Daily Thought For April 25, 2018

Proposing The Faith
(Daily Meditation from The Magnificat)

Doesn’t proposing the Faith mean proclaiming the Father’s love in the world? Doesn’t the Gospel require, from one end to another, that it be proclaimed in the world and against the “world”? Doesn’t the Gospel present the Faith as a choice to be made in the world, between the “world” and the Kingdom of heaven, a choice bought for us by Christ, and for which he gives us the strength?… And, lastly, in order for the Faith truly to become this choice, doesn’t it need to be connected with the “Be converted!”? Isn’t Faith for us a “turning back” and a “reversal”?

Can the apostolate be anything other than a living contradiction between that in us which God has made his own and the things before our eyes that remain foreign to us? Is the Kingdom of heaven not suffering violence everywhere we look? Doesn’t this violence pervade and penetrate the world from one end to the other, through all its parts, wherever God’s Dominion runs up against the prince of this “world”? Wherever Redemption runs up against sin? Wherever the Church runs up against the world?

Is there any way for apostolate to skirt around this accidental but constant, unequal but fundamental antagonism? And if it does have to face up to this antagonism, how would it be possible for this confrontation to keep from taking indefinitely new forms in the changing places that it occurs?

To the extent that the Faith does not speak out loud and clear in this confrontation, the world can maintain a surface ambiguity. But the moment the Faith shows itself to the world, the world can no longer remain ambiguous; the “world” that tries to hide within it is forced to come out and present itself as being at odds with the Faith.

Servant of God Madeleine Delbrêl

Servant of God Madeleine Delbrêl († 1964) was a French laywoman, writer, and mystic devoted to caring for the poor and to evangelizing culture.