Are You Listening?

Would it not have been marvelous to live at a time when John the Baptist could point his finger and say, “Look! There is the Lamb of God”-and, behold, there He is, in flesh and blood, the Messiah! Would it not have been marvelous to have our faith confirmed by actual experience?

Today, as in most days, people are hungry for spiritual experience. Often the Church is accused of stifling the experience of intense emotion, ecstasy. Religious routine becomes mechanical, it is said-bereft of spiritual adventure and excitement. It is possible that the Churches have imitated, to an extent, a secular, flat, bland, highly-structured social order. And these are times, as we all know, of widespread rebellion against this so-called “ticky-tacky” way of life.

Maybe the time has come to say something on the other side. Again, let us admit that the Church can be guilty of stifling certain dimensions of human experience. And yet there is a reason for the Church’s suspicion…