of his own? C.S. Lewis spoke of “men without chests,” in his work The Abolition of Man. What disease robs men of chests, of heart, and leaves only bloodless ideas? It is ignorance of, or rejection of, those objective values that inflame heat in the lives and actions of men. Modern men, including those who call themselves Christian, have died to the horrors of sin as they have to the glory of holiness. They have no chests; they have only thoughts about thoughts, lukewarm and pointless.

How can persons remain so detached from the horrors of sin, or the glory of holiness, as to speak of one or the other as easily and detached as they might speak of yesterday’s weather? How can men not care that our culture is going mad? How can Christians not care that the Church staggers and slurs like a drunken man while the culture commits suicide?

We do not hate evil enough. We do not treasure enough the holy all around us. We are men with thoughts about sin, and thoughts about God – but where is the fire? Where is the life? How do we not fall prostrate, sobbing for our sins and the sins of the Church, when we enter the Presence of God?

Revelation gives the response of the Lord to this church:

Rev 3:18 Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.

Gold, holy and spiritual gold! For those who will seek, there is true and eternal value embedded in this creation, like gold deep in the mountains and running dust in streams. There is fire in the heart of Jesus, able to make pure every ounce that we can find, if we will stay close to Him.

And there is another fire, a less welcomed one, a fire of justice that will destroy. As we look around us, one wonders if it can be very far away. Our blasphemies multiply, and gather, and angels must weep. We are called to repent, to turn again, to live the mission Christ has entrusted to us. We are called to be men, full-bodied and full-blooded, and live our mission – a mission from God – with passion while time remains.

Thomas

We have officially entered the Buying Season. The pillars of our economic system, retail businesses, hold their breath and hope that once more, Americans will buy-buy-buy as if there is no tomorrow. There is of course a tomorrow, some tomorrow that will not come. There is a day that will be the last day, a day that should illuminate our days between now and then, a day that ought to put things here and now into perspective. There is an end to this frantic busyness and buyingness, a day when our values and our valuables will be put on the scales of Truth, and evaluated in the light that never ends.

Our economy is based on over-consumption. The more we over-consume, the fatter and the more self-indulgent we are, the better for this dysfunctional economy. There is something very wrong with this picture! There is something very wrong with an economy built upon a foundation that is itself inherently unstable and transient. Self-indulgence is not a “rock” we can rely upon! Over-consumption is not a firm foundation!

Capitalism is not bad, if capital is invested for returns of real value. Regulation is not bad, if the regulation and the regulators are themselves ordered toward living true justice. Neither individual rights nor big government control are intrinsically bad, when the rights affirmed or the controls enforced are directed to true and righteous good. It is when light is darkness to us, and when darkness is light to us, that both freedom and control are destined to failure.

I do not blame our culture, or our government, or television or anything else in the secular world. I blame us in the Church who have failed to be Church. The Church is not a business! The Church is not a social club! The Church is not a weekend wish-time in a long week of hard and dirty reality. The Church is reality, the life of Christ set in this dark and confused world.

Christ sent the Church to be light in this dark and darkening world, until He comes again. But so many in the Church in our time have failed, and continue to fail in being light and in bringing light in the growing darkness. Instead, the witness of the Church grows fainter as we blend more and more into our surroundings. Catholics grow less sensitive to the presence of the Holy, less reverent before the Tabernacle, less full participants in Holy Mass, less educated and formed in the Faith, less able to evangelize, and indeed seeing less of a reason to do so. The secular and godless culture is evangelizing the Church! The Church is seduced, and grows impotent and lazy, as self-indulgent as the rest of the country. Catholics finally “fit right in.” Happy day.

This is a time for Catholics who have not yet fallen completely asleep to rouse themselves and begin to arouse others. The darkness has not yet overtaken us, but it is coming. Like the three whom Jesus made sit and watch as He prayed in His agony in the Garden, we fall off again and again to sleep, but it need not be this way. When the Son of Man comes, He can indeed find faith upon the earth, if the Church will awaken and become Church, her vocation.

What can we do? What must we do? We must rouse ourselves and look for Jesus who is very near. We must look to Him, we must find Him and see Him and see Him seeing us. We must meet Jesus, and listen so as to hear His words of life. And we must live in Him, without compromise. We must become converted, “sold out” to Jesus, finding God who is all in all, in Him. We must live as though we believe Him, and we must believe Him. No more mere reciting prayers – we must pray. No mere attending Mass – we must participate wholeheartedly, offering ourselves a living sacrifice which is our acceptable service of worship, receiving the living Christ and taking Him with us when we leave the assembly. We must live as though we are accountable, for we are accountable. We must live as though God has entrusted this world to us, for He has. We must live as though our days are numbered, for they are, and He is very near, at the door.

Most political discourse today is missing the point. Should we veer toward socialism – or hold fast to free enterprise and deregulation, to less restricted capitalism? More government regulation and control, or more individual rights and freedoms? So much faith today is put in political and economic ideology! The argument sometimes centers on the Constitution: should the Court judge by strict interpretation, or should it “breathe” and adapt to modern issues and problems?

This country is far different from when first grounded on the Constitution, and based on free enterprise and individual rights. Then, America mostly agreed on what was right and what was wrong – most individuals agreed that there was good and evil, and that we do not determine it: we must discover it. It was and is our challenge to find the true and eternal good, and to come into it; to discern the lurking evil and avoid it when possible, and fight it when necessary.

That was then; this is now. Does it matter whether we have free capitalism or regulated socialism, if we have forgotten the difference between good and evil? Is a greedy free capitalist who manipulates your health insurance any better for you than a “regulated” corrupt Washington bureaucrat? Which one will be looking out for your best interests? Who can be trusted to police either one, when God Himself is banned from the system?

The problem is deeper than the system that organizes us. The problem is within us. Before reform, America needs revival.

In receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Mother Teresa said, “I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing – direct murder by the mother herself.” Thankfully, American support for abortion is eroding: a recent Pew poll reveals 47% support legal abortion in all or most cases, a 7-point drop from last year; 45% want it illegal, an increase of 4%.

The chasm dividing Americans on many major moral issues is deeply troubling: half see it one way, half the opposite. Most troubling, however, is the moral insensitivity if not blindness of so many – and they have the power to vote! We vote into office people who are moral chameleons, able to adapt to “right” or “wrong” as campaign donors or constituent whims dictate. A nation so governed cannot stand. Its house is built upon mud.

We deserve it. A democracy deserves the government it gets, because for good or evil it is self-inflicted. As a people we are more concerned with our own bread-and-butter issues than with the good or the evil of our choices, the right or the wrong of how we live.

“The chickens have come home to roost,” using words of our President’s former religious and spiritual advisor. We elected them; we are reaping their bitter fruit. America is being restructured, redirected, indebted, refinanced and redefined in ways that make peace impossible: no justice, no peace – simple as that. Let us hope it is not too late!