Today’s readings: Acts 8, 5-8.14-17; 1 Peter 3, 15-18; John 14, 15-21.

The ecclesial landscape that emer­ges from the different reports on the Vatican survey in preparation for the upcoming Synod of Bishops is, to say the least, confusing. Most baptised people still have to be introduced into the faith, while many others are still seeking. The Church’s big task in this scenario is not to make people belong, but to find where it belongs.

It is no longer one’s origin that decides one’s biography. The postmodern situation shows that our society, rather than just being characterised by Christian remainders, requires a renewed inculturation of the Christian message.

In the aftermath of Christ’s death and the claim by his closest disciples that he was alive, the apostles reconnected afresh with the core of what they had experienced in the person of Jesus and could more easily and credibly reconnect with people. What is narrated in Acts transmits a powerful experience of community which simply recalls what Jesus himself had promised when he spoke to them of the spirit of truth.

Two thousand years have passed since, and the long history that separates us from those events has been alternately characterised by, on the one hand, a watering down of the message and, on the other, a regeneration that rejuvenates the faith.

Can we experience freshly the power that Christ’s death and resurrection injected in his disciples?

In the midst of the ruins of the Christian society we’ve been accustomed to in the West, there are even today clear signs of recovery of what many considered lost once for all. But we have to discern those signs.

For so long, we have conceived the Christian faith in terms of a cultural umbrella. Yet the more we consider religion as if it was meant to inspire culture and the values we breathe in everyday life, the worse things will appear to us. The time of a cultural Christianity is past. Re-evangelisation does not mean restoring the past.

The task of the entire people of God today is to interpret the many voices of our age. We should be interested in what meaning people give to their lives. We no longer live in times of cradle Christians. That has long been dissolving now. The Christian community, as depicted in the writings of the New Testament, is always stuck between its identity and being open to the new.

Peter’s words in today’s second reading sound most significant: “Always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have.” The reason for our hope is not a self-evident truth as perhaps it used to be. There has to be a reason for that hope, and whoever claims to have that hope has to be in a position to justify what and why he or she believes.

In Acts, we read about Philip go­ing to a Samaritan town where, against all odds, his message was welcomed. There are myriads of ‘Samaritan towns’ in our neighborhoods, which are alien to all we do and preach. They are the outskirts of human existence very often referred to by Pope Francis. In these outskirts, the Church’s mission is not to recruit more Christians but rather to manifest the mystery of God’s love.

When Jesus pledges: “I will not leave you orphans” and “I will come back to you”, he is speaking of be­long­ing, of the need we all have to be part of a community. Yet this be­longing to a community seems to be an aspect that is in crisis today. What kind of parishes are we perpetuating? What types of community are we proposing? Are our communities eliciting faith, particularly in those who claim to be unbelievers?

Today we have a four-generation Christianity. There are those who are Christians and practising; those who do not practise but still send their children to church; those who no longer practise but still have a residual knowledge of what religion is about; and a fourth generation who know nothing any longer.

There is a big task facing the Church in this scenario: the credibility of the Jesus message stands or falls depending on what type of communities we are building and on whether our communities are serving the purpose of regenerating the faith.

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