Just How Passive Are We?

I don't know how many of you have read the Encyclical by Pope John Paul II, "Christifideles Laici," which in English means "The Lay Members of Christ's Faithful People," but there are many things very significant in there, but I want to focus on just one thing that has stuck out to me so far. Oh and in case you were wondering I didn't choose to read this Encyclical, but it is required reading for one of my classes, but I am glad I have to read it because it is amazing.

I feel it would be helpful to provide a quick synopsis of "Chrisifideles Laici," abbreviated CFL. The basis for CFL is to help the laity of the Catholic Church understand their responsibility as the laity. It wants all the laity to know that they have a responsibility to evangelize. CFL states: "The Council Fathers, re-echoing the call of Christ, have summoned all the lay faithful, both women and men, to labor in the vineyard." The key word in that quote is "all." We all have a call to go into the world and work, not just the Catechists (Directors of Religious Ed, Youth Ministers, etc.) in our parishes.

Knowing that all of us have a call from Christ to go into the vineyard an work, CFL addresses two dangers in which the laity can fall into. In CFL, JP II writes:

In particular, two temptations can be cited which they have not always known how to avoid: the temptation of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that some fail to become actively engaged in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world; and the temptation of legitimizing the unwarranted separation of faith from life, that is, a separation of the Gospel's acceptance from the actual living of the Gospel in various situations in the world.

In case you didn't quite catch what JPII is saying the two dangers are I will expand just a little bit. The two dangers involve how we may act after we go to Church and get "filled up," meaning after we pray and receive the sacraments.

In the first danger, once we are "filled up" we may want to just stay at church and pray, and only minister inside our parishes. The problem with this is that we are never leaving the Church (building) and we are not fulfilling our call to go out and work in the vineyard.

The second danger is the complete opposite of the first, after we are "filled up" at Church we may go out into the world, but instead of working in the world we become like the world and the results end up being the same as the first - that we do not fulfill our call to go out and work in the vineyard.

The ideal is that we would go to Church and get "filled up," but then leave Church and go out an respond to our call from Christ. The priest even says at the end of Mass: "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord," and we all respond: "Thanks be to God!" That's is our affirmation of willingness to go into the vineyard and work.

Although we may respond with an affirmation many of us do not leave Mass and fulfill that call. This is where I believe we have become passive.

 We continuously complain about how the world is falling apart. God, morals, and values are all being lost and I think it is a good thing that we notice that, but what are we doing about it? Are we pointing it out and waiting for the Pope, Bishops, Priests, Religious Brothers/Sisters, and Catechists to change the world? If your answer was "yes," then STOP. Our world will not change by just waiting for these few groups of people to change the world for us. We need to answer "yes" to our call.

This "yes" is going to look different for each and every one of us, but need to bravely accept and, I even challenge you, embrace it. The response does not mean that we all now have to give up our jobs and become Catechists, but it does mean that we are to evangelize where we are in our lives. If you work at a job, evangelize at work. If you are a student, evangelize at school. If you are retired or do not have a job, then I would like to think that the whole world is yours to evangelize to.

I assume that everyone reading this blog has faith, but we cannot just stop at faith because if we just have faith then we fall into the trap of thinking we can be passive, but in fact having faith needs to breed love and it calls us to go out into the vineyard and work.

Are you going to wait for everyone else to do your work for you? I challenge you to join me in fighting the idea of passivity. Let us go and get our hands dirty in the vineyard of the Lord. I am ready, are you?

The Mission of A Call for a Revolution

I have had this blog for quite some time now and I know I haven't been very consistent in posting, and that is mostly due to school, so blame the University! I know in my very first post to the blog I established my reasonings for creating it and what I hope to accomplish by having it, but I think it needs a little clarification and possibly a little revision.

The very essence of this blog is about love and I intend to keep it that way, but my original intentions were to talk about the love in us that will change the world around us, but I forgot about two big details.

The first of these is that many if not all of us are ready to take up arm and engage in this "Revolution." We are broken and discouraged inside and may feel that we are not capable of bringing love to others because it may not even be inside ourselves. If you feel this way, be not discouraged, God is with you and wants to heal your brokenness. Because of this first realization, this blog will now be devoted to what needs to change in our own lives in order to have God and His love at the center.

The second realization that I have had is that I don't believe love can be fully understood with out the other two Theological Virtues - faith and hope. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:13: "So faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love." In the future post I am also going to try to include my thoughts on faith and hope and my goal is to emphasize how improving and growing in these two virtues will help to grow more in love.

The Mission of A Call for a Revolution is to help Christ's faithful realize who they are and how to continue to grow in faith, hope, and most of all love. But also to help Christ's faithful to live out their calling to love and bring God's Good News to the people who are spiritually suffering, sick, and dead.

The Satisfying Goodness

Going off to college is a big adjustment in environment compared to being home. One big adjustment is that I now get to eat at a cafe. At first, that was really cool because instead of just having one thing to eat for dinner I now have about five or so choices, but unfortunately the excitement only lasted about two weeks. After two weeks I really lost interest in what they served and so now I never know what I am going to eat for dinner. It usually takes a couple times around the cafe to see something that I will settle with. I can say that no matter what was on the menu for dinner at home I was happy eating it (most of the time), but here I am not satisfied in the same way.

There is a really strong link between my cafe story and our faith journeys with God. What I forget a lot is that God is the only one who can satisfy. He is everything in this world and in the next. So often we find ourselves trying to find the thing that will satisfy us. We may look to money, power, success, sexual impurity, and many other things, but the problem is that these are only things. It doesn't matter if they are tangible or intangible, they are things and never have the capacity to satisfy, actually they end up leaving us more empty than where we started. That usually ends up making us look to the next thing that we hope will satisfy, which I know for me is not usually the Lord.

We need to remember that the Lord is here with us. He is here with us in our brokenness and our despair. He is with us when we know He is the answer and yet we choose to indulge in temptation just to make sure that this sin really isn't the key to our happiness. We need to be reminded today that the Lord satisfies and He is the one that will love you no matter. I think the question that needs to be asked is: If we know this truth, then why don't we save ourselves the brokenness, heartache and despair, and look to Him to take care of us? Do not be like me who wanders around the cafe looking for the dinner that will come close to satisfying, but cast your eyes on the One that is the ultimate perfection of satisfaction.