A Lenten Experience: Being Realistic

 Claiming discipleship, we need to constantly measure our claim: the ratio of our willingness to embrace ‘committed love’ (Agape) and implement it as a fundamental value within our lives. Its integration enhances our self-understanding as we meet the Magister through our choices.  So doing, we need to consider our environment, be it physical, emotional or spiritual, because it either enhances or else hinders our coming after the Magister.

What dominates many of us is – and this brings into perspective Huxley’s insight (Brave New World)  – a cosmic order focused on the ‘me, myself and I’ now subjected to an irresistible invasive technology that doesn’t necessarily enrich us. 

Some suggest that we are but an extension of this mechanism: an affirmation that underlines Orwell’s opus (George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four). The automation of the human person sustains a misreading: a fading dignity confounding our self-understanding. 

Social media upholds this misreading: its impact is not necessarily addressed by an honest apprehension of the human person or a willingness to enhance its dignity. While not ignoring its positive contribution, social media’s drawbacks need to be examined: depression and anxiety, abuse, cyber-bullying, fear of being excluded, unrealistic expectations, negative body image, addiction, invasiveness and a tendency to replace direct human contact, reinforced by the exaggerated restrictions imposed by COVID-19: an impasse marked by individualism has been reached. 

Our pastoral approach to evangelisation does not necessarily admit this impasse, so that our childhood catechism sums up our faith, confining the experience of the Magister to tradition, cultural identity, or the blending of both, not necessarily addressing our values or choices: the majority no longer participate in the Eucharist, while others misuse its sacramental significance, confusing it with felt emotions or craved ethnicity. 

Despite years of catechism, imposed courses and ‘spiritual’ gatherings, values that witness Christ are lacking: the temptation to emphasise the exterior strengthens a surrealistic security. 

Despite the signs that should alarm us, we persist in imposing our confined vision of the Good News: we think we understand! 

Insecure, occasionally boosted by Magisterium’s opacity, we focus on tradition, rather than Christ, confusing the two. Surpassing this impasse concerns a deep-rooted desire to encounter God as a community focused on the Logos as our ‘Omega point’: direct human contact, rather than the pulpit, accompanies.

Reassessing our roles, whether ordained or not, we need to rethink our roles and responsibilities: bureaucratic success does not necessarily enhance pastoral sensitivities. Ordained disciples need to learn to let go: to embrace invisibility as a witness value. 

Non-ordained disciples expect too much from those ordained: what this tells us is that we need to discuss the meaning of Paul’s insight:  “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12,4-5).

Martin


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