The Advent season of promise, fulfillment and hope
By Father Derek Sakowski
I often imagine what it was like for our fathers and mothers in Faith as they patiently waited in hope for the fulfillment of God’s promises. God is faithful, but He sure seems to take His time or provide only limited information along the way!
Our father Abraham heeded God’s invitation and left behind his homeland of Ur to journey to a yet-to-be-determined land. God promised him descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sands on the seashore. Never mind that he was 75 years old, and that his son Isaac was not born until he was 100!
The angel Gabriel came to Mary to announce Jesus’ conception and birth. Curious, she asked for more insight, even though there was so much that she could not possibly grasp. Even without fully understanding, she believed that God’s promises would be fulfilled. (Lk 1:45)
God’s angel came to Joseph in his dreams, inviting him to trust that Mary’s child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. God’s angel appeared again to command Joseph to get up immediately, take Mary and the child, go to Egypt and stay there until told otherwise. Joseph got up, took Mary and the child and went to Egypt to stay.
Trusting God When We Get Restless
When God makes promises to me, I feel eager and excited. I follow joyfully. Then I get restless, anxious or panicky. I feel all the “what ifs”—many of which are not idle fantasies, but genuine challenges and threats. I feel tempted to grasp at control or manage things myself, rather than continue trusting in divine promises. I become like Lot’s wife or like the Egyptians in the desert, looking back to a familiar and comfortable past that stopped bringing life a long time ago. Hope is hard.
This fall, I launched the Rebuild My Church initiative, inviting everyone in the diocese to walk a path of renewal and pastoral planning together. We began this ongoing journey with 40 listening sessions across the diocese. Thanks to many helpers (deacons, diocesan employees and other lay volunteers), I traveled across the 19 counties of our diocese and invited our people to join a shared pivot from maintenance to mission.
Facing Fear and Discouragement Together
I found that many of our priests and people are struggling to feel any significant hope. I empathize. When we feel threatened, when so much has changed, when life is overwhelming or when the future is unknown, our human tendency is to hold tight to what we have and buckle down in self-preservation. Jesus invites us to learn from Lot’s wife: if we try to hold onto our life as we know it, we will lose it, but if we give all over for His sake and the sake of the Gospel, we will discover new life. (cf. Lk 17:32) We are invited to mission, not to self-preservation.
The world has never changed at such a rapid pace! We have collectively experienced massive events such as the industrial revolution, wide-scale migration to new countries (including the ancestors of virtually all of us), world wars, the Great Depression and two pandemics. Amidst these changes, so many of our families carry dark, multi-generational secrets of domestic violence, sexual harm or emotional neglect.
Even more radical and rapid changes have now arrived, first with the internet, then with smartphones and social media and now with artificial intelligence. Most painfully of all, nearly three-fourths of our family and friends have left the Church over the past three generations.
When everything around us feels like it’s spinning, people expect the Church to be the one place where everything stays the same. If we feel like our identity is unstable, surely we can at least hold onto our church identity?
Rediscovering Our True Identity in Christ
That depends on what you mean by “identity.” Many of us spend most of our life propping up a façade that feels safe but actually is only a shell of our true identity. When that façade collapses, we feel disoriented and upset. We don’t know who we are anymore. Those moments can be agonizing, but they are also an invitation to remember our true identity and to be renewed in hope.
Jesus is on mission, but His mission is not what He does. It’s who He is in relation to His Father. Relationship confers identity. Mission, then, is an ongoing abiding in relationship, bearing fruit by sharing the abundance with others.
If you want to understand these truths further, I refer you to John’s Gospel, especially chapters 10-17. Jesus is from His Father, and He is always connected in relationship with His Father, sharing everything perfectly. Jesus eagerly desires to share with us all that He shares with His Father. Jesus sends us just as the Father sent Him.
We easily forget that Jesus has already won the victory. He is the unconquerable Lamb of God. He overthrew the kingdom of darkness by His cross. We need not fear what lies before us. He promises that the gates of hell will never prevail against the Church.
Notice that image of “gates.” The Church is not a fortress, locked down in fear and desperately praying that evil forces do not overwhelm our defenses. Instead, the Church is on mission, going forth in confidence to assail the gates of hell, setting free those who are held captive by the evil one, just as we ourselves have been rescued by Jesus.
Ready for Renewal with the Good Shepherd
My prayer is that those of us who are currently entangled in fear, resentment or hurt will drink anew from the springs of salvation and rediscover our amazing mission. Jesus will show us the way. Outwardly, the day-to-day Church structures change and change again, as they must if we want to bring people back to Jesus. Inwardly, we remain anchored in eucharistic life and know that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. The Church is ever ancient and ever new.
The logo for Rebuild My Church evokes John 10. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. We learn to recognize His voice and follow Him, trusting Him to lead us to green pastures. He promises us a more abundant life.
Our diocesan bishop, the Most Reverend Gerard W. Battersby, has consistently emphasized that our pastoral plan will be discovered through faithfully listening to and following Jesus. This is not shirking responsibility, but rather a collective invitation to renew our faith in God’s promises. It is an invitation to trust that He truly communicates with us, to get to know Jesus’ voice and to follow Him into a life of abundance.
I have listened to more than a dozen dioceses, many of which struggled with their pastoral planning efforts. They learned the hard way that you never truly arrive at some magical summit, where all your measurable goals and objectives are ticked off and you can declare a success. Mother Teresa famously shared that God does not invite us to be successful but to remain faithful. Discipleship is an ongoing journey. This shared path of renewal that we have begun to walk together will be ongoing. If we listen to the Good Shepherd and learn to trust Him and each other—just as Mary and Joseph did when they traveled to and from Egypt, we will keep discovering new answers and next steps. Together, we will thrive on our mission.
Please note: If you would like to learn the latest about how you can participate in this renewal process, please visit our web page diolc.org/rebuildmychurch