Message from the Prelate (July 7)

Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz has sent us a message from Enxomil, a conference centre in Portugal where he is spending a few days during his pastoral visit to that country.

From the Father, Enxomil, 7 July 2017

While praying in Fatima with all of you, I was going over, in the presence of our Heavenly Mother, some of the challenges of this world of ours – challenges that are both complex and exciting. What is Our Lord expecting of us Christians today? He wants us to go out to meet people’s anxieties and needs, in order to bring the Gospel, in its original purity and its radiant newness, to everyone. The dimensions of this task are outlined by two fishing scenes from the Sea of Tiberias, which offer a glimpse of the way Christians navigate through history. One is the Master’s forceful invitation to be daring – “Put out into the deep!” (Lk 5:4); and the other is the words of the Beloved Disciple, “It is the Lord!” (Jn 21:7), reflecting the attentive, perceptive faithfulness that enables us to recognise Jesus.

Sailing into the deep sea of this world does not mean adapting the message or the spirit to current events, because the Gospel has the capacity to shed its own light on all situations. Instead, it summons each of us, with our spiritual and intellectual resources, with our professional skills or life experiences, and also with our limitations and defects, to try and see how we can cooperate more and more in the huge task of setting Christ at the summit of all human activities. To do this we need in-depth knowledge of the time we live in, its dynamics and potential, and also of the limitations and injustices, sometimes serious ones, that afflict it. Above all, we need personal union with Jesus, in prayer and the sacraments. Like that we will be able to remain open to the action of the Holy Spirit, in order to call, with charity, at the door of our contemporaries’ hearts.