Preparing for Lent: To Combat the World’s Evil
By Jack Rigert
Reflecting on our post-Christian culture and the life of today’s Church in America there is little doubt that both are in dire straits. The culture, the Church, individuals, marriages, families and the religious need to be reformed and renewed. We always need to be reformed and renewed…this is the human condition.
Is there a solution and a path forward for today’s Church and today’s families?
On the eve of His Passion, Jesus spoke to His first priests about the only way forward:[1]
I am the true vine…Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me…Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing (John 15:1, 4-5).
The culture and the Church needs Christ! “For they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34) The sheep need shepherds in persona Christi. Priests who will lead them, primarily by the example of their lives, to holiness. The Solution to the problem: The Universal Call to Holiness, “Holy Priests and Holy Families”.
Saint John Paul ll, in his life and work, presented a model of what a priest should strive for. “A man offers his humanity to Christ, so that Christ may use him as an instrument of salvation, making him as it were into another Christ.” And as Christ offered His life for His Bride, so must the priest be willing, even to death, to offer his life to the flock, and the Church at large.
“While the Second Vatican Council speaks of the universal call to holiness, in the case of the priest we must speak of a special call to holiness. Christ needs holy priests! Today’s world demands holy priests. Only a Holy priest can become, in an increasingly secularized world, a resounding witness to Christ and his Gospel. And only thus can a priest become a guide for men and women and a teacher of holiness. The truest secret of authentic pastoral success does not lie in material means, much less sophisticated programs. The lasting results of pastoral endeavors are born of the holiness of the priest. This is the foundation!”—JPll (Gift and Mystery, p.89-90)
May I suggest that now is the time for Holy Priests to think about setting aside complex organization and focus on Marriage and the Family, “the Domestic Church”. The new parish organization chart can be simplified by drawing a big picture of the altar in your Parish with Christ, the High Priest and eternal Bridegroom, hanging on the Crucifix behind it. On the altar stands a Holy Priest, consecrating the Eucharist in persona Christi. Lines are extended from there to every home in your parish (the Domestic Church). There you have it. Clear away as much clutter and eliminate as many distractions as possible and focus on helping families become Holy. Everything else you do—and there is always plenty to do and many needs to be met—flows out of this.
“If we take a close look at what contemporary men and women expect from priests, we will see that, in the end, they have but one expectation: they are thirsting for Christ.”—St. John Paul ll.
How can Parishes assist and empower parents to build up the Domestic Church?
