personal relationship with Christ — Holy Hope Blog

FullSizeRender-1 To peruse the comments in response last week's blog at Aleteia, The Elephant in the Communion Line, one might conclude that I eagerly observe those coming forward for Holy Communion and readily judge their worthiness or unworthiness to receive. Truth be told, I rarely notice who is receiving communion, as I am generally focused on Christ’s presence in the Eucharist before and after communion, often with my eyes closed. Furthermore, far be it from me to judge whether any soul is in a state of grace, for God alone is capable of such knowledge. But that is completely beside the point.

The point of my article was to pose a different question entirely, which I ask again here: What is at the root of the problem when, statistically, a majority of Catholics don’t practice the moral teachings of the Church or live in a way that demonstrates any appreciable difference than those in the surrounding secular culture? Moreover, why has so much focus been placed on divorce and remarriage instead of on the overarching problem of the spiritual and moral confusion that reigns in the Church?

I suggested that the crisis in the Church is due, in large part, to a system that often “sacramentalizes” Catholics without leading them to a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ. The solution? Bold, clear evangelization that leads people to a personal relationship with Christ. Or as St. John Paul II put it:

It is necessary to awaken again in believers a full relationship with Christ. Only from a personal relationship with Jesus can an effective evangelization develop. Pope John Paul II, speech to bishops of Southern Germany, Dec. 4, 1992. L’Osservatore Romano (English ed.). Dec. 23/30, 1992, pp. 5-6.

The crux of the Christian faith is a living, personal relationship with the Triune God, fully revealed in and through the person of Christ. This is the fundamental truth of the Catholic faith, and it is a truth we must proclaim with heartfelt zeal if we are to see the realization of the new evangelization of the Church and the world for which St. John Paul II ardently and repeatedly asked.

Christian faith is not meant to simply give us something pleasant to do on Sundays. It is meant to radically change us and our lives—to turn us around from death to life, to reorient our souls to life-giving truth, to enable us to participate in God’s very own love life—equipping us to know God intimately, to love as he loves, and to live and act as his very own children. Faith in Christ is more than merely an intellectual assent to propositions or the practice of a set of rituals, however good and necessary those are in themselves. Faith is “first of all a personal adherence of man to God,” the act through which one “freely commits himself to God,” and the mystery through which we live out “a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 150, 1814, 2558).

In other words, faith is the total self surrender of the human person to the living God, whom we come to believe in, love and trust as Lord, Father, savior, bridegroom, healer, lover of our souls, fulfiller of the deepest longings of our hearts and so much more.

Faith, trust and love are synonymous words in Christianity, and they indicate familial intimacy and deep friendship with a God who “has a name and calls us by name…he is a Person, and he seeks the person, he has a face and he seeks our face. He has a heart and he seeks our heart” (Joseph Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God, 24). This is the God of the Christian faith; this is the God to whom we must introduce others at a moment in history when vast numbers of people, including many baptized Catholics, have lost their way in an aimless search for meaning and satisfaction.

Finally, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) so eloquently articulated in Introduction to Christianity:

Christian faith is more than the option in favour of a spiritual ground to the world; its central formula is not “I believe in something”, but “I believe in Thee”…Thus faith is the finding of a “You” that bears me up and amid all the unfulfilled—and in the last resort unfulfillable—hope of human encounters gives me the promise of an indestructible love which not only longs for eternity but guarantees it. Christian faith lives on the discovery that not only is there such a thing as objective meaning, but this meaning knows me and loves me, and I can entrust myself to it like the child that knows all its questions answered in the “You” of its mother. Thus in the last analysis believing, trusting and loving are one, and all the theses round which belief revolves are only concrete expressions of the all-embracing about-turn, of the assertion “I believe in You”—of the discovery of God in the countenance of the man Jesus of Nazareth.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 47, 48

Thus, the essence of the Christian faith is a personal relationship with God. May we individually and corporately discover anew the “all-embracing about-turn of the assertion I believe in You.”

This article originally appeared at Aleteia.

Dear Friends, The following reflection is not meant to be a judgment about anyone receiving communion. I am simply wondering what is lacking in our evangelization efforts, and how we can better communicate the love of Christ to Catholics. I would love to hear your views.

Blessings and Grace!

Judy

We need to be humble and realistic, acknowledging that the way we present our Christian faith and treat other people has contributed to today’s problematic situation. We need a healthy dose of self-criticism. Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitiae, par. 36

The entire time the discussion has ensued over divorced and remarried Catholics being admitted to Holy Communion, there have been two burning questions in my head that I’ve longed for someone to ask out loud: What percentage of all Catholics who present themselves for Communion are, objectively, in a state of grave sin? And why isn’t the Church’s leadership talking about this enormous problem, which is surely much more massive numerically than the amount of divorced and remarried people receiving Communion?

Stated otherwise, how many Catholics who receive Communion are actively watching porn, practicing contraception, sleeping with and/or living with their boyfriends/girlfriends, having affairs, having abortions and living in a manner that is incompatible with the moral teachings of the Church? And why has so much attention been focused on the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics while the enormous elephant in the Church—the fact that statistics demonstrate that most Catholics do not follow the Church’s moral teachings—has been largely ignored? Furthermore, what’s at the root of this important problem?

I grew up Catholic in the 60’s and 70’s and was educated in Catholic schools from kindergarten through college. Like so many others of my generation, I learned little to nothing about Catholic teaching and ultimately graduated college as an agnostic—which, in retrospect, was slang for “a practicing pagan.” I had adopted the beliefs and lifestyle of the prevailing culture, much like we are seeing in the lives of so many Catholics today.

Indeed, there was a serious problem with catechesis, a problem that has undergone a major course correction thanks to the pontificates of St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. But the deeper issue was not that I’d failed to learn the teachings and rules of the Catholic Church. The real problem was that I had not met Jesus Christ and had no relationship with him. Personally encountering Christ was and is the crux of the Christian faith, and I believe this insight is what drives Pope Francis in his tireless summons for people to encounter the tender mercy and love of God.

It sounds sloganish, but how many Catholics have failed to embrace a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? How many Catholics have been sacramentalized without being evangelized, leaving them in a state of “cultural Catholicism” wherein they take comfort in the rituals and holidays of the Church without surrendering to the life-changing, soul-transforming power of the living God?

That was certainly my story, and it took being invited to an evangelical Christian church by an ex-Catholic for that to change. How grateful I remain for that blessed day when I was clearly challenged to welcome Jesus into my heart as the Lord of my life! My life has never been the same.

I wish my experience was unique, but I’ve seen this scenario play out in the lives of numerous baptized Catholics I’ve known, with a few, like me, eventually making our way back to the Catholic Church (usually due to a hunger for the Eucharist.) Many evangelical churches are filled with ex-Catholics who will tell you that they left the Catholic faith because they got “religion without relationship,” in other words, because they never came to an intimate, personal relationship with God as Catholics. This is nothing short of tragic.

I received a call not long ago from the head of the theology department at the Catholic college where I taught moral theology for seven years. “I asked some of the students which course they took at this school that changed their lives,” he shared. “A number of them said yours.” The reason? I introduced my students to the God of Jesus Christ; the God who loves us personally and passionately, the God reaches out to us with his great mercy, the God wants to have an intimate love relationship with each of us—the Lord who wishes to transform our very hearts and lives with his infinite, inestimable power.

In teaching the students about the moral life, I conveyed the message of St. John Paul II:

Following Christ is thus the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality…this is not a matter only of disposing oneself to hear a teaching and obediently accepting a commandment. More radically, it involves holding fast to the very person of Jesus, partaking of his life and his destiny, sharing in his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father. Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, par. 19.

Holding fast to the very person of Jesus. This is the essence of the Christian faith, the foundational truth that must be communicated to Catholics today if we are to see the Church healed of the many moral issues it faces--the tip of the iceberg which is divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Communion.

Note: This article was previously published on Aleteia.