Reflection on the Last Things
One thing I have noticed about the society is the lack of deep thinking about the big questions of life. People jump on things like The DiVinci Code and The God Delusion and they just buy it all. I mean bright guys who in every other area of life are great critical thinkers. Somehow when it comes to matter of faith and morals they swallow just about anything somebody tries to feed them. I have asked myself why. I wonder if the answer is time. It seems like just taking some time to reflect on the big picture of life allows us to think clearly about things when people who don’t do that seem to never develop a world and life view enough to be critical of anything else that they come across.
For me, I have learned to take such weekly time out by going to church. I have done this since I was young. A few years ago I got much better at taking such time out daily by praying the rosary on the way to work. Now I am trying to take out such time yearly by observing lent. I wonder if I am doing that part right. Still I think the daily rhythm, the weekly rhythm, and the yearly rhythm make a powerful pattern of growth. It becomes even more powerful when you replace the more self-centered reflections with a rosary, a mass, and a penance. The whole idea of coming to God for wisdom and doing it in a way that His saints have been using for centuries.
So what does that mean for evangelism? How do we draw people into thinking about the big questions of life? We want to involve them in the wisdom of God directly for sure. Still if you just take them to a contemplative mass they probably won’t get there. They will likely just be bored. Maybe some writers who have been able to combine divine wisdom with common sense. I guess that depends where they are coming from. If they are coming from a protestant perspective Mark Shea makes a lot of sense to people. CS Lewis makes sense to atheists. I am not sure about nominal or liberal Catholics. They are key because they come to mass once in a while. If we can learn to talk sense to them in the homily we can draw them in pretty quick.
