Robert Barron comments on "stultified" Catholicism
Do you know what Peter, Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Francis de Sales, and Francis of Assisi have in common?
Everyone is dead!
But we are alive! Now we are the church!
We are acting, as they acted, in this fifth and final act, the church.
What is the purpose of the church? Tell the world this great story. Untiringly.
It is telling the world this great story over and over again.
How do we do it? We count it especially in the liturgy, source and summit of the Christian life. Yes!
The church fathers said that the liturgy is like Noah's ark. A place where a part of God's creation is still preserved in a moment of crisis.
Even when surrounded by sin and death. The church conserves its life in this ark of Noah, the liturgy.
What is Noah's ark? Well, it's a floating temple! The parents said.
Moreover, it is an anticipation of the great vision of Isaiah; lion and lamb resting together.
It is a vision of the order of creation. Do you know that in the temple of Jerusalem, in the curtain, the veil that separated the most holy place from the rest, there were representations of the cosmos everywhere?
That's because right worship brings the world together. Right worship reminds us of the love, generosity and nonviolence in which the world was created.
The liturgy reminds us that we are one family. Ontological brothers! We in the church, especially through the liturgy, proclaim this great story.
Do you remember in The Book of Revelations, when John has the great vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, which descended?
It has the doors of heaven. It has the streets of gold. But the most remarkable thing, John says, is that in the heavenly Jerusalem there is no temple.
It's funny, is not it? That was the reason why people went to Jerusalem! To go to the temple!
One would think that if something is in the heavenly Jerusalem it would be a temple.
There is no temple there. Why? Because the city has become a temple. The whole city has become a place where God is praised correctly!
Go back to the Second Vatican Council. What did John XXIII dream? "We are the Lumen Gentium!"
We are the light of the nations!
Therefore proceed as great Catholic lawyers! Change that culture! Do not be incongruously Catholic!
Proceed as great Catholic teachers! Change that culture!
Go forward as great Catholic politicians! Not casually but in a way that determines your political convictions.
Proceed, then, as a great Catholic business leader! Not incidentally but essentially Catholic!
Holiness, the universal call to holiness, is connected to the idea "Lumen Gentium" of the church that goes forward, in all these ways, to proclaim the lordship of Jesus Christ.
This is how we release "dunamis".
Power.
Let me finish with a quick anecdote. Two minutes I promise!
I promised myself that I would share this with you in this context.
Last August, at the end of August, I went to my brother's house, and my niece, his eldest daughter, was about to start his senior year in high school, so he said, "Oh, go to the table and look at his books that are all piled up there. "
So I went over, and she goes to one of the best secondary Catholic schools in the Chicago area, and there were all her books.
Top of the stack was: Hamlet. Not Hamlet for dummies! Hamlet, Shakespeare's Hamlet was the first book.
Below that was: Virgil's Eneida
And in Latin! So it's one of the most complex Latin texts and it was what she studied!
Under that book was a great physics book full of equations and complexity.
Under that book was a large paperback book with a kind of nice picture on the cover, it had large text on the inside, and it had a lot of pictures.
That was his religion book.
It does not bother you?
That really bothered me!
I went with my brother and said, "Is not there a problem you notice with that pile of books?"
He said: Not what are you talking about?
He is reading Hamlet! He's reading Virgil's Aeneid! You are reading Physics saturated with complexity! But he's reading a comic book for religion!
Well, and you know what I did?
I went out and decided that instead of giving him $ 50, as I usually do for his birthday, I went to buy Volume I of "Contra Gentiles" by Aquino
I bought "Confessions" from Saint Augustine, I bought Dante's "The Divine Comedy", I bought "Orthodoxy" from Chesterton, and I bought "Itinerary of the Mind from God" from Buenaventura.
And I took them to her a week later and I said: "Here is the Catholic version of Hamlet and Eneida!"
Now, here is my point. We have an intelligent tradition. The Catholic tradition is a very intelligent tradition. Intellectually profound and rich.
We will not tell our own story effectively if we get away from that wealth!
We have to abandon this "dumbing down" of our tradition if we are going to make this story compelling.
Thank you! So let's do something about it! Let's do it!
Why when we tell this story with a verb and style is how we are going to light a fire on the earth. That is the way we can exploit part of this dynamite of the Church.
Thanks for your time!
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