Advent has begun. Once again, we are waiting for the light. The days have barely begun to darken, and already we’re waiting for them to lengthen and lighten. As Advent begins, the Mass readings look forward to Jesus’ return as the Light and the Lord of the World. He had hardly ascended when that long wait began.
Yes, I’m waiting for the light. But really, I’m waiting for fire. As the title of my blog indicates, sometimes I feel like I’m on fire. It’s burning me up, making me restless, keeping me just on the edge of tearing my (every more scanty) hair out.
If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot. (Jer 20:9)
For years, I thought this was only me. Then a trickle of books came out, better- or lesser-known a couple of decades ago, Ralph Martin’s The Catholic Church at the End of an Age and Michael D. O’Brien’s Father Elijah and Eclipse of the Sun. Someone else saw the crisis! Someone else felt the agonizing frustration of millions abandoning the Catholic Church. Someone else saw that the pallid preaching, the cold congregations, the perpetual inward focus of business-as-usual Catholic parishes was driving people out of the doors. They fled, either into nondenominational megachurches, or more commonly into easy agnosticism.
More recently, the trickle has grown to a stream. Forming Intentional Disciples by Sherry Weddell, Rebuilt by Michael White and Tom Corcoran, and Divine Renovation by James Mallon sounded the same call. “The parish model is deader than dead. We are using 1950s methods – which probably weren’t all that effective then – in a culture that has morphed from indifference toward active dislike of Christianity. We’re dying, folks!”
Ironically, only after reading these books did I learn that the popes from Paul VI to Francis have been hammering on these themes since Vatican II. A river whose name is “the call to evangelization” has been flowing from Rome. Many Catholic fountains flow from that source. They are fed also by strong streams of renewal in the evangelical Protestant churches. All note the same problems. All offer the same solution. Not a coincidence, as all draw from the same Word of God.
The solution? First, discipleship: coming to make a personal decision for a real relationship with Jesus Christ, something our Protestant brethren have been preaching far more clearly than we. Second, communion: knowing, welcoming, loving, and supporting the people in our Catholic communities through the formation of small, intentional faith communities within the larger parish. Third, mission: for us to be so filled with Jesus, and so loved by our communities, that we can’t keep it in. The love of Christ so urges us on that we have to share Him with others.
The embers are heating up, brothers and sisters. There are a thousand points of light in Omaha alone – brethren filled with the same fire, constrained with the same fervor. Through difficult marriages, financial hardships, deaths and other losses, I am amazed and heartened at the oak-solid, ocean-deep perseverance and faith of clients and friends in the Omaha area. Hearts are burning to know Jesus more deeply and to bring others to know Him. You won’t see it in the news – but it truly is good news.
The Christian martyrs in the Middle East, China, and Africa are daily holocausts. They are fragrant offerings for the sake of the Gospel’s spread. Along with their witness, the cry truly goes up from millions of hearts, exclaiming with Jesus, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Lk 12:49) In the midst of the West’s increasing darkness, the embers of drastically needed renewal in the Catholic Church and throughout the Body of Christ near their critical mass. Just a spark is needed. Just another point in the matrix waits to be aligned. The fire we are waiting for will blaze inextinguishably. We are holding on. We are trusting. We are praying. We are waiting for fire.
