The Archbishop of Notre Dame, Paris, starts his Sunday reflection with the following story: three tourists entered this cathedral 30 years ago. They were irreverent and callous in attitude and behavior. As they passed the confessional, two of them dared the third to make a mock confession.
He accepted and began his confession. The pastor could tell by his authenticity meter that this was not a real confession. The posture, voice and body language were false. But he let the visitor complete his confession. Then he said, “Before I let you go you have to do a penance.”
“I want you to go up to the crucifix at the front of the church and look Jesus in the face and say: You died for us and it means nothing to me.” The man left the confessional and wanted to leave, but his buddies insisted he do the penance.
He approached the Crucifix and looked up at the figure on the cross. He said, “You died for us and it means… You died for us and it means…” But he couldn’t finish.
“That young man was me,” the Archbishop said.
Tom Hoopes, writer in residence at ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, gives us a prescription for summer faith in “Do This, or Summer Will Swallow Your Faith Whole”.
A frantic e-mail from one of his students said her old surroundings and old habits and old relationships were literally swallowing her faith whole. Hoopes says summer is like a giant yellow sponge soaking up our spiritual energy.
“Don’t forget what Benedictine College taught you,” Hoopes told her. “Community, faith and scholarship are not just slogans on campus. They are the building blocks of your spiritual life, direct from the Rule of St. Benedict. “Use them to build your identity,” Hoopes told her. And he gave her this prescription:
First, Community: Find people who build your true identity.
“Become who you are,” said St. John Paul II. …you are a person in a community: you are a son, daughter, husband, wife, father, mother, aunt or uncle. Without a community, you don’t exist, and without a faith community, your faith disappears.”
Jesus repeatedly spoke of community. Love others; serve them without expecting repayment. Listen to them without cynicism, and pray for them with no hidden agenda.
Second is Faith: Have a specific prayer routine.
“If you stop talking to your friend, he will become a stranger to you. If you stop talking to your wife, she will leave you in heart and mind — or both, by walking away.
“There is a God,” Hoopes says, “and our faith in him grows through prayer the way our faith in our grandma grows the more we talk to her…
“Set a daily prayer routine and cling to it… But don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If it’s impractical to go to a chapel, pray at your bedside; Almighty God has no trouble reaching you there. He only has trouble reaching people who blow him off.”
Last is scholarship: You must feed your faith from your reason.
“If your faith doesn’t touch your intellect it is like kitsch [gaudy] art or pop music: it is sometimes sweet and sentimental but ultimately silly and insubstantial.”
Find the spiritual reading that will stimulate your brain,” Hoopes says. “But remember: The [Spiritual] you is made of community, prayer and study. Without them, you’ll disappear into video games, bad movies and chlorine fumes by the Fourth of July.”
