“The Adventure that is Following Jesus”
Fr. John Riccardo
September 8, 2021
I received this from a young priest friend the other day:
“So, I just finished The Christian Cosmic Narrative... I wish I read this my first year of seminary... this is like a textbook... so many images to pray with and so many ways to put everything together in my mind but also in my heart... seminary was a lot of great teaching but felt very fragmented... no cohesive narrative so often in how it was delivered... this solidifies the picture and awakens wonder. I feel like this should be read at every parish by every staff member, volunteer, etc. before we do anything else.”
Bingo. It is precisely this kind of response that led us at ACTS XXIX to publish this book. It’s also why we have taken so much time these past few weeks to share extended excerpts from it. Now, at last, we come to the final excerpt from this rich work. As we share this, we once again want to encourage people to do exactly what my young priest friend suggests—make every opportunity to gather people together to read this book. This could profitably be used in RCIA, teacher in-services, parish staff gatherings, small groups in the home, and beyond. Indeed, the book has a great ability to awaken wonder at the grandeur of God and the amazing adventure that is saying “Yes!” to Jesus’ call to follow Him.
“One sometimes hears the question asked, whether or not the Church will survive. When the true nature of things is seen, the question becomes comical. Not only will the Church survive, if such an anemic word can describe the dynamism of its bursting life, but the Church is the only part of humanity that will survive. The Church is already beyond the ravages of time, free from the darkness of sin and the tyranny of the Devil, and its future is gloriously secure. The only question facing those still living on earth is whether they will be joined to that bright race of divinized humans or insist on clinging to a dying and enslaved remnant of humanity that has no future but the shadows.
“To lay out the deep history of humanity in this way is to address the genuine drama going on all around us. But it is a largely hidden drama. The perspective given us helps to explain great world events and significant historical developments, many of which remain an unsolvable riddle without it. But the drama itself usually proceeds under the surface of things, clothed in the stuff of normal daily life, and working its way most profoundly in the minds and consciences, the hidden decisions and acts of each person, as they make their way among their families, their friends, and their fellow immortals along the path of life.
“So, the battle for humanity will go on until the One who rules all destinies decides that the time of fulfillment has arrived. Christ continues in every age to build his Kingdom, to assault the powers of evil, to attack the fortress of darkness, and to set its captives free. Satan angrily attempts in every age to fend off that attack, trying to maintain his deceitful but now fragile sway over human souls, and to cling, however vainly, to his illegitimate power. Into that battle, into the complexities and mysteries of a graced creation, into a zone of light and shadow, of high hope and quiet despair, of beauty and corruption, sprung from a race of rebels, some allied to and enslaved by the Devil’s tyranny and others struggling together against it by God’s power, one fine day, each of us was born. Conceived from all eternity in the mind of God, created by him with a high purpose and a hoped-for destiny, we were brought into existence under the watchful and loving eye of the Lord of the Universe himself.
“If the Father’s hopes for us are fulfilled, we will embrace the part we have been given. We will receive the grace of forgiveness and new life, renounce the ways of God’s enemy, walk the noble lowly road shown us by his Son, learn the lessons of humble warfare, and ultimately ascend the thrones prepared for us before the foundation of the world as kings and queens of God’s creation. If we squander our high birthright, forget who we are, conform ourselves to the world’s dark ways, and despise the promises held out to us, we will forfeit our place in the design of God and end as broken failures.
“Here then is the real significance of that potent but often misused word: choice.
