“Since they do not practise what they preached”

New technologies, the digital world, the internet, social media have turn up like a train arriving too quickly barging into our once simpler lifestyle. For better or for worse, it has changed our world. For sure, it has altered our train of thought and changed our decision making process. Specifically today, it has influenced how we live the faith we profess.

Secularisation for a long time have also been arriving on another track accelerated now by the digital speed we are blessed with today. As we speed into modernisation, we are told that it is better to leave behind our traditional religious beliefs. Coupled together it threatens to derail our faith life.

It is recommended that we separate our faith life from our worldly life. Secularisation plus our altered thought process and a new average speed of our lifestyle have together widened the gap between our worldly life and our faith life. However we know that these two worlds are actually one and inseparable. And that our one world must be guided by our traditional religious beliefs.

This does not mean traditional methods. Methods we must alter to address the changed world. The new evangelisation seeks to address this widening gap. It encourages a new ardour, a new method and a new expression to continue to uphold the same constant message of all religious beliefs. And this traditional message is to live our worldly life with love and through love. Love is the tradition of our religious belief and this train must chug along uninterrupted.

When we were simpler, we simply accepted our belief. We expressed our religious beliefs in rituals steeped in tradition. We lived by the law of love. Preaching and teaching then was very sufficient. There were few alternatives until the trains of modernity started arriving hemming in our faith life into a narrow corridor choking life from it.

We started to question faith, searching for answers. Many of us fell into the widened gap, confused by the pull of both worlds leaving us lost in between.

Preaching is no longer sufficient. It is no longer enough to bridge the gap. The modern mind has too many questions and at the same time has too much information or misinformation readily available in the digital world. It struggles to crystalize everything coming at speed and is confused that living a faith life is having to live in tradition that modernity with all its promises of happiness will leave behind.

Today we must heed the call to practise what is being preached, more so than ever before. Love in firstly an experience; teaching and preaching love without facilitating an experience of love is utterly hopeless. It is only when we experience love real in our life will we experience the truth of the need for our faith to be prominent in our worldly ways. Practice fulfils the preaching.

The train of the new evangelisation has also arrived. On it is the call for a new method for love to be interactive in this digital age. Tradition and modernity will go hand in hand only if rooted in the practise of love for the other person. Practising love, not merely preaching, keeps us on track.

 

 

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time