The Church is a pilgrim Church. The imagery of the 72 going from town to town in today's Gospel sets the context for a Church that has to keep moving on. But throughout history, the Church's temptation was always to settle down.
Jesus says: "Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you; rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven." Which seems to be Jesus's version of what we often repeat to ourselves today: "You are not what you do." We need to remain focused not on what we do but on what ultimately gives us our true identity.
For too long now we've been accommodated as Christians in a society that considered itself to be Christian. The proclamation of the Gospel and of Christian values rested on cultural supports. But now it's a different story.
We realise today that even in a Christian country like ours, Christian religion is less and less a society phenomenon. The sociological Christianity is losing its influence.
Confronted with a society and a culture that are pluralistic, relativist, at times even hostile to religion, we cannot afford to be nostalgic of the past or afraid of the future. God is new each moment. This is the big truth we need to experience even in our times.
And in this context, the extreme solutions of nihilism on the one hand, and fundamentalism on the other are no solutions at all, at least judging from what really picks the pieces of our broken images.
As Pope Benedict says: "Nihilism denies God's existence and His provident presence in history, while fanatical fundamentalism disfigures His loving, merciful countenance. Both disclose a terrible lack of patience with the way history unfolds. Both share an erroneous relationship to the truth."
Tradition and memory are the oxygen of the Christian faith. Traditionalism, instead, suffocates the true religion of the heart and makes us lose focus. This is what we are going through right now. Many of us feel the negative effects of religion and this gradually is leading to a religionless Christianity where people are throwing away the baby with the bath water.
Religion, as it is many a time perpetuated, encourages superficiality, which is the enemy number one of what Jesus and the Christian faith stand for. It's not a question of how we appear to be. It's not numbers that count. It's not primarily a question of sociological analysis and interpretation. We have not gone through the experience of empty churches. But still our times necessitate a new evangelisation.
Today's first reading from Isaiah invites us to rediscover the joy of believing. We need to rejoice and be glad again for the gift of faith. We need to recover from indifference, from a surplus of religiosity that will never lead to true faith. We need to find our way out of the straightjacket into which we've squeezed ourselves, our faith and the God we believe in. Isaiah says: "To his servants the Lord will reveal his hand."
Probably we would have preferred to be sent as wolves among wolves. Christianity as a religion would have braved culture and society alike. But the power of evangelisation has to rest exclusively, as Paul says, in "the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ".
As it was in the days of Jesus and the Apostles, it remains mysterious even in this day and age to understand how the Gospel can be proclaimed and received as the Word of life through the power of the cross. But that continues to be the inner source and strength that makes the kingdom of God very near, indeed really present in our homes and hearts.