Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; hold not back,
lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to
the right and to the left, and your descendants will possess the nations and
will people the desolate cities (Isaiah 54:2,
3).
This is the Church’s destiny, Her calling: To bear witness to the
Revelation of God and to unite God’s children, scattered throughout the world.
This has been the Church’s mission since the
beginning. But the cold heart of modernity has given birth to many challenges,
crippling this mission in a sense, barring old methods of evangelization, and
quelling hope in what’s left of Christian communities.
In his work, “On First Principles,” Origen
addressed the nature of such obstacles. He wrote:
…when we are
shut out and hurled back, it calls us back to the beginning of another way, so
that by gaining a higher and loftier road through entering a narrow footpath it
may open for us the immense breadth of divine knowledge.
Now the early church theologian was
discussing Scripture rather than culture. But there is a connection here, which
helps us to understand the upcoming Synod on the New Evangelization.
The Lineamenta for the Synod was introduced here, so that we could see the task
at hand and experience an invitation to participate in this Church-wide
discernment. With one week left until
the Synod begins, we will look through the Instrumentum Laboris, which serves as a summary of responses to the Lineamenta and the working document
for the council.
