Meditation is an ideal way to pray. Using God's word (Lectio Divina) allows me to hear, listen and reflect on what the Lord wants to say to me - to one of his disciples - just like He did two thousand years ago.
The best time to reflect is at the beginning of the day and for at least 15 to 30 minutes.
Prior to going to sleep, read the Mass readings for the next day and then, in the morning, reflect on the Meditation offered on this website.
I hope these daily meditations allow you to know, love and imitate the Lord in a more meaningful way.
God bless you!


Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Lk 13:22-30 Catholics and “Catholics”

Wednesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
(Click here for readings)

By BENEDICT AUGUSTINE

Lord, open the door for us.’
He will say to you in reply,
I do not know where you are from.’
And you will say,
We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’
Then he will say to you,
I do not know where you are from.
Depart from me, all you evildoers!’

Many people around the world profess to be Catholic (1.1 billion, according to a poll in 2010), but a very small percentage of them actually practice their faith and live out the Catholic life. The majority do not attend Mass weekly, let alone on the Holy Days of Obligation. Even those who do attend Mass weekly will often fail to make a regular confession. Among those few who do confess and do go to Mass, the great majority of them harbor deep personal misgivings with the Church's teachings, stubbornly clinging to their own interpretation of the gospel. Poll after poll reveal that the majority of Catholics use birth control and promote it, and that they think same-sex marriage is fine. More importantly, the truth of transubstantiation mostly eludes the understanding of the majority of the faithful even though they hear the words of liturgy repeated at Mass every time—although if most only attend Mass sparingly, and passively, the repetition will not mean anything.

Those Catholics hoping in the future of the Church should probably reconsider their optimism. Many young people ironically leave the Church as soon as they receive Confirmation. Among those who attend Catholic schools, many of them leave their faith behind like they leave behind their old uniforms. With a precious few exceptions, Catholic universities have utterly abandoned their religious identity and have adopted the avarice and boorish snobbery of most private colleges. Even among those faithful Catholics who immigrate from the south and raise their children here often struggle to maintain serious religious practice in their family beyond two generations.

Quite naturally, vocations have dropped. They have dropped as birthrates have dropped and as marriages have dropped. People feel less called to holy matrimony and parenthood, let alone the spiritual parenthood of the priesthood and holy orders. They do feel called to expensive, yet increasingly meaningless, college degrees, new cars, and new houses, that all make them slaves to debt and their jobs for the rest of their lives. They also feel called to cohabitate, to experiment, to hookup, and to fall back on aging parents when all those non-commitments fall through.

The situation has grown so dire that Church leaders now consider loosening some rules to simply bring back a few souls. In the confusion of the recent Synod, only one thing was clear: there is a huge gap between the ideal discipline of the Church and the actual discipline of her members. Like any mediocre person in denial, most modern Catholics blame the rules, not themselves. They went to Church (sometimes), and knew the Church's teachings (vaguely), and donated to the poor (occasionally), and sent their kids to Catholic schools (for lack of a better option). If they fail to even do these things, they could always say that they “grew up Catholic.” Unfortunately, these are the people that the Church hopes to somehow bring back: complacent, ignorant, selfish, defiant, broken people.

Although the small minority of devout Catholics might feel tempted to compromise with pathetic spirituality to contain the damage of modern secular culture, they should resist this impulse. The way to treat widespread lethargy and indifference is through rigor and zeal, not lower expectations and moral relativism. A lax religious discipline does not bring in converts in any circumstance, whether during times of persecution or times of tolerance—tragically, the Church seems to struggle more with prosperity than with adversity. Neither adults nor children want to emulate people who fail in their commitments, change their minds on dogma, and only follow the rules that suit them. People searching for meaning, for a fuller humanity, will not look to a church that demands nothing except positive dispositions and high self-esteem. Rather, they want the Church, that institution of Jesus Himself, that endured the torrents of persecution, heresy, warfare, and corruption, all while keeping her soul. They want the Church of saints, martyrs, holy orders, missionaries, scholars, an authoritative clergy, and a stalwart laity. Most of all, they want the Church who offers repentant sinners the Body and Blood of Jesus Himself. The faithful need the Catholic Church, and the Church needs the faithful. The faithless and the shameless need to repent before they offer their commentary on what the Church and faithful should do.

Happily, where there is Jesus, there is hope; and hope is not a virtue until it put in hopeless circumstances. In his teachings, Jesus offers a chance at life for those who follow and obey. Of the billion or so “Catholics,” a good many will probably knock on the door hoping to join in Jesus' banquet. As those in the parable, they will make the same pitiful claims they make today for not practicing their faith, and they will assume that their physical proximity to the Church equates to active devotion. Only a people completely uninterested in God and completely consumed with themselves could be so deluded. Thus, Christ sends them to a place that does not have God — one wonders if people in Jesus' day accused him of being intolerant and unpastoral for saying this. These many souls may not like it, but they had every opportunity to change their ways. Instead they stayed the same, and God grants them an afterlife that, in the end, also stays the same, forever.

4 comments:

  1. Father, I came to your blog to find inspiration in how to be a better Catholic, versus reading the junk today's media spews for a change. The coincidenx and affirmation is incredible and encouraging!

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  2. "Love is shown more in deeds than in words", St. Ignatius of Loyola .

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  3. "The way to treat widespread lethargy and indifference is through rigor and zeal, not lower expectations and moral relativism."

    Benedict,

    I share your frustration but I want to offer some hope. Vocations as a whole may be down, but I do think the clergy we have now is more orthodox than before (especially in the under 50 crowd). I believe this is due to the profound influence of Saint JPII on the Church Univeral. Those of us who came of age in his Papacy saw a resurrgence in the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church was such a help.

    I used to think the beauty of the Church's teachings would convert people. Perhaps for some. But as I grow older I do believe what converts people is relationships. If other people see the beautiful heart which so many practicing Catholics have, then they will want to know more. If you ever met JPII, his presence was electriying. He was a holy man of God. Likewise, if we truly strive to be another Christ, people will want what we have. They will want to know what makes us tick. They will want to know what makes us joyful. They will want to know what makes us suffer well. They will want to know how we love our friends and foes. They will want to know how we forgive. Once they want to know us they will want to go deeper. They will see at the center of our heart is Jesus and his Church. They will see that we are so lucky as to have the fullness of the Truth and the sacraments. They will see the freedom that the Church creates is showing us the clear path to the One that is Love. And they will want it.

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    1. I want to know more about the new saint, JPII since I was pretty young when he was leading the Church. I like him because my hero, Pope Emeritus Benedict liked him and because he stood up to socialism, a stifling ideology that poisons everything it touches. I also believe that he and Pope Benedict did quite a bit to clear out the rifraff from the seminaries and have finally pulled the Church away from the hippy-dippy nonsense of the 60s. I hope that continues. I've heard good things about the new priests, but we certainly could use more of them.

      I'm not altogether hopeless, and I did try to mention this towards the end of the post. I just think Catholics might be hoping in the wrong thing. Holiness, the kind you speak of with JPII, will strengthen the church, not popularity, not money, and not new gimmicks. We need to keep on the path of holiness and more will join our pilgrimage.

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