Man and Church
When Is the Church Truly Alive?
A living Church does more than preach, serve, and organize. Its true mission is to lead people to Christ, repentance, and salvation.
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will send a great famine upon the earth, not because you have no bread and water, but because you will not hear the word of God.” (Amos 8:11).
When the word of God is not heard in the Church, famine sets in: a hunger and a thirst that lead to death. Conversely, when the word of God is heard, the Church is alive.
This is one leg. However, to walk, we also need the other: the lived experience of Life itself, of Christ’s Resurrection. Otherwise, as Shepherds, we will speak like parrots; we will resemble “funerary steles and tombs of the dead, on which only the names of dead people are inscribed.” (Saint Ignatius the God-bearer, Epistle to the Philadelphians, P.G. 5:7010). And we will become the “best” gravediggers of Mother Church.
