MORE WAR AND FAMINE! Wherein my husband says things that make me uncomfortable in crowds

My husband likes to make me a little uncomfortable by telling people with whom we are discussing the loss of piety and respect for religious belief in our culture that what we need is more war and famine!His underlying observation is fair enough: when things get tough, people often turn to their faith to help make sense of things and to give them hope. They take religion seriously for a minute. I find myself wondering these days whether, if things get tough now, will people find their faith worth turning to? “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)The culture of the world is broken. The administration of the Church is broken. Our family is broken. The culture wars and the war on religion and the internal wars have taken their toll. It is hard to see the “Springtime of Evangelization” Pope St. John Paul II talked about. It is hard to see past the shrapnel and ruins of once-glorious Christendom and into the bright future. But the future IS bright.In the last post, we looked at a quote from Pope St. John Paul II from 1976:

We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, between the Gospel and the anti-Gospel, between Christ and the anti-Christ….

We stopped there, but there’s more to it:

The confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously.

Turns out, we are already at war, and the famine has been going on for a long time. We are caught up in a big confrontation, and we have been left starving because the teachers to whom we turned are actually wolves in shepherds’ clothing, wreaking their own havoc and leaving serious collateral damage. It’s not isolated skirmishes; it’s a world war, a War of the Worlds, even.This big, cosmic war, war with a capital W that will determine the contours of eternity, is somehow part of God’s Plan, and JPII tells us what we must do: we must take up this trial and face it courageously.Turns out, it’s OUR job to fix what’s broken. If we are waiting around for someone else to fix things and bring healing, we are mistaken. We must fix it. Not anybody else. It’s not someone else’s responsibility.This trial, says John Paul II, must be taken up and faced courageously. Here’s something that might strengthen your courage and resolve: you and I were created to live right here, right now.We were not born in ancient Palestine to follow a young rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth.We were not born in the middle ages to forge a new monastic order with Francis or Dominic.We were not born during the Reformation to risk our lives to remain Catholic under persecution.We were not born during the early years of America when Catholics were persecuted and sidelined.Those were someone else’s problems and battles. We’re in the battle right here, right now. This is our era of responsibility. In a truly eternal way, this is our moment.And this is not random. This is not chance. We were each created for a purpose. From the foundations of the world, God was thinking of you and me in every detail. And when the pre-ordained time came, that thought that God had of you became the physical and spiritual reality of you in the womb of your mother. God created you for a purpose, for a task that no one else can do. You were created for a time. Now is that time.Ephesians tells us that we have been chosen from the foundations of the world. We’ve been chosen for this.And being chosen as a little terrifying because we aren’t in control of that choice. But God created each of us to be alive right here and right now to battle the difficulties that are here and now. We are here, in the midst of a cosmic battle, living in a world that is in desperate need for us to BE who we are created to be.Let’s pause to review who we are created to be. Every single baptized person is created and called to the same mission:

• We are created to be arrows pointing to the Father with our lives.
• We are created and called to be leaven for a world enervated and deflated by sin and selfwardness, to be the salt that enhances and preserves what would otherwise rot, and to be light to every darkened place.

• We are created and anointed to be God’s priests and prophets and kings.
• We are created to be radiant with Christ, and this culture has a huge need for our radiance.
• We are created to be holy, and this world has a deep need for our holiness.

St. Chromatis tells us in his treatise on the Gospel of St Matthew, that we in the Church must not fail to share the light of truth with others:

If we fail to live in the light, we shall, to our condemnation and that of others, be veiling over and obscuring by our infidelity the light men so desperately need...That brilliant lamp which was lit for the sake of our salvation should always shine in us ... Therefore, we must not hide this lamp of law and faith. Rather, we must set it up in the Church, as on a lamp stand, for the salvation of many, so that we may enjoy the light of truth itself and all believers may be enlightened.  

Let’s resolve not to wait for the next allegation of wrongdoing to finally get us moving in the direction to which we are called from all eternity. Let’s start right here, right now, to become the persons we are created to be, unashamed of who we are and of the Savior who gives us all we need. Let’s ask the Lord to show each of us how we can shine the light of Truth, hold up the beauty of Truth in the face of the Lie, and radiate the Truth in all we do. And let’s start right here, right now.