Doing what we Believe

We have all seen the picture of the  beheaded soldier in England and the woman who accosted the killer to stop any future killing. The picture was seen throughout the world. There were children leaving a school, and she thought that her actions would help stop the killing. She asked the person with the knife and gun in his hand, what did he want? As a Christian she felt it was her duty to do what she did. "We have the duty to help one another" is how she felt.
 
A columnist writing in a recent issue of the Catholic Times gives us her account of what happened, believing it was the woman's religious motivation that moved her to act as she did more than her maternal instincts.  She wanted to help those who were in a difficult situation, the columnist said, and was willing to face personal bodily harm by doing so out of love for her neighbor.

The columnist brings up the acronym NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard, which she says is the thinking of many in society: the unwillingness to accept any kind of sacrifice. The tendency in society is such that even those supposed to be the salt and light of the world are having difficulty bringing God into their everyday experiences. Isn't this what the Church is meant to be in society? she asks.

A theologian once said the greatest crisis facing the Church is that we do not live what we believe.  Numbers increase while the quality of our inner life decreases. Seeing this 'black cloud' hovering over the Church, she laments what this could mean for the future of the Korean Church.  
Pope Francis  in one of his recent sermons said our words have to be consistent with our actions. To make the Church believable, our words and our lives have to be one. We have to understand that when we are not witnessing by our lives what we believe, we can't proclaim the Gospel of Jesus.
 
The Second Vatican Council told us that justice was the way to peace. Peace in the world is the result of a life of love, and Jesus is the icon of that peace and its result. At each Mass, we say the prayer for peace. We should reflect on how to  make it a part of our life of faith, and can honestly say we are instruments of God's peace in the world.