As a Church, we are going through a hard time right now. But we can learn from the model of families. 

 

When they encounter hard times, often the solution to renewing the family is to go back to basics, to draw closer together to help each other and to draw strength from our most fundamental sources. 

 

The news these days is filled with stories about our beloved Catholic Church. Scandal upon scandal is being recounted. Our leadership is called into question. Stories of victims once more rightly challenge our consciences and our faith.

 

There is widespread disillusionment and calls for reform. That is only right. In fact, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, at this time has publicly called for an Apostolic Visitation by the Vatican, working with prominent lay leadership, to fully investigate the circumstances surrounding Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and his prominent misdeeds of sexual abuse. 

 

Cardinal DiNardo also has called for new procedures to handle effectively allegations involving bishops and cardinals. It is clear to everyone that there have to be changes.

 

While we follow all of these stories with anguish and with anger, we must guard against the temptation to give up or to join those described in the recent Sunday Gospel who walked away from Jesus and returned to their former way of life. 

 

In short, we need now to focus intensely on our own personal and family efforts to deepen our spiritual lives and our love for the Church that Jesus has entrusted to us. As we seek the changes and that have become so apparently necessary, we cannot overlook the need for spiritual renewal that must come as well.

 

The call for spiritual renewal is a reminder of the nature of our faith and of the Church. 

 

As members of the Church we are not simply a collection of individuals who choose to gather together periodically for prayer. Rather, we are truly and intimately bound to Christ and to each other by baptism. As a result, we not only receive grace through the Church, but we also implore God for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to come upon the Church for Her purification and renewal.

 

Seen from this perspective, now is a time for us to intensify our spiritual lives. How might we do this?

 

Of course we begin with the Eucharist and with Mass. There is no place where we are more fully joined to Christ than at the Mass. Now is a moment for even greater fidelity to Sunday Mass. 

 

Can we find a time to go to Mass a time or two during the week to pray for the Church? Sure it’s a sacrifice. But it helps us to get our priorities right.

 

What about confession? When is the last time we went? How about going as a family? 

 

This is not simply the recitation of sins whispered in the confessional. It is God’s eternal gift of pardon. And with that is again a deepening of the gift of grace for each of us and for the Church.

 

What about our spiritual lives at home? Is our time regularly marked by good and spiritual reading? 

 

How about periodically turning off the television to read a life of one of the saints? And how good it is that we might be able to point to times when we pray at home, or pray as a family.

 

Fidelity to our faith, the Mass, the sacraments, prayer, good habits. These are the deeper foundations that are the ultimate solution to our very serious problems.