Season of creation September 2020. Week 4

What we can learn from the Corona crisis
A Change for the Church

Pope Francis on Good Friday in front of the deserted square of St. Peter’s, deeply immersed in prayer in front of the Roman plague cross, is an image we will not soon forget. Celebrating Easter in front of closed churches was also a completely new experience. But even before Corona, our churches became increasingly empty. The younger generation was absent at Services. More and more churches were desecrated, sold and converted into homes or supermarkets; centuries-old monasteries were transformed into homes for the elderly. Are these signs of the times and what does God want to tell us? With the destruction of the temple, the people of Israel in exile had to learn that God is not found in buildings, but lives in their own hearts and is with them in their community. They had to find new ways to understand and live their faith. The family became a centre for prayer and worship.

Is the church in Europe not facing a similar challenge? With falling church taxes and donations, how long can we continue to finance our catholic institutions and the enormous church bureaucracy? We need new ways of being a church, a church perhaps more like the early church in Jerusalem, where prayer, eucharistic celebration and communal meals took place in the houses and the “laity” with their various charisms took responsibility for pastoral needs and for the proclamation of the Gospel..

Quotes

Perhaps the time of locked churches shows up symbolically their hidden emptiness and their possible future that could come about if the churches do not seriously try to give the world a completely different form of Christianity… Let us not forget that in many areas the church survived for centuries without priests. Perhaps this “state of emergency” is only an indication of a new form of the Church, of which there have been precedents in history.  Tomás Halik

Every crisis is an opportunity to dare to look for something new. The Corona crisis… has led us as a church to discover digital space as a place of proclamation, worship and catechesis. The virus has done something that a dozen papal encyclicals… have not achieved: We are becoming missionary… We are approaching people with new ideas and in new ways to help them and to proclaim the Christian message of God’s love.  Karl Waller

There are two images of the church: the missionary church, which goes out of itself…,and the glamorous church, which lives in itself, from itself and for itself.  Bergolio at the Conclave

No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins,  and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined.  Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. [And] no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.  Lk 5,37-39.

Document in pdf click  Season of Creation .2020 EN 1.-4. Week 4

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