Part of the future of our church may be out there, outside the traditional boundaries and definitions of who church is. For certain, they do not come regularly for Sunday mass, if they do come at all. Their numbers are large and growing. For some of them, church in its present form has lost its relevance to their lives. They are now scattered into every facet of society, found in all lifestyles, values and liberal opinions. Today, our mission to reach out to these Catholics away from church is urgent and critical.

Pentecost renews our definitions and boundaries. The Holy Spirit always renew our views of mission and our ways of being church. Our mission has never altered. Evangelization has always been about making known the one constant through time: the love of God present with humanity. What has changed is the stage on which we mission. Evolving worldly ways and values challenge the church into the new evangelization of finding new methods, expressions, and ardour to speak the language of today.

This mission to reach out to our Catholics outside must speak a language they understand. In an over-informed age, for some, doctrines and teachings are no longer catalytic for re-conversion. Intellectual arguments are easier settled when we have a living experience of this love. When the disciples emerged from the Upper Room, they spoke in different languages, each listener heard them in their own native language.

Today, personal life stories are our most native tongue, each story speaking to each different person about the mighty acts of God in their individual, unique life. Our life events are like a personal language God uses to speak one to one with each of us. The message is clear: God is active in each of our life.

Landings, the ministry welcoming returning Catholics, uses the language of personal life stories to good effect. Everyone has a life story and the events that happened in our personal life are more linked than we imagined. Often the hidden presence of God in our chapters lead to what we nonchalantly regard as ‘blessings in disguise’. Precisely. The methods of Landings remove this ‘disguise’ for us to see the intervening presence of God in episodes we thought He was never there. Encountering God this way ignites faith.  

Relevance can only be found in our own personal life. Many people can be quite disconnected in their faith life. Relevance will reconnect us. Relevance is when we see God’s hand guiding us through the harsher episodes of our past; we look back to realize how we got to the present. It is only when we see God real in our realities that we can claim ownership of our faith; it is no longer faith from our parents. Faith no longer remains a teaching or a doctrine or a Sunday ritual. Faith evolves to become a dynamic, powerful living experience.

In our experience with Landings, we can testify to this power. Returning Catholics encounter God in this very personal way. They may have abandoned God but realized through the story of their life that God never abandoned them. God’s love had accompanied them through the passage of their personal history, leading, affirming, encouraging, empowering, and healing through the course of time. It is no longer a theory but an experience of love. Life story becomes faith story. Conviction is power coming from the native tongue of our life story. Every one of us has this potential in our inner self: A faith life ready to move onto a new stage, ready to be set on fire.

‘Returning’ is not just about Catholics who have left the Church. It is for everyone including those who sit regularly in the pews on Sundays. ‘Returning’ is about being drawn infinitely closer to God. In this sense, we are all always ‘returning’. Coming closer ignites us, fires our faith life whichever stage it is at, in whichever facet we find ourselves in society. We are the Body of Christ with many parts scattered into our world, perhaps for a purpose yet to be revealed.

Pentecost renews our sense of purpose and the way of being church to one another. Our mission includes re-evangelizing our own, baptized Catholics struggling to connect. This could possibly be our own self. We have a new way for doing this as laity by participating in a synodal church, journeying together, and listening intently to the stories of each other. Everyone has a story. Allow the Holy Spirit to set it afire.

Pentecost 2022

My eyes are quick to condemn. Hence I need to restrain my opinions to give space to others for theirs. I remember as a young kid in math class learning about length x breadth. My little head spun when they introduced depth, the third dimension. Suddenly everything was cubic, no more linear, no longer vanilla. Along life’s learning curve, I grew to marvel at the beauty of each person’s uniqueness but appreciated that this depth in us can create divisions.

No artificial intelligience can predict our human responses. We may share the same single goal in life but no two persons will do, say or think the same in trying to reach it. We are immensely unique in our personality. Add to that immeasurable variable, culture, religion, education, wealth or lack of, time, upbringing, environment, and many other influences, so we will never ever be united into any common response. We must learn to accept and embrace this division to live in harmony.

Difference in beliefs have split families. Though united in belief faith communities have also split as a consequence of human response. Deep in everyone of us we are united in the one common goal of life: to journey and return to our Creator. For some this is a purposeful walk and for others an accidental wander. Along the way we are constantly divided because of ourselves.

Governments, structures and organisations exist to rein us in. Rules, regulations and laws are in place for our common good. Authority is placed over us like a common roof. Otherwise we will hurt one another through our divisions. Laws at least try to limit hurts.

The Church is such an organisation too. But its laws does not concern your property or wealth. It is concern only with that journey deep inside each of us: returning to our Creator. Breaking its laws has no immediate retribution. Only humans are quick to condemn. For the Church, breaking its laws is met with its higher law of love through mercy and forgiveness, always. Simply because God’s nature is that unconditional love and that is a fixed constant factor in life’s innumerable equations.

God is wise to the variables in each of us. Our progressive world as it is today has a multiplier effect on those variables in each person. We have pushed out on the extremes with our up to date opinions and life styles. We have developed our own personal portfolio of achievements so much so we need our personal rights to protect them. We keep going and going and have started to question the authority in our life.

One constant will never ever change which is that purpose now buried deep under the rubble of life: that journey home to our Creator. Only at that door will our Creator judge us.

We will seek new methods of evangelisation to address this divisive world. Our formula cannot deviate from the basic start point from which we must not judge and condemn others. God will be experienced if there is harmony in divisions.

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time