Really, I am humbled by this invitation to address you on the theme: "The Church: Looking Forward to the Future and Having Regard to the Past". I am also delighted to be here among you sharing this time and this space at the beginning of the first year of the third Christian millennium. Thank you for inviting me.

As I began to reflect on the theme and pray with the words: "The Church--Looking Forward to the Future and Having Regard to the Past", I found myself thinking back to the major addresses I have given to my community of Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph as the Community Leader since the summer of 1996. I read through the five major addresses and somehow, I believe that in those addresses are points which do touch on the perspective that I have to offer you this evening. In the summer of 1996, I suggested to the community that there were three touchstones for living a life of integrity, a life of holiness in the twenty-first century.

"God chose us in Christ before the world began to be holy and without sin in God's sight."

"Among you who are baptized in Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free."

"Let your first refuge be ever at the feet of Jesus."

The latter quote is from Saint Angela Merici and is "the" touchstone given us by our foundress for every season, for every millennium, for every season of the heart of each Ursuline woman religious. The two former touchstones seem for me to extend beyond my address to community and say much to the theme that targets this convocation around which all of us are gathered for reflection during these days.

Our world is changing at an unimaginable speed - family life, technology, environment, the vast infrastructures of our societies. With the advent of the information revolution, the sum total of human knowledge is now estimated to be doubling every eighteen months.

To survive in the twenty-first century, we must become more capable of handling change than ever before (or as tribal peoples put it - to become "change masters"). If we are to navigate safely through this critical moment of history, it will mean awakening to the wisdom that lies within us all, of which the great sages have always spoken. This, I believe, is our next step in evolution--not an outer step, but an inner step. "The Church--Looking Forward to the Future and Having Regard to the Past". Each of us has to enter the sacred space within ourselves where God dwells. The lavish God is near, fulfilling promises to us, rescuing us and sticking by us through thick and thin; reminding us that no matter how little we have, it is enough, enough to sustain us, enough to share, enough to nourish and sustain others. We are held firmly and carefully in God's embrace. Nothing can separate us from God's love in Christ Jesus.

During the darkest periods of history, quite often a small number of persons scattered throughout the world, have been able to reverse the course of historical evolutions. This was only possible because they hoped beyond all hope; what had been bound for disintegration then entered into the current of a new dynamism.

There was only one Abraham, one Moses, one Judith, one David, one Deborah and one Samaritan woman, all of them flawed, all of them fragile. Yet, they turned their worlds upside down because they were genuine; they were real in a world in search of truth and direction. What we see is simple but often ignored: the movements that transform us, our relations and our world emerge from the lives of people who decide to care for their authentic selfhood. We need to mold our human personalities in such a way that our personalities become a bridge and not an obstacle for others in their meeting with Jesus. Jesus Christ addressed himself to the whole of the world, to each individual as a totality. He did not propose or live some parallel existence alongside the world: instead he embodied a way of acting in the world that is designed to penetrate and transform everything. Christ plunged into the world to alter it by his mission. The task of the Church is to be faithful to its mission of preaching the Christ-event in such a way as to transform and penetrate the world but to do so in such a manner as to be opened itself to transformation.

"God chose us in Christ before the world began to be holy and without sin in God's sight."

 

Let us be impelled by this will of God for humankind and let us not be satisfied with less. Sanctity is simply a matter of living for the coming of the reign of God with conscience, with voice, and with authenticity NOW.

Relationships are crucial to the task of carrying out the mission of the church in our time. Our-success in preaching the Gospel and sustaining communities of faith and love rises and falls on our ability to be in relationship. All good gifts are for the common good--pastoral gifts, administrative gifts, educational gifts, cultural gifts. Each is meant to build up the body of Christ and to set the reign of God in our midst. All of us, working together in mutual trust and common faith, have a tremendous contribution to make toward the unity and peace that characterizes the reign of God. We will be the more credible to others to the degree that others can see in our relationships trust, maturity and mutual respect.

Judging by the witness of the New Testament and other early Christian documents, the ancient church never thought in terms of solitary anyone or anything but rather of communities. The basic principle of Christian relationship is equality. The great legacy of Vatican Council 11 is that it embodied and encouraged a new attitude of openness, freedom, respect., dialogue and cooperation both inside and outside the Church. It takes a special and demanding grace to live in a post-conciliar period--it requires a stretch of faith. The rhythm of creation and diminishment seems to be part of God's plan. God is just too big to be encompassed by any single vision. There is always more. Change is an adjustment to God's ever changing creation. Life demands change not change that is blind and threatening but rather thought through change, freely chosen because it promises to bring the church and humankind in a step further toward the realization of God's reign. We are partners with God in helping creation to grow and prosper. We unite with others who love enough to move toward change, empowered by the Spirit. We acknowledge human blur, destruction, hurt and sin. We begin the healing task. Hope is born anew in each generation.

As we move through time, there are adventures in faith and relationship, encounters with dream and loss and desire and the events of daily living which become the journey of our lives. We must always be on the point of setting out again. The beginning of this new year gives us another opportunity. This we do know: the earth does not belong to us; the earth belongs to God. It is the mission of God that we are to be about. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World began with words on the relationship of the church to the world. With this document the church began a new age, an age that welcomes the world, accepts the world as its domain, and admits the need to learn from the world as well as to teach and to serve the world. We are anchored in a community of believers who embody and witness to the power of God, which is working to heal and save the world. Whatever the faults of any and all of us, the total effect of the coming of Jesus into the world and of the commission given us has been to change the world into a world in which the Sermon on the Mount and the words of the 25th chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel have been given effective meaning.

The whole world is held in the embrace of the God of unconditional love. Only in working for right relationships, characterized by love, justice, peace, and liberation, can we undermine the violence of separation and division which, even today, is far too prevalent across our suffering earth. The church lives in the world. What happens in the world is as much our responsibility as what happens in the church. The church can never cease from being a community of peace and truth in a world of falsehood and fear. The telling of the story of Jesus and the mission of Jesus requires that we be a particular kind of people if we and the world are to hear the story truthfully. By being that kind of community we see that the church helps the world understand what it means to be the world. For the world has no way of knowing it is world without the church pointing to the reality of the reign of God. How could the world ever recognize the arbitrariness of the divisions between people if it did not have a contrasting model in the unity of the church?

There is a tightrope strung between the church and the world and Christians live on it; in fact they are the rope, the tie that binds the two together. There is, also, within our diversity, a common essence, a framework which can gain acceptance by people of every culture and creed because it finds resonance within every religion. This framework, this essence, which has at its heart the Golden Rule that "we must treat others as we would wish them to treat us". That basic premise, which is so familiar and yet so astonishing in its simplicity and power, is capable of being the source of a truly global ethic. It sounds so simple. We may ask, then., why has it not already succeeded in changing the church, in changing the world. Perhaps, as G. K. Chesterton said of Christianity, "It is not that it has been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried". I believe today we have a call to build bridges of trust. We have an invitation to listen and learn from each other, to identify the core values and objectives that unite us, and respect the different pathways we have found to God's presence.

There will always be those who fear this call, those who will dismiss it as a pointless pipedream, which can have no effect in the real world. There will always be those outside the Churches and those within them, who cherish the status quo, who are willing to offer friendship and respect only on their terms, who reject the opportunity to listen to the perspectives of those of other faiths, who are blind to the light that this exchange of trust and friendship can shed on our own perspectives, our understanding of each other and of God.

Love cannot be divided. Its nature is to multiply, to embrace openly and widely, to draw in, not to exclude, to make each feel part of the group, to make each feel completely at home, to reconcile. Exclusivity is not in the nature of God. God made each of us, called us by our name, knew us before we were born, has the very hairs on each head counted. God has no favorites. Captor and captive are God's cherished children. Calvary is God's gift to all, the Resurrection is God's promise. The Second Coming is God's invitation. It is an invitation to experience God's loving presence, to share it and to bring the world out of chaos into reconciliation with God. "Among you who are baptized in Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave, nor free." "God chose us in Christ before the world began to be holy and without sin in God's sight."

We said to the ONE who stood at the gate of this new year: 'Give us a light that we may safely tread into the unknown.' And we were told: 'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That to you will be better than a light and safer than a known way."' May we marvel at the mystery of our one life--pure gift, unique, not "necessary"...but which, once given, has such wide-reaching effects for so many, for the whole cosmos! May we be amazed that we are allowed to participate in this wonderful Universe event, this gorgeous Earth Community of life! The Church--Looking Forward to the Future and having regard to the Past.

Continuing Education for Clergy, Diocese of Owensboro

© 2001, by the authors, all rights reserved.

Sources and References:

"Vatican II: The Unfinished Agenda" edited by Lucien Richard, O.M.I. with Daniel T. Harrington, S.J. and John W. O'Malley, S.J.

Copies of Origins 1996-2000

Copies of UISG Bulletins Numbers 111, 1999; 113 and 114, 2000

Copies of Chicago Studies 1996-2000

"Poverty, Celibacy, and Obedience--A Radical Option for Life" Diarmuid O'Murchu

"Rites of Justice" Megan McKenna

"Finding the Treasure" Sandra M. Schneiders, I.H.M.

"The Fire in These Ashes" Joan Chittister, O.S.B.

"Let Your Life Speak" Dr. Parker J. Palmer