The director compared our faith life to a bicycle. We can carry the bike on our shoulders, but that is difficult, or we can learn to ride the bicycle which will give us great joy. The year of faith is not an event but a way of deepening our roots. We have to respond to God's call. We are happy when we meet someone we love, so it is with the God who loves us, and with whom we continually have the opportunity to meet.
To help us respond to God's call, the diocese has selected five key terms: Word of God, Prayer, Church teaching, Mass, and Sharing love. To the question how did the diocese decide to select these five terms, the director explained by describing the current situation in the Korean Church.
The crisis facing the Church is a weak understanding of faith life. Although many people still want to join the Church, many are leaving. This is a sign to us that something is not well. That is why we selected hearing the "word of God, prayer and listening to what the Church teaches. The teaching of the Church, to a believer, is the will of God attained with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Mass is our sign of community and the call to be one. Our life of faith is to bear fruit, which is the sharing of love. St. Ignatius said that faith is the beginning, but the end is love.
Why are we seeing this weakness in the basics of our faith life? asked the interviewer. Prayer life is no longer important to many, replied the director, and less than 10 percent study the Scriptures. There are also the external elements in society that affect us: good grades for children and the quest for money are becoming more important than God. When money becomes an absolute, we have problems. Furthermore, when I make myself the center, our faith is distorted, for faith grows by relating with others.
To the interviewer's question whether we are going the way of Europe , the director answered that because of a growing secularization taking place in the world, we have to prevent this from happening here. When we accept the world's standard of judging, the Gospel message becomes weak. When we turn service to others into a search for glory, or stress the importance of money and give pride of place to education, we are using worldly standards. There are many who have entered our community, seen this attitude, and have left, he said.
The director leaves us with the example of a butcher, Hwang Il Kwang Simon (1757-1802), living in a society that had little respect for the trade. Simon said that heaven is in two places: the place you go after you die and the place you create here on earth. The way the upper classes treated him, a member of the lower class, made him feel that he was in heaven. This, the director says, is what a Christian should be doing in every encounter with anyone.
