By MOST REV. JOSEPH STRICKLAND
Part 1
In the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we read these words from Jesus to His disciples concerning how they should live their lives: “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”
It is time to make an honest assessment. We should all ask ourselves this question, “On what foundation are we building?”
We are living in increasingly turbulent, and often frightening, times. The turmoil of violence in our streets seems to be happening so often that we are no longer even surprised by it. Everywhere one looks, we see a shaking, even a total rejection, of the moral foundations of freedom upon which we once relied. There are fractures in the fabric of our civil order and deep wounds which must be healed.
And the Church is also being shaken. However, Christians need not be afraid. Our life together in the Lord, our connection together in the Mystical Body of Christ, is still able to provide a place of shelter. Not only for us, but for others who seek stability as the shaking continues all around.
False foundations, some of which have lulled even some believers into complacency, may soon fall under the stress caused by the growing unrest and decline. But as the Apostle Peter reminded the early Christians undergoing persecution “judgment begins in the household of faith” (1 Peter 4:17).
All who bear the name Christian, even if we are divided, are somehow still joined in that Church which is founded upon Jesus Christ. It is the only place where we can stand secure. And the place from which we must reach out to those who are succumbing to the fear which has been unleashed in the hearts of men, women, and nations.
The Church has an unshakable foundation, Jesus Christ, who is the same “yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8)
From that place of safety we are to wage war together against the world, the flesh, and the devil. From that place we are also called to reach out to all men and women with the love of God, fully manifested in Jesus Christ. And from that place we can help to rebuild the foundations of authentic freedom and lead others along the path to the only lasting peace, the peace which Jesus Christ can provide.
We cannot withdraw from the turbulence around us. We are part of the Lord’s response. Rather, standing on the firm foundation of true and living faith, we are being called to help bring stability and freedom to those who fear what lies ahead. And from there we must fight “the good fight of faith” (1 Tim. 6:12).
On Monday, May 21, 2012, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI held a luncheon with members of the College of Cardinals to thank them for their kindness in wishing him a happy 85th birthday on April 16. In addition, he wanted to thank his friends for wishing him a happy seventh anniversary of his election to the Chair of Peter on April 19, 2012.
Vatican News sources reported that Benedict reminded the brothers upon whom he relied for advice and counsel, that “The Church, the Mystical Body, exists on this earth, and is called the Church militant, because its members struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil.” He shared many of his moments of joy during his apostolic ministry as the Successor of Peter, as well as insights into the struggles, telling the cardinals:
“(I) especially thank the Lord for the many years He has given me, years with many days of joy, wonderful times, but also dark nights. But in retrospect it is understood that the nights were necessary and good. We see evil wants to rule the world and it is necessary to go into battle against evil. We (see) it does in so many ways, bloody, with various forms of violence, but also disguised with good and thus destroying the moral foundations of society. We’re in this fight and (in) this fight it is very important to have friends. I am surrounded by friends of the College of Cardinals: They are my friends and I feel at home, I feel safe in the company of great friends who are with me, together.”
Perhaps the sentiments expressed on that day were pointing toward the historic action which he undertook on February 28, 2013. With the humility which characterized his papacy, Benedict resigned his apostolic office. The announcement was simple and straightforward. It was made to a consistory of his brothers in the episcopate, cardinals who had gathered in Rome where he approved over 800 causes for canonization.
The use of the expression “Church Militant” as a description of the mission of the Church on Earth used to be quite common. However, for lots of reasons, including a possible misunderstanding of the term in this increasingly violent age, it has fallen out of use. It needs to be revived, and placed in its proper context, a spiritual context. In 1953, the late Pope Pius XII, who had led the Church through two decades of darkness in a world besieged by war, stated without equivocation:
“We belong to the Church militant; and she is militant because on Earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights. No rank of the clergy is spared; and the faithful — their number is legion — inspired by the valiant endurance of their shepherds and fathers in Christ, stand firm, ready to suffer and die, as the martyrs of old, for the one true faith taught by Jesus Christ. Into that militia you seek to be admitted as leaders.”
As we face growing hostility because we profess our Christian faith in in our daily lives, it is important to hear again the words the Apostle Paul spoke to the Ephesian Christians: “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood; but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:11, 12).
A Fresh Blossoming
In 1969, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict, wrote a small book entitled Faith and the Future. In it he spoke of what might be ahead for the Church. Little did he realize then that he would occupy the Chair of Peter? Here are a few excerpts which bear serious reflection:
“The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, she will lose many of her social privileges. As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.”
“It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.”
“Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.”
“And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”
“But in all of the changes at which one might guess the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world.”
It is hard to believe that he said all this fifty-one years ago. Yet, I am not the only one wondering whether these words were prophetic. They seem spoken for the very times in which we live. Perhaps they were. I suggest it is time to seriously assess not only the state of the Catholic Church, but our own understanding of the very nature of the Church, and our role in it.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress