The light has come

A man came, sent by God.

His name was John.

He came as a witness,

as a witness to speak for the light,

so that everyone might believe through him.

He was not the light,

only a witness to speak for the light.

John 1:6 - 8

There are entire schools of thought when it comes to making meaning of one's life experiences, relationships, mortality, serious illness, death/loss, religiosity, spirituality, and just being. The reflective person will interogate their lived experiences and make connections and when these connections make sense, they give meaning. Some make meaning out of a balance of their life's experiences, but there are many who, because of a deficit or surplus in their own experience, become dependent on - for example - religious experience, literature, sport, politics, gardening. The metaphors people chose to explain what their lives mean can often be drawn from the mouths and writings of gurus, mentors, heros and stars of the human variety.

When meaning making is successful there can be resolution, healing, growth.

As we prepare for the birth of the Christ-Child and for the ultimate last days, it is opportune to make sense and make meaning of the mythic story that is the Christian story. John - who has constructed this narrative for us - has no angelic annunciation or infancy narrative, but a super-narrative creation story where the Divine Word becomes flesh. This then is immediately followed by the introduction of the divinely missioned John. John really is looking at the big picture. Jesus is the Christ before creation and after creation. He has no need to reconstruct a birth story - he may not have been aware of one, it may not have been question to be answered in his community. But he does want to make sure that from the very opening of his Gospel account that you are absolutely aware that Christ's coming, his incarnation, was a divine act, and his ministry was presaged by John Baptist.

John's introduction is deeply layered. But who is this John, and where does he come from? Is he an Essene (or a Zealot)? Is he indeed Jesus' cousin - son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, or is this another reverse prophecy? How has God sent him? How was he called? If he was to witness, how did he learn or come to know what he had to know and do? Or was he a prophet, like Isaiah whom he quotes? Answers to these questions and many more would give us a deeper understanding about why John Baptist is the central figure in the beginning of Chapter 1. Now depending on what experience we ourselves bring to this story, religious, cultural, scriptural, literary-historical, social, and whichever of these is our forté will inform us and allow us to grasp not the author's intention, but to discover who we truly are in this extraordinary story. This is how John (the Evangelist} wants to engage us in his Gospel. We are not viewers from 1900 years after the Christ-event, but participants in  an unfolding and everlasting story.

Peter Douglas

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE LAST PRIEST DIES? IT DEPENDS ON THE NATURE OF OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE

Werner G. Jeanrond

The debate – it goes back to the days of the first followers of Jesus – about the shape and governance of the Church has never lacked drama: and today we are at a moment when the anxious defence of her (real or imagined) glorious past clashes particularly sharply with prophecies of doom if she does not modernise at once. But change of some sort, almost certainly momentous, has now become inevitable.

The reason? The rapidly decreasing number of celibate male priests in most Western countries. In Ireland, for example, the average age of priests is pushing 70. What will happen when the last priest in a diocese dies or leaves? It will not be the end of the Christian faith, but it will certainly mark the end of the Church as we have known it.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on the nature of our Christian hope. Do we hope for a Church that confronts the world with an alternative vision of society – a perfect society, run on Christian principles, separate and apart from the decadent, God-less world? Or do we hope for a Church that is called to be one of God’s instruments in bringing about the promised renewal of the whole of Creation? Is the celibate male priesthood – and the vision of a Church led by holy men who alone are deemed able to mediate between God and his people – closely related to the first model of the Church, as a separate society set aside from a decadent world?

Nobody denies the need for leadership and for appropriate public sacramental service in the Church. But, as Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich recently reflected, the two functions ought not to be confused. Not everybody who has the ability to lead a parish needs to be ordained. And not everybody who is ordained is thereby rendered competent to lead a Christian community.

By and large, Catholics in the West – lay and clergy alike – have not even begun to reflect on the possible ways the Church might be structured and organised in the future, beyond the closure or amalgamation of parishes. It’s impossible to tell if they might be open to embracing different forms of leadership or if they cling to the current model, in the belief that Jesus Christ himself ordained that his Church should be made up of dioceses and parishes, each with its own male celibate priest, and a curate or two if spare personnel are available. If the latter, the lack of biblical, theological and historical knowledge would be disturbing. Clericalism is never a good cover-up for the lack of hope in God.

Thomas Aquinas invited us to rethink the divinely given virtues of faith, love and hope. Unlike the ordinary human virtues of justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude, the three theological virtues can only flourish in women, men and children when God’s grace is actively embraced. They presuppose an intimate and dynamic relationship with God in prayer and action. Hope, which concerns us here, is more radical than optimism. It involves a pilgrimage not to God, but with God and with fellow pilgrims along the path of God’s creative and reconciling project. The sacramental life of the Church is to facilitate this pilgrimage in and for the world; for this world is God’s Creation and God will never abandon it. God has invited us in Jesus Christ to participate in this pilgrimage of renewal, of healing and of reconciliation, and God has opened up the perspective of eternity for this project.

Eternity is not unending time, nor does it imply immortality for Jesus or for us. Rather, eternity means God’s presence has entered into our time, place and language. Eternity opens the horizon for our hope and for any meaningful conversation on the Church, her vocation and her future structures and organisation. Christians hope that God’s will be done in love and that God’s joy can be shared by all human beings – past, present and coming generations, the entire community of saints.

Fear that the contours of our Church are changing causes despair; trust that God’s Spirit will guide us on our worldly pilgrimage strengthens our hope. I would like to see the Church become an institution of hope: at once preserving our common vocation to transform our world through love, and encouraging the dynamics of hope that will guide us to explore and discover ever more adequate forms of vibrant community life and non-clericalist leadership. A great and hopeful example for the latter is the Parish Catalyst movement in the United States, of which William E. Simon Jr’s recent book Great Catholic Parishes (2016) gives an inspiring account.

All of us, bishops, priests and people together, are challenged to make our Church fit again to respond more appropriately to the manifestation of God’s eternity in our lives and aspirations. God has not called us to worship our customs and traditions. Rather, God has given us hope and invited us to share our hope with all people of good will. Ultimately, we shall have to account for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15).

Werner G. Jeanrond is the master of St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford.