World Youth Day 2016: A Candle Lit in the Darkness

What kind of world do we really live in? If we attempt to answer that question by watching the nightly news, surely we’d come to the conclusion that our world has gone off the rails. The ubiquity of random and senseless violence, the absurd comedy of our political zeitgeist, the perverse affront to human dignity at every turn – it seems as though the human condition is totally if not irreparably depraved.

This is certainly how I was feeling about the world when I stepped on the plane a few short weeks ago. I honestly thought to myself (because surely I would never voice such a radical opinion out loud) that this must be the beginning of the end. This is the final and farcical finale before Jesus returns and sets everything straight (and leave it up to Jesus to time his return with the Cubs fated victory in the World Series). Frankly I welcomed the idea. Feeling so powerless in the face of evil, I yearned for the day when sanity could be restored and love could triumph once and for all.

Then something happened.

I took a journey, a pilgrimage, that allowed me to see beyond the matrix of fear and helplessness. Arriving in Krakow, Poland I lifted my gaze to see other pilgrims, two million of them to be exact, on a similar journey of the spirit. They too had left lands where violence and brutality had ripped apart their homes, their families, their peoples. They too had come to Krakow to see if divine mercy really had a place in this world, if this Jubilee Year of Mercy was more than wishful thinking amidst the “real world” of callous inhumanity.

World Youth Day restored my faith in God, in the Church, and in the larger narrative of redemption in human history. One moment in particular marked the turn in my mind. It was the Saturday night Papal Vigil. We had hiked eight miles out of Krakow, under intense summer sun, to reach the dusty plains of Campus Misericordia – the “Field of Mercy.” That night two million young people lit candles and knelt in prayer, lifting their hearts to Jesus, united as one people of God, commiting their lives to mercy, to forgiveness, to love. Two million faces illumined with the spark of hope. Two million hearts turned to Jesus. Two million lights cast out the darkness.

In that moment I realized once again that there is no greater power, that our present sufferings are nothing compared with the glory that will be revealed to us. In that moment I was reminded of the words of St. Paul, the patron saint of missionaries and evangelists, that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ro 8:38-39).

What kind of world do we really live in? God’s world. And we are his children. We are ambassadors of hope and heralds of the kingdom where nothing (and I mean nothing) can separate us from the love of God that we know through Jesus Christ. Though in the world we may have trouble, let us take heart, today and always, echoing the words of St. Faustina Kowalska, Polish nun and mystic, “Divine Mercy, inspiring hope against all hope, I trust in You.”

Keep It Simple, Stupid

I used to think that being intelligent meant being complicated.

It just seemed like the more complex, convoluted, and intricately byzantine a person could be, the smarter they appeared. When our culture places so much emphasis on cerebral intelligence (think of the value we place on IQ and ACT scores), it is no wonder that so many of us chase this distorted professorial image – the esoteric thinker, stroking his Rasputinian beard, waxing eloquently about something so mind-blowing and magnificent that none of us simpletons could possibly understand it.

We sit back in awe of such people, with a wonderment that approaches worship, and imagine all the good they’re doing in the world (while consequently feeling inconsequential about our own mundane contributions). “They are so smart,” we mumble, which often merely translates: “I have no idea what he/she just said.”

It seems this phenomenon can infect the Christian ranks as well. We often equate the verbose with the very smart, the opaque with the omniscient. If you really want the good stuff, we intuit, you gotta read the heavy-hitters - Aquinas and Augustine, Bonaventure and Barth, Schweitzer and Schleiermacher (no knock on any of these, by the way). When the Rahnarian run-on sentences become so long that we forget what day it is before reaching the fifth semi-colon, we rest assured that we’re really onto something sophisticated and fresh (though we haven't a clue what that is). 

It is perhaps not surprising that Soren Kierkegaard, nineteenth century Danish philosopher (and no dunce himself) suggested:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.[1]

Well, I don’t exactly share Kierkegaard’s conspiracy theory about theological reflection. I don’t think of Christians as scheming swindlers (well, at least not all of them).  But I do think he’s touching on something important.  It has to do with the relationship between simplicity and power:

Simple truths transform us.

This perennial axiom is nowhere more important than in our presentation of the gospel. It’s what Pope Francis was getting at when he said, “The message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing.”[2] We should not be “obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines,” he urges. “Do not be preachers of complex doctrines, but rather be announcers of Christ.”[3]

So the question becomes, “What is the core, the essential, the most beautiful, the heart of the Christian message?” Try a few of these on for size, taken from Pope Francis’ exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel:

·      “In [its] basic core, what shines forth is the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead.”[4]

·      “Before all else, the Gospel invites us to respond to the God of love who saves us.”[5]

·       “The joyful, patient and persistent preaching of the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ must be your absolute priority.”[6]

·      “The salvation which God offers us is the work of his mercy. No human efforts, however good they may be, can enable us to merit so great a gift.”[7]

·      “What is essential is that the [Christian] be certain that God loves him, that Jesus Christ has saved him and that his love has always the last word.”[8]

What Pope Francis is getting at here is of supreme importance. It’s a message that we’ve heard proclaimed and prescribed by every pontiff before him in the modern era. “The essence of Christianity is Christ,” Pope Benedict XVI said, “not a doctrine, but a person.” Pope John Paul II declared, “We shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person.”[9] “Nothing,” Pope Francis reminds us, “nothing is more solid, profound, secure, meaningful and wisdom-filled than the initial proclamation.”[10]

The point is that the most essential thing, the heart of the Christian message, the essential core of the Gospel is not complicated. It is not complex. It is not a doctrine even. It is a living, breathing reality. It is the simple presence of God among us. It has a gentle face and tender flesh. “Christian doctrine,” Pope Francis pronounces, “is called Jesus Christ.”[11]

The unparalleled brilliance of the mind of God shines forth in the humility of the stable, in the selflessness of a servant, in the scandal of the Cross. It is the simplicity of the Savior, not the complexity, which makes all the difference in the world. For Protestants and Catholics alike, our primary mission is the same – to announce, in word and deed, to each and every human being, the Person of Jesus Christ. There is nothing more important (and more intelligent).

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[1] Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. Charles E. Moore (Farmington, PA: Plough, 2002), 201.

[2] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 35.

[3] Pope Francis, Address to the National Ecclesial Congress of Italy (Nov 10, 2015).

[4] Evangelii Gaudium, 36.

[5] Ibid, 39.

[6] Ibid, 110.

[7] Ibid, 112.

[8] Ibid, 151.

[9] Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 29.

[10] Evangelii Gaudium, 165.

[11] Pope Francis, Address to the National Ecclesial Congress of Italy (Nov 10, 2015).

Remembering

How great is my God,

and how I love to sing His praises!

Whereas I am often frightened

when I think about the future,

and confused and disturbed

by the rapidly changing events about me,

my heart is securred and made glad

when I remember how He has cared for me

throughout the past.

When I was brought forth from my mother’s womb,

God’s hand was upon me.

Through parents and people who cared,

He loved and sheltered me

and set me upon His course for my life.

Through illness and accident

my God has sustained me.

When I became rebellious

and struck out on my own,

He waited patiently for me to return.

When I fell on my face in weakness and failure,

He gently set me upon my feet again.

He did not always prevent me from hurting myself,

but He took me back to heal my wounds.

Even out of the broken pieces of my defeats

He created a vessel of beauty and usefulness.

Through trials and errors, failures and successes,

my God has cared for me.

From infancy to adulthood

He has never let me go.

His love has led me – or followed me –

through the valleys of sorrow

and the highlands of joy,

through times of want

and years of abundance.

He has bridged impassable rivers

and moved impossible mountains.

Sometimes through me,

sometimes in spite of me,

He seeks to accomplish His purpose in my life.

He has kept me through the stormy past;

He will secure and guide me

through the perilous future.

I need never be afraid,

no matter how uncertain

the months or years ahead of me.

How great is my God,

and how I love to sing His praises![1]

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[1] A contemporary interpretation of Psalm 105; Leslie F. Brandt, Psalms/Now (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1973), 166-67.

Playing Not to Lose: Why the Church is Losing Before It Starts

In perhaps the most pronounced and pointed language to date, Pope Francis told Catholic leaders on Sunday that the Church stands at a crossroads and there are only two options: “We can fear to lose the saved or we can want to save the lost.” His words are powerful and precise, diagnosing a deep ill that has plagued the Church for centuries. “What’s that?” you ask?

We’re not playing to win, we’re playing not to lose.

There’s a difference between playing to win and playing not to lose. Ask any basketball team who tried to coast through the last minutes of the game resting on what they thought was a secure lead. Ask any golfer who made the turn ahead of the pack and choked down the stretch because he was trying so desperately not to lose. When you take your foot off the gas making sure you don’t make a mistake in the final lap, you end up losing the checkered flag.

The same could be said for the Church when it places maintenance over mission, when it tries to keep what its got instead of seeking what is lost, and the pope knows it. In what has been called the Holy Father’s “mission statement,” Pope Francis made it abundantly clear on Sunday that the Church’s very identity cannot be passive or defensive or indifferent or on cruise control. If you’re using the language of “retention strategies” you’ve lost the game before you started. We cannot sit in our church buildings just trying to maintain what we have. We can’t continue to post things in the bulletin, run programs and settle into our committees. If we want to change the world, we’ve gotta go out!

“The way of the Church,” Pope Francis says, “is precisely to leave her four walls behind and go out in search of those who are distant, those on the outskirts of life.” In what might be understood as the fundamental gauntlet of his papacy, Pope Francis repeatedly reminded Church leadership to get out of their “close caste” societies, their “mental boxes of ritual purity” which isolate them from the world.

The essential mark of the Church, and Pope Francis couldn’t say it any more emphatically, is to go. Go, Pope Francis is telling all of us, and seek the lost. “Go out and see, fearlessly and without prejudice, those who are distant” from the Church. We can’t be neutral or indifferent or lukewarm anymore. “Charity is infectious,” the pope exclaimed. “It excites, it risks, it engages!”

“Go!” Pope Francis is saying.

Using the Gospels reading of Jesus healing the leper, Pope Francis reminds us, “What matters above all is reaching out to save those far off.” He urges us not simply to pursue the outsider but to see in every non-Christian or fallen-away believer Jesus Christ crucified. “See the Lord present even in those who have lost their faith, or turned away from the practice of their faith, or who have declared themselves to be atheists."

Jesus said, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’”[1] Pope Francis declares, “For Jesus, what matters above all is reaching out to save those far off, healing the wounds of the sick, restoring everyone to God’s family. And this is scandalous to some people!”

Scandalous indeed.  There is often a palpable resistance to this kind of missional thinking in the Church. Fueled by a completely consumerist and parochial mentality which feels entitled to certain privilege, seasoned Catholics assert, "We have been here. We have put in our time. We've sent our kids to this school. We have served on committees. We've earned this."

Jesus' Luke 15 "lost parables" offer a beautiful corrective to the "elder son" syndrome. The “elder son” won’t rejoice with the Father when the wayward son returns. He feels slighted that more attention wasn’t paid to his constant faithfulness. The Father must remind the elder son that “everything I have is yours.”[2] In the same way, the elder sons of our own parishes and Catholic institutions bristle at the thought of turning everything toward the outsider, those atheists and fallen-away believers and those whose Sunday Mass attendance isn’t quite as stellar as theirs.

Pope Francis says to us, “True charity is always unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous!” It’s not something you earn. It’s a free gift you receive. And if we were really sons of the Father, we wouldn’t need the prodding. We’d be right there with Jesus, filled with compassion, running, not walking, running toward the sinner. This is the mark of the Church. “Total openness to serving others is our hallmark,” the pope says. “It alone is our title of honor!”

The choice is ours. We can fear losing the saved or we can do everything we can to save the lost. We can join the Father in seeking the sinner or we can sulk in our own sense of self-righteousness and miss the heavenly banquet. We can follow the clear, unequivocal teaching of Pope Francis or we can continue with business as usual. We can play not to lose or we can play to win.

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[1] Lk 15: 4,6.

[2] Lk 15: 31.