Called to illuminate the darkness of right now

[Serious Christians] can never stay safely attached to the merely theoretical; our Catholic faith sends us into this world that is marred and warped by sin, violence, poverty, lust, despair, and greed, in order to apply the doctrines of the Church to living people, concrete situations, and social structures. When we actually start acting the Gospel out in the lived reality of economics, politics, and culture, we start getting into trouble.

When I served in the Dominican Republic, no one took issue with our parish building latrines, teaching people to read, or dispensing food and medicine, but when we formed a human rights committee, started working on needed land reform, and talked about the rights and needs of the campesinos, a group of government soldiers with guns came to the rectory one day to question me about what we were doing.

When we start helping to free persons from the evil clutches of human trafficking, those who profit from prostitution and sweat shops will get angry. When we attempt to help women in crisis pregnancies choose for the life in their wombs, the lucrative abortion industry will come after us. When we question the ethics and greed of Wall Street, some will call us Communists. When we defend religious freedom and the integrity of marriage, some will call us “haters” or “intolerant.” …

None of this opposition should deter us from living our faith in the concrete situations of our society; sometimes such criticism can actually be a stamp of approval that we are living Gospel values. As Jesus said, “Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). Embracing the teachings of Christ can be a subversive activity, because when we follow the Lord, He uses us to overthrow the deceptions, injustices, hatred, and sin of this world to help the Kingdom of God to flourish with greater authenticity and power.

… G.K. Chesterton famously said in his What’s Wrong With the World that “Christianity cannot be condemned because it has not yet been fully tried.” [20th-century French Catholic and co-founder the Catholic Worker movement with Dorothy Day] Peter Maurin said that “the Gospel is a keg of dynamite that Christians have been sitting on for two thousand years.”

We ask the Lord to inspire us to go ever deeper into our faith, to make our love more specific and practical, and to allow the Lord’s generous sacrifice on the Cross to move our hearts to be that lavish in our response to His astonishing mercy. The world needs the light of Christ more than ever; we are called to illuminate the darkness of the world!

Excerpt from Love Never Fails: Living the Catholic Faith in our Daily Lives, by Bishop Donald Hying (Ignatius Press, 2021), pp. 87-89. www.ignatius.com

MOST REVEREND DONALD HYING is the fifth bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, appointed by Pope Francis in 2019. After his 1989 priestly ordination, he served parishes in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and a parish in the Dominican Republic. He was dean of formation, then rector, at St. Francis de Sales Seminary (Milwaukee). Pope Benedict XVI appointed him auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in 2011, then bishop of the Diocese of Gary, Indiana in 2015.