Today’s readings: 1 Samuel 3, 3-10.19; 1 Corinthians 6, 13-15.17-20; John 1, 35-42

The calling we all have in life has practically nothing to do with status or profession. Our first and basic calling is to come home with ourselves, to grasp what gives fullness to life and an enduring happiness. We need to learn how to listen to life, to the voice within, and then how to be true to ourselves. This is what finding the Messiah is about.

It is when one finds the Messiah that one starts building a remarkable life, following one’s dreams without simply following the crowd, learning who and where one stands, and always bravely seek to speak one’s truth. Introducing today’s generations to the real faith entails the right understanding of faith as an initiation first and foremost to our inner selves and then to the wisdom of the Gospel that makes us come to terms with life and the world we live in.

There are two provoking highlights in this regard in today’s gospel reading from St John.

First, faith is transmitted not as a teaching but as a true initiation, a personal introduction to the person of Jesus Christ. Second, there is a radical shift from what John the Baptist stood for to the novelty of Jesus.

John the Baptist introduces two of his disciples to Jesus, and then one of them, Andrew, introduces his brother Peter to Jesus, telling him “We found the Messiah”. This personal contact has systematically disappeared from the ways we transmit the faith in our communities. The transmission of faith has become a mechanical process, consisting mainly of teaching catechism or religion and participating in the sacramental life.

This process lacks the basics of a true ‘initiation’ to the experience of Jesus Christ as saviour. Jesus can be experienced as saviour if and when he touches our life and responds to our basic issues and queries. This rich process of initiation to the faith animated the first Christian communities seeking first and foremost to make disciples of Jesus rather than just baptised Christians.

If we want to secure the faith of future generations we need first and foremost to be more in sync with the evolving soul of the world and with today’s zeitgeist. This calls for a deep rethinking of the Church itself and a reinventing of its mission. The worst decline the Church can suffer is not the dwindling of its numbers but the failure to connect with the soul of the world.

This leads to the second provocation in today’s gospel, the radical shift from what John the Baptist stood for to the novelty of Jesus. One was the past, the other the future. We have to decide where the past ends and where the future begins, where vision and memory intersect and where they are in conflict. Otherwise we keep speaking of needed changes and reforms while remaining the same.

The Church has gone through this very often, and we need to beware a repeat performance post-COVID. We also many a time find it hard to learn the lessons of history. In 1947, with World War II just over and Europe in shambles, Archbishop of Paris Emmanuel Suhard wrote an explosive long letter entitled Essor ou declin de l’Eglise (Rise or decline of the Church), which, if revisited, can still speak to us loud and clear.

Suhard speaks of the end of a world and the birth of a new one, and the choice facing the Church in his time to remain in the past or to venture towards new futures. He saw the decline of the Church in the failure to capture the spirit of the time and to connect with the soul of the emerging world.

The challenge ahead for us all nowadays is to let the Gospel message echo the dreams and aspirations of so many seekers, being, like Andrew, catalysts for them to find the Messiah.