I attended a workshop presented by Mr. Raymond de Souza, who is now director of the diocese of Winona’s Office of Evangelization. His talk centered on the need for a new evangelization, his view as to the root of the problem in the Church, and a suggested avenue with which to respond. I cannot justly summarize everything he said, but one thing rang loudly in my mind after he finished. It was a sentence he used in the middle of the workshop, a sentence he didn’t belabor as such, but may become for me the source of meditation for the upcoming week.
He said: Lukewarmness adds weight to the Cross.
He suggested rather forcefully that the “smoke of Satan” has entered through the cracks in the Church and has given rise to a lame Church, a lameness that is seen in the selectiveness that many Catholics want to enjoy by picking and choosing to which of the teachings of the Catholic Church they will adhere.
He defined lame in this way.
Lukewarm
Apathetic
Mediocre
Erratic
His solution: To burn with the fire of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and be willing to die for the Church and our Faith, to regain the Church’s sense of being a missionary Church, not a maintenance Church.
To burn with the fire of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. To reject all lukewarmness, apathy, mediocrity and erratic/inconsistent effort.
To begin a new Apologetic … a new Ecumenism.
Food for thought.
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