PASTORAL LETTER - GREAT LENT 2005
My dearest brothers and sisters,
Western society has never been more advanced in the spheres of science and technology, but never have individuals been less aware of the presence of God. Never before has afluence permeated the lives of more people, and yet we witness the tragedies befalling societies: war, death, terrorism, economic injustice, sexual abuse, abortion -- tragedies which so often level everything for which we have worked and all we have accumulated.
You and I enjoy remarkable freedoms and choices but often without the responsibility that previously accompanied our Christ-centered view of reality. Culture today is in great danger of losing its experience of the Holy and the transcendence at the heart of life that has accompanied and underpinned all the great civilisations of history. We have pushed God into obscurity and divinized our egos.
As a result, many people today are lost and confused, and they seek inappropriate comfort in drugs, promiscuity, or consumerism, which merely re-enforces their sense of alienation and loss.
Sadly enough, generations are growing up now for whom the word 'God' is merely a pious curiosity of the past, with very little relevance to the present, and Christianity has lost its delicate balance of prayer and action manifest in the life of Christ himself, and repeated in the life of the Church. Even a superficial reading of the Gospels indicates that Christ gave fundamental importance to the presence and will of God, from which logically flowed all his Kingdom-driven action, as he reached out with promises of justice, peace and freedom for all.
Today's Church culture seems to have embraced the latter and forgotten the former. We cannot claim to believe in the God of Jesus Christ without becoming people of prayer and action, as he was.
On almost every page of the Gospels, we find Jesus calling us to the conversion of our hearts and repentance for our sins.
Like John the Baptizer, the season of Lent, calls each of us to repentance.
This Lent I would hope that all parishes in the diocese will reach out to all their people, not only those who worship regularly, but also all those who have been baptised into the Church and are still searching for answers, as well as that multitude of people who have never yet heard the Good News.
I would also hope that all parishes might focus as well on the material needs of people, especially the poorest in our communities and those in need in countries crushed by poverty, natural disasters and war.
Finally, in this season let us make sure that, at least in our own lives, we will heighten our awareness of God's presence by linking our lives to God through prayer, fasting and appropriate action for the Kingdom.
Within that context I cannot recommend “retreating into our own hermitages” too highly. It is my hope and prayer that each of us will break away from the noise and chatter in our lives, retreat to a quiet place and dialogue with our beloved Christ personally on a daily basis if even for fifteen or twenty minutes. Moreover if we are able this Lent to open up the possibility of faith for even one other person, then our diocese will be richer indeed, and the Kingdom of God in our midst will be recognised just a little bit more widely.
May God bless you all this Lent as you participate in the mission of the Church and begin your individual Lenten journeys, and may John the Baptizer, the archetype of the one who forsook all in his quest for God, be our model and guide as we seek to live out in our time the vision of the Kingdom that he lived so convincingly in his own.
Given at Milwaukee, WI, at the Skete of Solus Christi Brothers, this 14th day of March, 2005, in the first year of Our Episcopate and the first year of Our election as Bishop of Milwaukee and the Midwest.
+IOAN
Bishop of Milwaukee and the Midwest