Responding to faith

Between 7th and 28th October 2012, the representatives of the Catholic Church from every corner of the world, under the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI, gathered in the city of Rome to discuss what new evangelization paths the Church could find for the transmission of the Christian faith. During these three weeks the Synodal Fathers as well as other participants had been trying to come up with the road map, if you will, as to how to enliven the faith in the Church, especially in those regions of the world, where the faith had been marginalized or even seems to be completely extinguished. The Synod was also attended, ex officio, by the Head and Father of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk. In his synodal intervention, made on 12 October 2012, the Head of the UGCC shared with the participants the experience of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in evangelization as the passing on of faith. He said: "Traditional transmission of faith in our Church has always been done in the context of an interpersonal relationship", elaborating that "faith as a gift of God and as a virtue, as an ability to perceive and enter into the Divine life involves someone, who gave birth to us in the faith of the Church and the one, who was now born in faith". "Exceptional context or condition of this evangelization is the interpersonal encounter that leads people to a meeting with the risen Christ", affirmed His Beatitude Sviatoslav, adding that, as a consequence, faith cannot be handed down even through the best spiritual literature or the Internet, but "can only be transmitted by believers, who live by faith". The Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church likewise presented to the Synodal Assembly a program of the pastoral activity of the UGCC till the year 2020 titled "Live parish – a meeting place with the living Christ" that was developed by the Synod of Bishops of the UGCC and a leading idea and task of which is evangelization.Since the Synod officially ended on 28 October 2012, we are now expecting a so-called post-synodal apostolic exhortation – a document that is traditionally written by the Pope after a synod is over as a summary of the Synod’s proceedings. Yet, the exhortation will only be the guidelines for the Church to proceed. It’s not going to solve the Church’s current challenges in and of itself. Then, what will? Well, the question is not what will, but rather who will? We all know very well Who this Person is. As a matter of fact, the Church has known this Person and has been proclaiming His Good News to men for two thousand years already. Yes, His name is Jesus Christ. It is namely from a living and authentic relationship with our Redeemer that each Christian is able to draw the divine life-giving energy needed for his or her truly joyful daily life leading up to the life eternal.As I’ve been reflecting on the theme of the new evangelization in today’s world, I was getting more and more convinced that first and foremost it depends on us, the clergy and consecrated people, by what we could measure the state of spiritual health of any given society that we minister in. Certainly, every Christian, through the virtue of his or her Baptism, is called to be a true witness of the Lord on an everyday basis, however, since we, the clergy and the consecrated, did receive a special call of the Lord to follow closely in His footsteps, concomitantly leading on this divine path all the entrusted to us people, it is first of all upon us that people look, when searching for the meaning of their lives. We always stand on the front line, when it comes to spiritual guidance. Consequently, if our everyday life does not reflect the vocation we received from our Lord, we not only become hypocrites, but we let people down, sending the wrong signal to them and casting a shadow on the Church, in particular on her evangelizing mission. In other words, if Father so and so, for instance, preaches from the pulpit to the people to search for the spiritual goods instead of the earthly ones while concomitantly driving a luxury car and wearing expensive clothes, how convincing is his message going to be? People are not blind, especially in this day and age; hence, it is so vital that we, the religious, on an every day basis live up to the highest standards in terms of our vocations, setting the world around us alight by our own example. It is, thus, my personal conviction that only then the Lord’s salvific message will be transformed through people’s hearts and minds into the concrete expression of love that stems from no one else but God Himself. Only then we’ll be able to respond worthily and with dignity that is proper to every man to the trust that our Heavenly Father placed in us.