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A Call to Conversion
Last
Sunday (10th February 2013) our parish priest announced the
beginning of Lent from coming Wednesday – Ash Wednesday. He emphasized the
importance of prayer and penance as part of our Lenten discipline. Basing
myself on many years of pastoral involvement, I am sure many other parish
priests have done the same. I know many lay people and few a bishops, priests
and religious, who give up alcohol and non-vegetarian food during Lent. Many
flock to the Church to participate in the Way of the Cross. Many resume the
recitation of the family rosary. Some even inflict violence on their body. Is
this sort of Lenten observance going to bring about the much needed conversion?
Frankly speaking, I have my serious doubts.
The
Greek word for conversion (meta-noia)
suggests a change of mind, a change in the way we look at life. During Lent we
are called to engage ourselves in critical reflection: Is my relation to God
right? To answer this question correctly and adequately we need to have a
correct idea of God. The God we confess is the Abba of Jesus. He is a God who
is Love (1 Jn 4.8, 16). Hence God is always willing to enter into dialogue. God
loves simplicity and dislikes pomposity and solemnity. God loves honesty and
authenticity, and dislikes show, decorations and makeup. God refuses to be
contained within boundaries, and dislikes laws and boundaries that curtail the
legitimate freedom of Her children. God makes all things new and He invites us
to re-examine the way we formulate our faith and celebrate our liturgy. We can
never do this enough, and so we need Lent every year.
What
happens when we fail to do this? Here we need to remember what Carlo Martini
said a few days before he passed away last year. “The Church is two hundred years behind time.” Martini was no upstart. He was an internationally
respected New Testament scholar, the archbishop of Milan
In
this year of faith, we are recalling the great gift the loving Mother and Father
gave to the disciples of Jesus: the Second Vatican Council. It is very sad that
many of us – including priests and bishops – are not aware of its teachings.
Hence let me first quote from its Decree
on Priestly Ministry:
Since human culture and also sacred science has progressed in our times,
priests are urged to suitably and without interruption perfect their knowledge
of divine things and human affairs and so prepare themselves to enter more
opportunely into conversation with their contemporaries (no. 19).
Let me also remind you of what its Decree
on the Office and Ministry of Bishops has to say:
The bishops should present Christian doctrine in a manner adapted to the
needs of the times, that is to say, in a manner that will respond to the
difficulties and questions by which people are especially burdened and troubled
(no. 13)
In order effectively to accomplish these things, bishops, "ready for
every good work" (2 Tim. 2:21) and "enduring all things for the sake
of the chosen ones" (2 Tim. 2:10), should arrange their life in such a way
as to accommodate it to the needs of our times (no. 16).
We cannot respond to the needs of our times without updating our knowledge
of Sacred Scripture, Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics. When I say this
to bishops and priests their stock answer is: “We have no time.” We also need
to evaluate our pastoral style.
We
priests and bishops are happy to receive invitations from persons who know us,
especially nuns. They make a lot of fuss about us. They make us feel important.
They want us to be the chief guest. “Every one is searching for you” (Mk 1.37). But
we fail to realize that they are using us
as a social decoration. In our
highly hierarchical society – the Church and the country at large – priests
(Brahmins) – are important. Their presence adds to the glamour of the function.
Many Hindus believe that more the Brahmins greater the effectiveness of the
rituals. The Hindu blood running in the arteries and veins of Christians is
thicker than the water of Baptism. We carry deep within us the Hindu mentality.
This explains why there is so much caste consciousness and discrimination
within the Church. We are hierarchy conscious: our priests are Brahmins, and of
course the bishop is the big Brahmin.
Many
of us – bishops and priests – waste a lot of our precious time sitting through
cultural programmes, adding grace to the occasion, whatever that may mean. We
spend a lot of time visiting convents – first vows, final vows, feasts of the
congregation or province or the superior, jubilees silver and golden, etc.
Similarly we waste a lot of our precious time going to different parishes:
ordinations, first communions, engagements, marriages, titular feasts, feasts
of shrines, etc. So also we invest a lot of our precious time in conducting
rosaries, novenas, holy hours, way of the cross, pilgrimages, etc. Some of us
even think that we have to organize cultural programmes, sports, picnics, etc.,
for our parishners. Then there is the TV with endless cricket matches, and the
internet with whatever you want to see. We need to honestly confront ourselves.
Most
of the functions we attend do not need an ordained priest, definitely not a bishop.
Even when they do call for an ordained priest, one is enough, more than
enough. What then is the pastoral
gain of this investment of time, energy and the money needed for our
vehicles, attending all those functions? What do we ourselves gain in our closeness to God and effectiveness in our ministry from all that
running around? We justify and console ourselves by saying that people expect
us, that our presence is a source of encouragement. Who taught the people to
expect us? Who provided Jesus the encouragement he needed? Let me be very
frank, some people invite us not because they really cherish our company or
value our words, but because they think we will be angry if they do not. I know bishops and priests who do get angry
when they are ignored. We are very
fragile, or shall we say we are very
childish. We need to stand before our crucified Lord and ask ourselves:
“Why did I become a priest?”
It
is not merely the question of time. The reasons are deeper. We find sitting
down and quietly reading some worthwhile stuff very difficult. This is all the
more reason to make it an essential part of our Lenten agenda. There is still
another, a more frightening reason: many of us bishops and priests are more
comfortable with an outdated church. We do not need to dialogue with anybody:
we can do what we like. We can continue running our institutions without being
accountable to the laity. We can busy ourselves with rituals and in the process
collect a lot of money Rituals do not call for much knowledge and authenticity.
We need not reach out to people: they need us, and so they should come to me. In
short we are at home with a highly male-dominated clericalized church.
Today
there is a growing malaise within the Church: consumerism and glamorization.
This has entered even our sanctuaries. A lot of our precious resources are
spent of pompous celebrations and showy buildings by bishops, priests,
religious committed to evangelical poverty. At the same time we continue
begging funds from the West, forgetting that he who pays the piper calls the
tune. We spend a lot of money on social events: engagements, marriages,
birthdays, etc. All this money could have been put to much better use in the
service of the poor and the needy. We cannot blame the lay people. They tend to
draw inspiration from their self-appointed religious leaders and self-proclaimed
spiritual guides. On the other hand the gulf between the rich and the poor is
widening. We should not allow ourselves to be fooled by the statistics put out
by the government
There can be no real
conversion without our examining our priorities and the way we manage our time
and other resources. Fasting, bodily penance and prayers can be a dangerous
escape from our real Christian responsibility. We can live with false
complacency. It is not easy to be an authentic Christian today. We have to walk
with Jesus. This is the real Way of the Cross. This is the only true Way of the
Cross, the only Way we all very badly need today.
