It was in Detroit at our last convocation that I was able to share some of my deep concerns about the Church with our clergy. That gathering, which took place in October of 2019, was the last time we were able to meet face-to-face. I pray it won’t be the last, but it is impossible to know the mind of God with regard to the pandemic we are all living with now. My message to the priests and deacons in attendance that week was stark; some would say bleak. It was not meant to depress, however, but to inspire.
In that same vein, I thought I would share a little of that message with you, adapted somewhat for a broader audience than pastors. What I had to say was this:
Sometimes I feel the Catholic Church, indeed Christianity itself, is in crisis in the world today. Rampant secularism; militant, atheistic, materialistic capitalism; and other religious beliefs are now capturing the interest and attention, not to mention the hearts and minds, of those who were once Christians. I have been wondering if, in the midst of this crisis, we Romanian Greek-Catholics — despite a proud history and the courageous witness of our martyrs — haven’t lost our way. If we have, it is because we may have forgotten why we exist in the first place.
Our diocese is struggling mightily in many ways. We are closing parishes that have been in existence for more than 100 years; the parishes that still exist struggle to stay alive, and newer missions flounder for lack of institutional support. In general, we also lack a vibrant sense of responsible stewardship and a serious awareness of the need for serious sacrifice on the part of some of our faithful.
Meanwhile, our brother and sister Byzantine Catholics of the Ukrainian, Melkite, and Ruthenian churches, in the United States and, in some cases, in their homelands, are finding new life grounded in a strong sense of mission and supported by the catechetical and institutional resources that they themselves have developed. And a new sui iuris church has been established in Hungary.
Finally, despite great ideas, enthusiasm, and support from my brother priests, I think that my leadership has not been what it could be. I find myself still in need of more learning if I want to fulfill my dreams as your bishop. More learning, of course, means more failure, because it is in the failures that we learn the most.
The task before us is immense, and it starts with figuring out what this task actually is — why we are here, what it is that God is asking of us on behalf of the people he loves so much. We are not going to figure out our task and our mission by reading recipe books or conducting six or 600 versions of “business as usual.” God is changing the landscape in His pasture, and we must change with it.
As President Abraham Lincoln once said, in the midst of a war that was tearing the new American nation apart, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.” (Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 1, 1862)
We all need to stop worrying about how we are going to do everything that needs to be done and complaining that we have no people and no resources. In fact, God has been answering our prayers all along. Our poverty, littleness, and weaknesses are our strength, not our handicap. God has chosen you — clergy and laity — and brought each of you to this eparchy. You are our treasure, our chief resource, and the object of God’s sacrificial love. We can fully trust that this God will give us everything else we need for the accomplishment of His will, as St. Paul says, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13)
First, however, we must sincerely and earnestly seek God’s will and discover the mission God has entrusted to us. That mission exists; it is our “why”: Why we are here in these lands and why we do what we do. As recently canonized St. John Henry Newman says, we have our mission, and if we fail to discover it in this life, we shall surely be told it in the next.
I have some ideas to share about our mission, but it doesn’t matter much unless it really is the mission God has assigned us. That is not a matter of my ideas, but God’s, and it is God’s will that we must work to discover. There will be more to come on this subject in upcoming communications from me, but for now, open your own heart and let the discovery begin.