Three things transformed the early Church and made it dynamic — being devoted to prayer and praying in groups, being dynamic, loving communities and reaching out and caring for the marginalised.
There is no reason Catholics in New Zealand cannot have the same impact as the early Church, because the Lord is with us, New Zealand theologian Fr Neil Vaney, SM, told the Auckland Eucharistic Convention.
But the renewal needed won’t happen if people just show up for Mass on Sundays and don’t do anything else, Fr Vaney said.
“Many Catholics are still under the impression that you go to Mass on Sunday because it is the law of the Church and if I didn’t go I would go to hell. I’ve always been doing this and it’s good for my kids and all that,” the Marist said.
“But the big thing we know now is that that’s not enough. The Eucharist . . . is not primarily a thing. It is embodied in the species in the tabernacle. But it is mainly the creation of all of us praising God through Jesus in our midst. Now we can’t do that as a people if we aren’t a people. If people just walk in and out of church on a Sunday and hardly know each other — that’s not going to create a transforming community. It is going to create perhaps some people who are finding spiritual nourishment for themselves, but it is not transforming them, it is not transforming the places they live in. It is not transforming their work.”
Fr Vaney cited studies by Sir Alister Hardy and Paul Hawker showing that many people in wider society do, in fact, have an experience of God, but, for a variety of reasons, don’t go any further.
A critical factor in this is that they lack a community that acknowledges the reality that they experienced.
“This is why Church and Eucharist and being together is so important for us. Unless you have somebody you can
talk to and reflect (with) and you can hear their experiences, you can’t grow it, you can’t let it come to life.”
After Jesus ascended to heaven, the Christian community gathered and devoted themselves to prayer, Fr Vaney said.
“All of us need to be in a nest of prayer. We live in a world that is very individualistic . . . But the reality is that we live in worlds in which the interactions, the
relationships, the values we have, are sustained by the people that we love. And if we are alone, that won’t happen.”
“We can’t allow ourselves to be taken over by the dominant economic myths of our reality,” Fr Vaney added.
“We have to be counter-cultural. It doesn’t have to mean we have to live like tramps or whatever. But it means that we have to know that the cost of the society we live in, the myths we live in, is loneliness, depression, loss of spiritual vision.”
Many people in New Zealand live by a materialistic ideal, but at the same time are spiritually impoverished, he said. Loneliness and isolation are increasing. There is inequality in New Zealand and many social problems, with many Government policies aimed at addressing
them.
“Social policies can set parameters, and point out things, but only love of people can transform and make others love people,” Fr Vaney said.
Mary
Drawing on the thought of the founder of the Society of Mary, Fr Jean-Claude Colin, Fr Vaney pointed to the example of Mary.
“We look at the model of Mary and what she was in the infant Church. And she was not powerful, she was not a person who called all the shots. She was a person of deep, deep prayer and vision. She was a person who saw what needed to be done and she called Jesus to do it. And she knew that that entailed death, but new life came from it.”
It only takes a few people with vision and energy to rejuvenate a parish, Fr Vaney said, citing an example he had seen in Chicago. These people encouraged others, found out what the local needs were and encouraged people to meet them.
Fr Vaney challenged his audience to ask themselves questions about their own prayer lives and the prayer life of their parishes, whether there are prayer groups and spiritual direction available or not.
“What are we doing about our parishes? Are you talking to any young people and inviting them? Are you saying to people, let’s make a prayer group, let’s meet at people’s houses and talk about some of the eventualities.”
Fr Vaney said in an earlier talk that the Church is in a very difficult time, but it has been in worse times in its history.
He cited the papacies in the ninth and tenth centuries and the French Revolution as examples. But out of these times came great renewals in the Church, in different ways.
Most great movements in the Church, for example the Marists and the Jesuits, started from three or four committed, dedicated people together.
“That is so important for us to realise,” he said.
Hi Fr Neil, thank you for your ministry,
I want to “push back” (as passive-aggressive Kiwis say) on two points:
1. if a possible solution is prayer, groups, and a loving community then it’s much easier to be a bible-alone Evangelical or a ‘spiritual’ NGO worker.
2. Can we please attribute the idea of “…[Eucharist] is mainly the creation of all of us praising God through Jesus in our midst.”
Since only about 15% of Sunday Mass attendees are between 20-40 years, someone should really ask them properly why they still attend and participate in works of the Church. Personally, it’s not because of immanent theology, Marxist or Neo-Conservative political analysis, or middly “therapeutic moral deism” (Denton).
I participate because I want to be conformed to Christ. I go to Mass because Jesus is there. If not then as Flannery O’Connors quips, “to hell with it”.
God bless.
Only two things are stopping New Zealanders.
1. Insufficient belief in their God.
2.Insufficient belief in themselves.
While the Catholic church discarded ascetical practices both during Lent practised every day, and before mass, the practise of asceticism and mysticism has reappeared in the 40,000,000 plus pilgrims to Medjugorje. In Aug 2nd message via the seer Mirjana Eucharist is mentioned four times.
Before the sense of the mystic arises, there must be the way of the ascetic.
This much is noted by the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, Fr Reginald Marie Garrigou Lagrange in writings.
This is long before Vatican II.
St Benedict fasted for three years on bread and water, and St Joseph of Cupertino ate only on Thursdays and Sundays. He
levitated over seventy times, a fact noted by Secular texts. St Catherine of Sienna also fasted and moved the Pope, to restore
the church. St Benedict’s rule exists today.
The plague of death which has effectively reduced the birthrate came about through the influence of the Secular Humanist of America, and the latter is contradicted effectively only by mysticism – the mysticism of the Catholic church.
Fr. Neil, perhaps you recall your trip to the JPII Catholic Bible School in Radway, Alberta Canada, in the early 2000’s. I remember a homily you gave explaing the modern world as a “Global Village”. Developments in communication technologies allow news articles to circle the globe in seconds. You then said, “If we Christians ever get it right, the news will spread like wildfire!”
Vatican II presented the Church with a call to renewal and shortly after, Pope Paul VI clarified the process required to achieve that renewal and identified it as the method all renewal is accomplished, whether its renewal of the individual or the whole Church. Essentially, the Church must look at herself with penetrating eyes , and compare what she sees to how Christ would want her to be. And after identifying those flaws introduced by her own members, correct those elements that Christ points out to her and condemns.
In his letter of exhortation, Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis reminds us of our call to renewal, as individuals and as a Church and freshens our memory of Pope Paul’s insight as to how to accomplish that renewal. He also says that after these fifty some years, the renewal has not progressed very far and things have reached a point where it can no longer be deferred.
It’s a daunting task to consider critically reviewing 2000 years of Christian faith development to discern what, even well intentioned, members of the faith have added that are of human origin and not God’s. I suspect that it is the inconceivable difficulty of this task that has stalled the renewal of the Church till today.
Pope Fracis’ efforts to begin a process of synodality over the next two years, calling for input from any and all who would care to contribute, is a brave attempt to at least begin the process of renewal. And so,with these things in mind, it’s critical that we gather together with our Bishops to work on determining what has been added to our faith that is not congruent with the person of Christ and his vision of his Church, and seek a means to correct those things .
If we Catholics can ever get this renewal right, as you said, it will spread like wildfire…..Pope JPII’s vision that our renewal will revive the rest of Christianity, and once Christianity is revived, it will lead directly to the restoration of all mankind…..this vision, only then,
will become a reality!