Orienting Our Prayer & Suffering

Orienting Our Prayer & Suffering in the RIGHT Direction

The media - tv especially - tend to have a chilling effect on people, e.g. politicians, singers, dancers, actors, movie producers etc. One false word, one false move, one unstoppable rumor. . . and a career, or even a life, lies in ruins.

That is one reaction. The other is likely to be ours: if only we had enough TV facilities! Bigger and better technology would enable us to convert the world! And there are so many new media that what we lose on the swings we gain on the roundabouts! A combination of all these means is what we need to convert the world to Christ.

Among the illusions of life, this is - for us Paulines -one of the most serious. TV and the other media can certainly make people worse . - and have they ever! But by themselves cannot make them better.

Over the past 30/40 years, the number of people reached by religious media must run into hundreds of millions or even billions.

But    the    word    is    REACHED,    IMPRESSED,    not

CONVERTED. Never have so many people been reached with the Christian message, by the main Christian ministries and by Catholics. And never have we seen such an outbreak of permissiveness, promiscuity, divorce and family break-up. Never has the word of God been preached so forcefully . . . and never has sin been so shameless.

WHAT HAS GONE WRONG?

NOTHING has gone wrong! The simple fact is that REACHING people is not enough. Telling them what is right is not enough. Talking about sin and punishment is not enough. Do we think that we can change ten thousand minds just by pushing a button? God doesn't work like that. He takes things - and people - one at a time.

Jesus had some human success: the immensely popular preacher who told great stories, clashed dramatically with the religious leaders (doubtless to the delight of the people) and healed the sick . . . made a tremendous impression.

But when he lay dying on the cross . . . where were all those who had hung upon his every word, where were those he had healed: the blind, the lame, the deaf, the loathsome lepers? They were nowhere to be seen. Such is

the reality of the roar of the crowd. When it dies, the silence is deafening.

Who is the greatest and most influential figure in every century? There is only one: Jesus of Nazareth. How did he become influential? By losing everything human, every human success. The Church was born out of his open side . . . and not merely out of his mouth. His wounds are more saving than his words. Jesus spoke ... but he also acted.

In two thousand years, nothing essential has changed. The words of the Lord are in Scripture for all to read, but it is the cross planted on Calvary, it is the sacrifices of people everywhere that bring about conversions. For centuries the Scripture scholars have been discussing what Christ said and what he really meant. But there is no discussion about what he did: he paid a terrible price to ransom the souls of every human being that ever lived.

WE OFTEN FEEL LOST. Stand at a street corner any day of the week waiting for the pedestrians to cross. Watch their anxious faces, their many genuine concerns, their haste, their commitment. Is there even one - apart from you - who is thinking of the spiritual state of others? Is there even one person listening to the cries of the spiritually blind, lame, deaf and helpless people? Is there nothing we can do to help?

Well, yes, we must reach out to them with all the media and in all the places possible. We cannot ask God to do for us what we can do for ourselves. But the reaction to the media alone may well be like the reaction of parishioners greeting the pastor as they leave the church: "Great homily, Father! Well, thank you, but are you going to reform? Oh, no Father, I just liked what you said!."

WE Institute people may feel inadequate at times. Prayer, yes, but does it do any good? Suffering, yes, but where is it getting us - except into the hospital?

We should not feel bad if this is how we think. But neither should we give up on the Institute and take refuge in the many other devotions and practices aimed at helping the poor, the sick, the oppressed, the refugees, etc. Nobody is denying the value and the need of work for these suffering people but do we think for a moment that they are more in need than the twenty million plus Catholics that have left the Church, than the staggering numbers cohabiting, than the divorced, the remarried outside the Church and the parents of the millions of unborn lives destroyed?

All of us are victims of the media and the overall breakdown in Catholic life. We have to admit that the idea of praying and suffering for these unfortunates - and the word is not too strong - does not always strike us as very urgent. IT COULD NOT BE MORE URGENT! Let us put it very plainly: millions of those in any of the above-mentioned groups are not in any sense prepared to die, so there is no "good cause" more important to pray and suffer for, and there never will be.

All prayer and suffering are immensely useful but what a privilege we have to pray and suffer for these countless individuals for whom practically nobody even THINKS of praying! Among Catholics generally today there is no great concern about the spiritual state of these millions -they've become used to it. Hell? "My dear, so medieval, isn't it? A good God could not condemn people to Hell."

And Satan, if he had a face, would be smiling broadly.