Dear Friends,

In today’s Gospel, in just five words, Jesus imparts the wisdom of the ages and extends the blessed and challenging invitation to be an authentic disciple of His when He says: “… Give them some food yourselves.” The goal and aspiration of our lives as followers of Jesus Christ is intentionally and arduously participating in our own salvation by daily moving from narcissistic self-centeredness towards Eucharistic self-giving.

In a 1969 German radio broadcast, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger offered his thoughtful answer to the interviewer’s question: “What will become of the Church in the future?” Typical of the humility he practiced, the future pope did not pretend to have powers to predict the future. In the late 1960’s, a time not much different from our own, when society was experiencing an existential angst amidst the feelings of powerlessness, political cynicism, alienation and moral depravity; wherein believing Catholics longed for clear answers at a time when the Barque of St. Peter, with her adherents and dissenters aboard, was coursing through turbulent waters of its own. What follows is my edited version of his remarks:

“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego; by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves … to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus, our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are! …

How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. … But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer, she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship. The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. … The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution— when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century.

But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret. … And so, it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death. The Catholic Church will survive in spite of men and women, not necessarily because of them. And yet, we still have our part to do. We must pray for and cultivate unselfishness, self-denial, faithfulness, Sacramental devotion and a life centered on Christ.”

When we get overwhelmed and shaken by news of the day, let us withdraw to a deserted place with Jesus and not retire there away from the work of the Kingdom of God. Rather, let us engage the endeavor of His love with the gift of ourselves, as meager as we may seem it to be and allow Him to multiply His blessings for those in need. Be of good cheer and have a blessed and restful week!

Msgr. Grous