We are experiencing a narrowing of life to the individual. Life is becoming more and more a little monad with little connection and commitment to any other group beyond myself and the people that are meaningful to me.
As we see almost all the volunteer groups disappear, the service organizations being buoyed up by members well past the seventy year best before date, and our traditional faith communities shrink, we can see that we are moving more and more into a very lonely society.
The large media are interested in the churches only if there is controversy or scandal. Their disinterest indicates what church communities actually mean to our society. The very few items of reporting indicate how irrelevant churches are to the society.
This could make your day go completely flat. It is so depressing!
But maybe being pushed into irrelevancy in our society is the season when new fire can emerge from these decaying embers.
Christianity started out very small, not only were we seen as irrelevant but we were illegal. This was a group that was politically incorrect; Christians staunchly proclaimed that Christ was Lord (i.e., the divine one) and Cesar was not (he was only a human being). Talk about going against the grain! No wonder Christians became the object of persecutions early on within the Roman Empire.
Being reduced can also be our great moment of rebirth. This will force us to focus on what our Church is all about.
As the early Church welcomed the poor and the dispossessed, we too must open our hearts to the many lonely and forgotten people in our society. The local parish must work hard to become a community that people want to belong to and participate in. Can we move to being a community of belonging and away from the religious service station?
The strongest service that the Church can offer is the “meaning for life.” We are people who live in a much larger world than the individual. We live with the transcendent and root peoples’ lives in a God who wants so much more from us and calls us to an everlasting life.
The pagans of long ago observed very quickly how the Christians took care of one another. We must move more and more into being a Church of service and compassion. This may be very difficult when we live in a society that is so mobile and so involved in doing our own thing. Rebirth can be very painful, but do not all processes to new life involve pain, suffering and some confusion?
Small can mean a more meaningful and purposeful life as a faith community. What appears as a disaster may be the moment that we will be forced to arise from the ashes of past glory and power to a new life of service and community.
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