In A Post-Christendom Age

Christ the King
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Much ink has been spilt of late on the idea of Christendom, or a worldwide or Western-wide Christian kingdom reality.  In case you’re wondering, we’re not in it.  Christendom often describes a reality where Christian values are the norm, and may even be the major underpinning of the legal system.  In the US, people often think of the 1950s as demonstrating the height of Christendom for Americans.  Certainly, in Europe that history goes much farther back, but also frayed during the time of the so-called Enlightenment, until its collapse probably around World War I, when many in Europe wondered how a Christian ethos could produce the “War to end all wars” between Christian countries.
    Again, in case you’re wondering, we’re not in a time of Christendom.  While our court system, perhaps the last bastion of sanity in our otherwise crazy political system, has upheld our rights as a church against the assaults connected with especially the Obama and Biden administrations (think of Little Sisters of the Poor, the redefinition of civil marriage, and the promotion of gender dysphoria policies), society generally has walked away from a Christian worldview.  
    And in some cases, we’re to blame.  When our lives as Catholics no longer act as salt and leaven, but rather are part of the rot and flatness of society, is it no wonder that others would not want to continue with Christians providing the overarching theme of society?  Two extreme examples from the past century stand out as acute reminders that simply being Christian doesn’t mean you live a Christian life: Hitler and Stalin were both baptized Christians: Hitler a Catholic and Stalin a Russian Orthodox.  But many more stopped living the faith in their work and in their homes, which had an even greater diminishment of trust in a Christian worldview.  
    So, as we celebrate Christ the King this Sunday, what do we celebrate in a post-Christendom world?  This is an important date for the Traditional Latin Mass community of Flint, but how do we celebrate Christ the King when He seems to reign less and less in our country and in our world?  
    In the first place, we have to ask ourselves if Christ is truly king in our lives.  Can people tell that I am Catholic when I work?  When I invite friends over to my house?  When I go on vacation?  The first and most important way to spread a Christian and Catholic culture is to live it ourselves.  If we do not live the Gospel at its roots, that is, in a radical way (from the Latin word radice, meaning root), then no one is going to listen to me encouraging them to become Catholic or to live with Catholic values.  One thing that people look for today is authenticity.  While we all fall short of our goals at times, living something in integrity convinces others.  Living Catholicism only as a mask does not convince others, and strengthens the point that it’s not worth trying, since even those who profess it don’t live it.  May our lives not reflect the quote from G.K. Chesterton: “The Christian idea has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”  If we don’t do what we can to live up to the standard Christ sets, why would we expect others to do so?

    Secondly, Christ told Pontius Pilate that His Kingdom was not of this world.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t advance the Gospel and Christ’s way of life, but that it will always be opposed.  Christ is King, whether we and the world accept Him or not.  And at the end of time, that kingdom will come in force.  But until that happens, our goal is to encourage others, by proposition, not imposition, to join in the kingdom, so that the inauguration of the full reign of Christ will be a day of joy for them and us, not a day of wrath.  The blueprint for this is what is called the Apostolic Model (in distinction from the Christendom Model).  Our key is to live like the Apostles did: filled with the Holy Spirit; committed wholeheartedly to Christ; willing to suffer persecution joyfully for the sake of the Name.  The first disciples were not theologians.  Maybe St. Paul could claim that title, but most of the first disciples simply opened themselves to Christ’s grace and were willing to die for their belief that He is God and saved them from sin and eternal death.  They lived in a way that showed they were ready for Christ’s return at any moment, not growing drowsy from the wait.  

    Living in such a way, and dying in such a way, transformed the first-century world.  The first generations of Christians did not participate in the all-too-common debauchery of public life.  They did not concern themselves with doing anything to gain power and prestige.  They loved those who persecuted them.  They lived innocent lives, but did not disdain to be martyred when confronted with false charges of treason or heresy against the Roman pantheon.  This convinced everyday people to convert and follow Christ then, and it will work to convince and convert everyday people now.  In a world that lacks logical consistency; in a world gone made by lust and power, those who live the truth (not their truth but the truth) stand out as beacons.  Yes, some will persecute those who are not mad.  St. Anthony of the Desert saw this some seventeen hundred years ago when he wrote, “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attach him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”   So we need to be ready for greater persecution, if it comes.  But when neighbors recognize that we are not buying into the cultural madness, and that we are even willing to suffer because we do not buy into it, they will slowly come to our side, and sense the power of the Gospel, just as ordinary Romans did in the first three hundred years of the Church.
    Christ is King.  And while His Kingdom has not advance in this world recently, and in fact has receded quite a bit, His Kingdom cannot, in the end, be stopped.  In the meantime, our goal is to live the faith in its fulness, doing all we can to follow Christ with all of who we are.  When we do this, we live as faithful subjects of so great a King, and can expect to be welcomed into the mansions prepared for us when His Kingdom comes in all its fulness at the end of time.  To Christ be honor and glory for ever and ever.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Patience with the Kingdom of Heaven

 Resumed 6th Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Rhetorical question here, but how many of you have ever struggled with patience?  Perhaps some of you are better than I, but it’s been a long struggle to stay calm and not get easily frustrated.  I will say that I am better now than I used to be, but I’m still a work in progress.
    As our Lord talks about the kingdom of heaven, in today’s Gospel, he uses two images that require patience: a mustard seed and leaven.  One certainly involves more patience than the other, but both require patience.  If you plant the mustard seed in the ground, it takes a while for it to bloom and become that large bush where the birds dwell.  And even with leaven, it’s not like you add the yeast to flour and immediately the dough starts rising.  You have to wait, sometimes overnight, for it to really rise.  So, besides the fact that our Lord teaches us that the kingdom of heaven starts small, He is also teaching us that we need to be patient as the kingdom of heaven grows.
    This is important for us to remember as we see the numbers of Catholics who practice their faith decline.  In many ways we are impatient, we want to see huge numbers at Mass, living their faith in the public square, and transforming the City of Man to be more like the City of God.  But sometimes, God makes us wait.
    Now, this is not to suggest that we sit on our rumps and be passive.  The decline in the number of Catholics who are practicing is startling, and should shake us out of complacency.  In many ways, COVID exacerbated the problem, but even if we didn’t close down our churches for two and a half months, we would have still seen the same decline, just at a slower rate.  After all, do we really think that, but for COVID, lukewarm Catholics not living their faith and not allowing the faith to transform their private and public lives would have led to more people wanting to be Catholic?  I think we are fooling ourselves if we take that position.  Catholics who don’t live for the kingdom of heaven tend not to attract new Catholics, no matter how many come to Mass each Sunday.  It’s like pretending that we’re going to make a profit on selling a widget for $1 when it costs $2 to make, as long as we just sell a huge amount of widgets.  The math doesn’t add up.  So the spiritual math of expecting people in pews who aren’t committed to the faith to stem the tide of Catholics leaving the Church isn’t there.
    But, at the same time that we should recommit ourselves to living a Christ-centered life, and spreading the Gospel in our daily lives, both at home and at work, by word and by deed, we shouldn’t freak out that numbers aren’t growing right now.  That’s hard to do; I know.  As I mentioned, I’m impatient, and so when I looked at our October counts for St. Matthew, both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Form Masses, there was that quick sense of panic that things aren’t growing, which means I’m not making a difference, which means I’m not doing a good enough job or simply enough period; I need to do more (even though I was feeling like I was burning the candle at both ends).  It’s easy to get caught in the numbers game, and treat the Church like a corporation, where, if the profits don’t rise consistently every year, we aren’t doing something right (profits being akin to people in the pews for the church).  
    Growth of the kingdom takes time, and often happens in unseen ways.  In all reality, the Church started with less than 100 people at Pentecost, who spread the Gospel, and thousands were converted in that one day.  But those thousands were from around north Africa, the Holy Land, and Asia Minor.  When you get them spread out, you don’t really have a mega-church.  
    We probably tend to think about the churches St. Paul founded like dioceses (which many did later become) and presume that the diocese had lots of people, like the Diocese of Lansing does (we’re a smaller diocese, and we have, as of 2019, around 191,000 Catholics).  In fact, from what I have heard and read, the Church in Corinth likely had 50-150 people.  And they had so many problems that St. Paul wrote them two epistles.  The Church in Rome likely had more people, and spread more quickly, but there were more people in Rome, especially slaves and immigrants, who were very eager to hear the Gospel and put their faith in Christ.  I don’t have any sense of the numbers, but maybe no bigger than our diocese, and likely smaller.  It took time and fidelity for the Church in Rome to blossom into the populated metropolitan diocese that it is today.  In almost every place where the Gospel has been planted, like the mustard seed, it took time to grow before it became a large bush in which the birds to dwell.  As we are now living in pagan times once more (if not officially, than de facto), we should not be surprised that it will take some time for things to grow once more.  

    Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus, stated in 1969: 

[The Church] will become small and will have to start pretty much all over again.  […] The reduction in the number of faithful will lead it to losing an important part of its social privileges.  It will be a more spiritual Church, and…will be poor and will become the Church of the destitute.

He also said, “Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely.  […] Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new.  They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.”  Again, that was said in 1969.  
    We cannot be complacent in sharing the Gospel, but as the Lord said, the kingdom of heaven starts small, and takes time to grow to its full stature.  May the Lord grant us patience and fidelity in the meantime, and help us to be those faithful witnesses that will draw others to the joy and hope of the Gospel.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.