Given the extraordinary times we live in with all their opportunity for discovering creative ways, taking on new initiatives and achieving growth, it seems a waste for church to just keep repeating what is always done. To only follow the same trodden path will only lead to our missing out on the richness to be found in these times that are not just extraordinary, but I am finding are also very much graced and freeing. The message of the ostrich with its head stuck in the sand is that it never knows what is going on around it, missing out on what is wondrous, new and possible.
For me, their having public mass truly no longer concerns me on the basis of their going against Church and civil advice on assemblies in the age of the virus nor about their lack of solidarity with the rest of the local Church. It is about what they are missing in these graced times and more importantly about what they are not allowing others to experience and enjoy in these times of graced opportunity for church and mission.
These are freeing times for we can see reality more clearly for what it is; we can see more easily those around us for who they are. So we no longer just assume that we will be directed by the other to do the good and right thing, but freed for discovering the creative and new ways to do the same into the future. Pope Francis calls us as Church to look to creative ways to be Church, to live God's love. This is freeing but freedom does not come easily. Freedom involves struggle.
What we thought was permanent is now easily seen to be impermanent. The basic call of the gospel to transformation rings more true than ever before. This is a time for an incredible journey. Our heads stuck in the sand will never allow us to start that journey. None of this is easy but the ways of adventure and risk are best followed to be authentic.
As an Orthodox theologian teaches:
"We know where the church is, but we don't know where she isn't."
How true. How frightening.
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