The Most Important Thing the Church Has to Say to the World

This morning, reading the August 22 issue of Catholic San Francisco, the archdiocesan newspaper here, I was very struck by Fr. Ron Rolheiser's column entitled "Prophecy--Challenge and Comfort." Fr. Rolheiser is one of the best and most justly popular spiritual writers today. His column, which I shall attempt to summarize here, caught my attention, because he articulates simply and clearly what I find is my own conviction.

Fr. Rolheiser writes that, recently, he attended a conference in which participants were asked to discuss an important and intriguing question: "What is the most important thing the Church needs to be saying to the world today?"

Different groups stressed different "aspects of the Gospel." Conservatives tended to stress sound doctrine, family, marriage; liberals tended to focus on justice and peace.

Upon reflection, Fr. Rolheiser believes that, although truth and justice are important messages, there may be something more basic the world needs to hear from the Church. "One of the major tasks of the churches is to console the world, to comfort its people."

He recalls a conversation he had as a freshly ordained priest with an elderly, exemplary priest. When he asked this older priest (who had been in the ministry for more than 50 years) whether the older man would change anything about the way he had practiced his priestly ministry were he to be given his life to live over, Fr. Rolheiser received a surprising answer.

Rolheiser expected that the priest would not change anything really, since he has been such a faithful and holy priest. Instead the old man said: "If I had my priesthood to live over again, I would be gentler with people. I would console more and challenge more carefully. . . . I regret that sometimes I was too hard on people! I meant it well, I was sincere, but I think that I ended up laying added burdens on people when they were already carrying enough pain. If I were just beginning as a priest, I would be gentler. I would spend my energies more trying to life pain from people. People are in a lot of pain. They need us, first of all, to help them with that!"

I like the way Fr. Rolheiser, years later, approves the wisdom he heard as a young priest: "He's right. What the world needs first of all from us, the churches, is comfort, help in lifting and understanding its complexity, its wounds, its anxieties, its raging restlessness, its temptations, and its infidelities and its sin. Like the prodigal son, the world needs first of all to be surprised by unconditional love. Sometime later, and there will be time for that, it will want hard challenge." 

Fr. Rolheiser ends by wisely pointing out that the consolation the churches offer cannot be based simply on human empathy or wisdom. Rather, it must come from the churches' experience of God's all-compassionate heart. This is the only true and enduring comfort the Church can give the world: when, as Fr. Rolheiser eloquently puts it, "we show it [the world] that God feels for it more than it feels for itself, . . . that God always opens another door when we close one, that God is not put off by all the times when we are too weak to do what is best, that God understands our complexity, our weaknesses, our anger, our lusts, our jealousies, and our despair."

The Churches must tell the world that "God descends into all the hells we create, stands inside our muddled, wounded and guilty hearts and breathes peace."

I think Fr. Rolheiser's question and his answer deserve reflection and discussion among my brother Jesuits and other pastoral ministers in the Philippine Church today.