Praying with Evangelii Gaudium, Day 13: Dreaming of renewal

                  Is the Church being renewed and given new life by Pope Francis's dreams and visions?

In the last sentence of point 25, we saw how Pope Francis drove home one of the most important messages for our Church today,:  “Mere administration” can no longer be enough for the Church. Throughout the world, let us be “permanently in a state of mission”. (Quoted from the Aperecida document of the Fifth general Conference of Latin American Bishops in 2007; EG 25). This call to be in a state of permanent mission is also a call to renewal (a word that appears a lot in this document!). Renewal is something many pontiffs have encouraged the people with over the years in the hope that Christians develop a better understanding of who they are as  a community of disciples of Jesus. Quoting Paul VI's encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam,  Francis continues this task by reminding us that the Church's purpose is to ponder the mystery of her own being.We do this because the image of how the Church represents Herself is not always the image of the Church portrayed in scripture.(EG 26) 

That's because what we find in scriptures, as Francis reminds us, is an ideal. It's what Jesus yearned to see us do. His dream, if you will, that each and every of his followers would become so committed to the heavenly father and to each other, that such ideals would be a second nature to us.  As we know, things didn't quite turn out that way, and perhaps it's  for the best that we never become that perfect, spotless bride scripture often calls us to be(Ephesians 5:27). Failing to achieve this ideal could be one of the things that keeps us humble. That being said, our attempts to achieve this ideal should never stop, nor should our efforts to deepen our self-awareness which opens the door to our renewal.

 As the Second Vatican council document ' Unitatis Redintegratio'  stated, the conversion of the Church, which implies a renewal, is of the essence, as it opens the door for us to following Christ with greater fidelity ( Unitatis Redintegratio, 6). Francis goes even further though, in naming this renewal, as the life which sustains the positive structures within the Church that can help any of our missionary work (EG 26).  This brings us back to the idea that began this entry: The administration of the Church is key to the survival of our Universal Church, but it is nothing without the renewal of the faithful that brings pure air into the lungs of this institution. The pastoral activity of the Church are empty without that air, without that life, without that personal conversion of the faithful .

This renewal is key to Francis, because,  through this process, there can be much transformation of the Church.(EG 27) But to secure this transformation, there also needs to be a 'missionary option' or impulse that will be central to the Church and to everything She is and does. It's the only way to create authentic change within the Church. Francis reminds us that any renewal of the institution, the structure and even the self understanding of the Church can only occur as part of an effort to make them more mission oriented. (EG 27) This again, is not strictly Pope Francis' vision, but it's definitely his dream for this Church. Of course, what's making Francis so unique is that he is working hard to ensure that these dreams are brought to life.  Let us pray that this dream of a Church with a missionary impulse continues to help transform not just the Roman Catholic Church, but the entire world!

II. PASTORAL ACTIVITY AND CONVERSION

26. Paul VI invited us to deepen the call to renewal and to make it clear that renewal does not only concern individuals but the entire Church. Let us return to a memorable text which continues to challenge us. “The Church must look with penetrating eyes within herself, ponder the mystery of her own being… This vivid and lively self-awareness inevitably leads to a comparison between the ideal image of the Church as Christ envisaged her and loved her as his holy and spotless bride (cf. Eph 5:27), and the actual image which the Church presents to the world today... This is the source of the Church’s heroic and impatient struggle for renewal: the struggle to correct those flaws introduced by her members which her own self-examination, mirroring her exemplar, Christ, points out to her and condemns”.[23] The Second Vatican Council presented ecclesial conversion as openness to a constant self-renewal born of fidelity to Jesus Christ: “Every renewal of the Church essentially consists in an increase of fidelity to her own calling… Christ summons the Church as she goes her pilgrim way… to that continual reformation of which she always has need, in so far as she is a human institution here on earth”.[24]

There are ecclesial structures which can hamper efforts at evangelization, yet even good structures are only helpful when there is a life constantly driving, sustaining and assessing them. Without new life and an authentic evangelical spirit, without the Church’s “fidelity to her own calling”, any new structure will soon prove ineffective.

An ecclesial renewal which cannot be deferred

27. I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with him. As John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania: “All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion”.[25]