WE MJST BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

 

I wish that more of our clergy and fellow believers would listen to the poverty of religious knowledge and experience on the part of our born Catholics, born Lutherans or born United Church. There is a strong sense of identity and attachment to the church of their growing-up years but an incredible dearth of knowledge about what we are all about.

 

We are strong at going through the motions. But that is where most things religious stop. We know we are supposed to get out kids done but there is no follow up to live consciously the Christian faith.

 

It is most common to ask the people who have been asked to be godparents when a child is presented for baptism, “What is your role here?”  The most common answer is, “I don’t know.”

How can you fulfill a role in the Christian church if you do not even know what you are supposed to do?

 

We must train all our Catholics who are active in the practice of our faith to pay attention to what the person beside them knows and what they do not know.  They may have a strong Catholic name but do they even know what this is all about?

 

We are in the same position that the first Christians were in the Roman (materialistic) society. They began by calling people (most often the working people at the bottom of society) to a lived faith in Jesus Christ. They took the time necessary to teach them the teachings and story of Jesus. They gave them a sense of living and participating in the great mystery of Jesus Christ alive among them today. The local Church was an evangelizing Church. The people of the local church had expectations of how the newcomers were to live their new found faith. They also expected them to share in the life and ministry of the faith community. 

 

The early Church may have been small but it was dynamic. It expected everyone to be working with both hands in the life, worship and service of the Church.

 

We are surrounded by more and more people who have no connection with a church community. It is not that they were once a part of a faith community and then drifted away. About one third of all Canadians identify themselves  as not connected.

 

And then those who claim some connection, how much does the religious faith of the church community influence their lives?

 

First of all, those who are active and practicing their faith need to be more straight forward and call all parents who want sacraments for their children and families who want Chnristian funerals for their parents to a lived connection with the life of the Church community.

 

Would you like to become a part of a living faith community? Have you ever considered becoming a Catholic?

 

Also, in the life of our faith community we need to work harder to teach our faith, deepen our knowledge of the Bible and bring people to a deeper prayer life. One of the first things that you will observe when the people of the parish work hard to evangelize others is that the number of babies getting done decreases, but the number of people sharing the Sunday Eucharist increases.

 

We are at a turning point in our church life but it is a turning point to more active evangelization and living the Christian faith.