‘Where will it all end up?’ A question often posed today by people who value the role of the Church in their lives, their community and their society. To say that there is a lot of confusion tending towards despair about the future of the Church in Ireland and indeed Europe is commonplace.
The future lies more in creating great human beings and less about great institutions. Those who have made it to the top of the ecclesiastical structure were often people who made the institutions look great and their humanness was often not a priority. In a world that has enormous possibilities and increasingly diverse influences Christianity is desperate for more ambassadors and less bureaucrats.
The gospels remind us that people want to meet other people whose humanity points towards something worth striving for. ‘All spoke well of him, how can this be they asked, “isn’t this Joseph’s son?”’ (Lk.4:22). ‘And they were amazed, and asked, “what kind of man is this?”’ (Mt.8:28). ‘The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man?”’ (Lk.23:47). Over the last two thousand years the rituals of faith, the words of tradition, the noblest of people who allowed grace to influence their humanity have built up a great reservoir of hope and a resource of incalculable value as we foster a faith appropriate to our age.
Being Christian is not an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. – Deus Caritas Est Para.1. Pope Benedict XVI