Dear Father Angelo,
I am writing to you regarding a perplexity that has arisen in me recently.
I realized that my faith is incomplete. I believe in the Trinity and the Catholic Church. In particular, I trust the church as an institution and subscribe to the entire dogmatic apparatus. I saw my life flourish every time I trusted in its proposal. However, the obstacle my faith encounters is the Church understood as a community.I’m probably scandalized. With this term I am not referring to the scandals commonly raised against the Church, many of which are hackneyed clichés without even a plausible historical basis. My scandal comes from the feeling that within the Church, in Catholic communities, there is a general conformism that has nothing to do with the virtue of obedience. (…).
This is combined with my proud and arrogant judgment of a lack of passion and clarity in the Christian message from priests or leaders of any kind. A fearfulness that leaves us young people alone at the mercy of a fierce world. All this leads me to always express my point of view with great vehemence, often clashing with very dear friends in sterile discussions.But the underlying problem is that I don’t understand how Jesus is present today in the church as a community, that is, in the Christians around me.

Paradoxically it is much simpler to believe in the real presence of the Eucharist. Only single very intimate relationships make me sense the presence of Jesus, for example the one with my girlfriend or with our spiritual father.

And it is precisely our spiritual father who always insists on the fact that Christ without the Church understood as human company is an ideal Christ with no relevance to reality. But ultimately there always remains resistance.

Maybe I’m masking personal and generational issues with theology: the effort of relating to others, today, is boundless and generalized everywhere.

If you could help me clarify this doubt I would be very grateful.

Cordially,
Michelangelo

Priest’s response

Dear Michelangelo,
1.our Christian communities must have Jesus Christ as their center and point of radiation.

If Jesus is not the center, we find ourselves among ourselves with our paucity and sometimes even with our insignificance.

It is in Christ that we have plenty to say to each other (the personal experience of our faith) and plenty to give each other (communion, charity)

.

2. You mention obedience.
But before being obedient to our superiors, with obedience being necessary so that our actions are uniform especially if we live within an association or movement, it is necessary that we are obedient to Christ.
When Abraham was called by God, the first thing he did was to be obedient to God. He set off, he started his journey waiting for God to show him which land would be the Promised Land as he was on his journey.
Now, the obedience that’s lacking within our communities is the obedience to Crist, to his word. It is lacking because even if it is heard, it is not internalized and even less practiced.
I don’t mean to generalize and say that everybody behaves like this. But a great number do.

Often we are like forgetful listeners towards Christ, as St James says: “humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls.Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like.” (Jm 1,21-24).
When put into practice“one shall be blessed in what he does” (Jm 1,25).
It is here that the word of God becomes fire in our heart and starts to straighten our life.
It is then natural that this fire spreads and starts to affect others too.

3. You have touched upon a sore point when you talk about  “a lack of passion and clarity in the Christian message from priests or leaders of any kind”.
When our preaching is cold, devoid of passion and clarity what fruit can it bear?
I am thinking of the warmth with which St Peter talked on the day of Pentecost, so much so that St Luke concludes: “He testified with many other arguments, and was exhorting them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation»” (Ac 2,40). 
When he talked everyone felt their hearts being pierced and asked him and the other apostles: «What are we to do, my brothers?». And Peter said: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.” (cfr. Ac 2,37-38).

4. Peter was able to pronounce such words because he was filled by the Holy Spirit. He was as transformed in Christ.
People felt that Jesus was alive in him and admonished them through him.
That’s why he did not attract them to him, but to Christ.

5. You say that you feel this rarely: when your spiritual father talks or when you are with your girlfriend.
At this point then I tell you: don’t wait for others to be filled with the Holy Spirit and of fire.
Get moving yourself: let yourself be transformed by Christ, live in such a way that other can feel Jesus speaking through you.

6. I am thinking of the beautiful figure of the Blessed Carlo Acutis.
His family wasn’t deeply christian. His mother affirmed that she used to go to Mass with her husband at Christmas and Easter.
Carlo instead went every day. And he was a 12-13 year old boy.
His words were light and fire.
Amongst these I would like to quote a few:
He used to say: “The only thing we need to ask of God in prayer is the will to become Saints”.
On his death bed he was able to say: “I die happy because I lived my life without wasting a single minute on things that displease God”.

7. How nice would it be if these two affirmations became our life programme.
If we asked the Lord incessantly to give us the will to become Saints, very soon we would feel a fire burning, pushing us to listen to the word of Jesus Christ, to put it into practice and to experience Heaven’s joy already here on earth.
Equally, how wonderful would it be if we didn’t waste a single minute in saying or doing things that displease the Lord!
As if by some sort of automatism, we would become light and fire for all, as instantly as when we flick the switch and the light comes on.
How beautiful it would be if what God says through Paul in the letter to the Philippians became everyone’s life programme: “Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world, as you hold on to the word of life’’ (Phil 2,14-16).

Wishing you to be the first to obey Christ, to experience joy in putting his word into practice, with the task to shine like a star in the world, living irreproachably, purely, like an innocent child of God in the midst of an evil and perverse generation, I accompany you gladly with my prayer and I bless you. 
Father Angelo

Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian Spanish Portuguese