On fire, please no water.

 

This Sunday our pastor quoted Fr. Robert Barron in the Church bulletin, it is certainly worth repeating. "In The Strangest Way, Robert Barron, writes: ... the Christianity into which I was initiated was relatively bland and domesticated, easy to grasp and unthreatening. Then, in the course of my formal theological education, I began to read the mystics, saints, and scholars of the classical Christian tradition. What I encountered there took my breath away. Whatever this Christian phenomenon was, it was not the beige system of thought that had been presented to me. Rather it seemed to me the strangest, most exotic, surprising, and uncanny of all religious paths I had encountered. ... a God who comes after us with a reckless abandon, breaking open his own heart in love in order to include us in the rhythm of His own life." As a revert, I remember the faith of my childhood in this way, on my return to the Church this same faith seems "bland, beige", tame, and more like an Oprah rerun. For example, the first question I asked after my return to the Church was: what happened to the Communion rails? Those rails moved us to our knees in order to receive our crucified and risen God. Now, anybody can hand God over to me. A decade after my reversion, the cravings for breaking out with a reckless abandon  have not subsided, but the fire is still contained. The surprise for me is how isolated and solitary it feels. Not isolated from Christ, but seemingly not in sync with the majority of Catholics. Our faith needs to demand more - please go ahead, take our breath away! This is on us to correct. Maybe a little boy's faith needs to be genuinely relived and revisited. JMJ. Mick, SFO