The course of Lenten catechesis of Cardinal José Policarpo, Patriarch of Lisbon, has begun. It takes the form of a cycle of six meetings linked to the theme: “The reasons of our believing”. The first pastoral catechesis, last Sunday, took its cue from the witness of the Evangelist John I: 23: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord'”. “I chose this biblical image – said the Patriarch of Lisbon – because I believe that the mission of the Church in contemporary society must be realized in a loving tension towards the world, though without identification with it, and that the nature of her message must have the capacity to astonish, and to open our eyes to the wonder of faith and hope”. The “wilderness”, in which these new ways need to be traced, “is not identifiable just with the profane character of the current socio-cultural context, apparently ever more indifferent to the spiritual needs of the Kingdom of God – said the cardinal -, but the prophetic call involves the Church herself as people of the baptised, in whom a religious faith of traditional type is unable to express fully the innovative power of Easter”. “The progressive abandonment of religious practice, the divorce between faith and morality, the lack of coherence of living according to the faith we profess, demand a prophetic pastoral ministry that is able to trace ways of the imitation of Christ and the transformation of our life”. During Lent, the Portuguese Primate is asking Christians to examine the motivations for their faith: “This is not just a feeling or a tradition; it means the assent of the mind and the heart and finds its foundation and support in reason”. Although organized forces that aim at relativising the importance of Christian values are present in our society, according to Policarpo, “the main threat for the Church comes from inside: from inner exhaustion, from the strain of the cohabitation of society, from the wear and tear of time that is expressed in the inability to affirm the rational soundness of the Christian proposal”. “The debate on truth needs to be revived, and the dignity of freedom renewed. We need to show that there are reasons for believing, that faith is not incompatible with reason, and that reason, in its profound dynamic, constitutes an opening to God and to his Word”, concluded the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon.
