The Future of the Church 
The Pope has been repeating it over and over again.
Evangelization. New evangelization. What does it mean? It means simply that the man of today, at the threshold of the year 2000, needs to listen again the good news of Jesus Christ! In the midst of today's confusion and muddled values, where there are too many people suffering because of economic and political systems which fail to solve the real problems, Jesus Christ must be presented anew. Christianity believes that it possesses the real answer to man's anguish.
Well over a decade ago Pope Paul VI had the courage to state and to repeat that the Church must be built again psychologically and pastorally afresh. And the present Pope is reiterating over and over again the need for a new proclamation of the Gospel, even and especially in countries where Christianity has roots going back down the ages. This evangelization has to be "new as regards its ardor, its methods and in its expressions".
Something somewhere has gone wrong! The values
which motivate our lives are not evangelical.
Religion is more of a tranquilizer
than a
driving force. A bishop was once heard
to
lament : "Wherever Jesus went
there
was a revolution; wherever I go, people
serve
tea!" The majority still seek
the sacraments
but few make an authentic journey of
faith
and conversion.
In our Western world, we are basically
faced
with two challenges. On the one hand
a secularized
culture that shelves God from its conscience
and gives priority to the acquisition
of
material goods and immediate pleasure,
with
the obvious result that gradually we
become
allergic to anything that is transcendental.
And, on the other hand spiritual disorientation
because the fast growing idols of success,
comfort and money beguile man's heart
to
such an extent that one finds himself
lost
and confused.
Hence a radical solution is needed.
When
the pond dries up and the fish are
lying
on the parched land, to moisten them
with
one's breath or damp them with spittle
is
no substitute for flinging them back
into
the lake... remarks Anthony de Mello.
Consequently
it is not a question of multiplying
masses
and devotions or even of a basic intellectual
transmission of more doctrine. Neither
it
is a question of organizing ourselves
better.
The Church in many places is running
the
risk of becoming too clustered with
structures
and organization. The priest is becoming
more and more an administrator and
less and
less a shepherd.
What is really needed is on-going catechises
capable of leading Christians (and
priests
are Christians, too!) to a progressive
rediscovery
of the faith and of the Christian life
as
a following of Christ. This is not
a luxury
reserved to a particular elite but
the basic
vision of any healthy pastoral outlook.
Without
ignoring children, such activity must
be
directed with particular attention
to adults
- they are the first witnesses and
educators
of the young. Faith transmits itself
by osmosis
in any family!
How can one work a valid on-going catechises
with the fundamental objective of forming
mature Christians? It is the one million
dollar question which has quite a simple
answer!
The Church has always considered the
experience
of the Christian life as a journey
of faith.
From the very first centuries, there
was
a concern to accompany and sustain
those
who wanted to become the Lord's disciples
through an exacting journey of faith.
This
was the reason why the catechumenate
as an
extended and progressive insertion
into the
mystery of Christ and into the Church
mission
was born.
Even today this catechumenate remains
the
model for forming adult Christians.
It comprises
the various factors which make up a
pedagogical
and organic process of conversion -
the acceptance
of the 'good news' of Christ, the deepening
of the Gospel message, the celebration
of
the sacraments in renewed efficacy,
and the
commitment to share the burden of the
ecclesial
mission. God has already inaugurated
this
reality not only through the RCIA but
also
through a new charism called the Neocatechumenate
which is already giving abundant fruits
in
more than hundred nations worldwide.
Our mission is not to create new projects
but to discover his plans and to work
on
them. He is such a creative artist!
(c) Fr. Pius Sammut, OCD. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, provided that the content is unaltered from its original state, if this copyright notice is included.