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<\/p>\nLENTEN RETREAT
\n Day 38<\/p>\n
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THUS<\/strong> far in our retreat, I have mainly focused on the interior\u00a0life. But as I said a few days ago, the spiritual life is not only a calling into communion<\/em> with God, but a commission<\/em> to go out into the world and…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n …make disciples of all nations…\u00a0teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. (Matt 28:19-20)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That is to say my friends that this Lenten Retreat would be a colossal failure if it was reduced to a “Jesus and me” mentality\u2014the kind of shallow self-actualization\u00a0preached these days among some televangelists. I think Pope Benedict XVI nailed it when he wondered aloud:<\/p>\n How could the idea have developed that Jesus\u2019s message is narrowly individualistic and aimed only at each person singly? How did we arrive at this interpretation of the \u201csalvation of the soul\u201d as a flight from responsibility for the whole, and how did we come to conceive the Christian project as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others? <\/span><\/strong>\u2014POPE BENEDICT XVI, Spe Salvi<\/em> (Saved In Hope), n. 16<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Clearly, Matthew 28 inaugurates the Church itself as the “sacrament of salvation”\u00a0by first being the face<\/em> of Christ,\u00a0then the voice<\/em> of Christ, then the power<\/em> of Christ\u2014particularly through the Sacraments.<\/p>\n In a recently published interview, Emeritus Pope Benedict again underscored that every <\/em>Christian is called out of themselves into a “being for others.” I think he makes a wonderful summary here\u00a0for our retreat thus far:<\/p>\n Christians, so to speak, are not so for themselves, but are, with Christ, for others… What the human person needs in the order of salvation [in order to be saved] is a profound openness with regards to God, a profound expectation of and adherence to Him, and this correspondingly means that we, together with the Lord whom we have encountered, go towards others and seek to make visible to them the advent of God in Christ.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\u2014from a 2015 interview with Jesuit theologian Father Jacques Servais; translated from the Italian in Letters from the Journal of Robert Moynihan<\/em>, Letter #18, 2016<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We make Jesus “visible” to others when He himself lives in and through us, which is the goal of the interior life. As Pope Paul VI said,<\/p>\n People listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and when people do listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\u2014POPE PAUL VI,\u00a0<\/span>Evangelization in the Modern World,<\/em>\u00a0n. 41<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And they are witnesses, not by reading about Jesus in books so much as encountering Him personally,\u00a0<\/em>an idea that is almost foreign to some Christians.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sometimes even Catholics have lost or never had the chance to experience Christ personally: not Christ as a mere \u2018paradigm\u2019 or \u2018value\u2019, but as the living Lord, \u2018the way, and the truth, and the life\u2019.<\/strong> \u2014POPE JOHN PAUL II, L\u2019Osservatore Romano<\/em> (English Edition of the Vatican Newspaper), March 24, 1993, p.3.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But St. Paul asks…<\/p>\n …how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? (Rom 10:14)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n You and I, dear brothers and sisters\u2014we are called to become these witnesses, which we can really\u00a0only be by an interior life of prayer in which we love Christ, and an exterior life of good works in which we love Christ in our neighbour.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is therefore primarily by the Church\u2019s conduct, by living witness of fidelity to the Lord Jesus, that the Church will evangelize the world. This century thirsts for authenticity\u2026 Do you preach what you live? The world expects from us simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, obedience, humility, detachment and self-sacrifice. <\/strong>\u2014POPE PAUL VI, Evangelization in the Modern World,<\/em> n. 41, 76<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But brothers and sisters, Jesus also said:<\/p>\n If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. (John 15:20)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n You see, the Christian who is truly filled with the fire and light of Christ is like a hot air balloon that ascends above the earth, becoming visible in this world’s night of sin. As the flames of love increase in the heart\u00a0through prayer, they radiate from the\u00a0soul over the world. And this has two effects: one is that you\u00a0will evangelize others: some will receive the “word of God”, as Jesus said, but\u00a0others will not<\/em> welcome the light, no matter how profoundly it glows with the radiance of love. They will seek to crucify you too, for as Jesus said, the…<\/p>\n …people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. (John 3:19-20)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We need to be prepared, more than ever today, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus who walked not only among the welcoming throngs, but also the angry mobs. For the persecution that I have been compelled to warn\u00a0about for years is beginning to burst out upon the whole Church. [1]<\/sup><\/a>cf. Persecution!… and the Moral Tsunami<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Spiritual Tsunami<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/span>\n
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