THE OPPOSITE TO BOREDOM - ENGAGEMENT, PARTICIPATION AND MISSION

Fr Billy Swan

One of the accusations often levelled against religion is that it’s boring, leaving us passive and disengaged. Here I offer a few thoughts on how Christianity is a religion that does the exact opposite – offering us the gift of love, confronting us with deeper questions, drawing us out to know ourselves and know God, discovering our purpose in life and absorbing us into a dynamic relationship of love that changes us and the world around us.

The Engaging God of the Bible

The dominant theme of the Bible is that of right relationship with God that leads to worship and praise. From the moment they are created by the God who gave them life, Adam and Eve are sent into the garden to till it and enjoy the fruits the garden had to offer. It is what we call that state of original blessedness with human beings living in harmony with God, the rest of the created world and with each other. Although created independent and free by God, humanity was made in God’s image and likeness in such a way that our nature was designed for relationship, especially with God Himself. This relationship is a bond of life, of trust, of love, goodness, truth and beauty. It is a living relationship that is ongoing, that must be sustained and renewed lest it grow cold and weak. Even after they sinned, Adam and Eve were pursued by God who asked them ‘Where are you?’ They were engaged and questioned about their act of disobedience but were not left without hope. Reconciliation with God was still possible.

God’s love for human beings is a free gift but one that demands a response. We either accept it or reject it. The one response we can’t make is to ignore it. Indifference is a type of refusal. For these reasons, the Song of Songs in the Bible describes our relationship with God in terms of a Lover who seeks out the beloved and desires to be with them. The God revealed in the Bible is a God who is never passive but whose love always seeks to engage with and woo the ones He pursues. God loves his people and it pains Him when they ignore Him and are unfaithful. Through his prophets, God takes the initiative to call his people back and to a renewal of the covenant He made with us where “I will be your God, and you will be my people” (Gen. 17:7; Ezek. 34:24).

The high point of God engaging his people came with Jesus of Nazareth. As he began his public ministry, he immediately set out to engage with others. Walking along the Sea of Galilee, he called his first disciples with the invitation: ‘Follow Me’. With these words, Jesus was not simply asking his chosen to walk after him. Rather the words have a deeper meaning, inviting them to trust, surrender, to follow the path he leads them on, to learn and become spiritually and morally conformed to Christ who called them. We see this at other times too when Jesus asks questions that engage people at the level of their deepest convictions: ‘Who do you say I am?’; ‘What do you want?’; ‘What do you want me to do for you?’; ‘Do you want to go away too?’; ‘Go and sell all you have, then come and follow me’. All of these words capture the love of God in Christ that reaches out, encounters, engages with, chooses, changes and sends people on mission in his name. Through Jesus, God’s love engages us in a way that invites us to make a response of love in return: “Give me a drink” (John 4:7); “I thirst” (John 19:28).

In John’s Gospel, the intimate proximity of God’s engaging love reaches a new intensity when it is described not just as intimate closeness but one of participation. This participation in the life of God is described in terms of mutual indwelling: “Remain in me as I remain in you…the one who abides in me and I in them bears much fruit” (Jn. 15: 4-5). In the teaching on the true vine, Jesus exhorts that we “abide in him” (Jn. 15:7,10). In his priestly prayer, Christ prayed “that they also may be in us” (Jn. 17:21), that is, inserted between the life and love shared by the Father and the Son. Later in his letters, John elaborates on this concept, telling his audience to “remain in him just as he has taught you. Therefore, remain in him now, children” (1 Jn.  2:28). Abiding in Christ is granted by faith which makes accessible the inner life of God: “Anyone who acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in them and they in God” (1 Jn. 4:15).

Similarly for St Paul, Christ does not just engage us externally but absorbs us into Himself. The concept of being ‘in Christ’ as a participant in his life, death and resurrection is a major theme in the letters of Paul as he uses the phrase en Christo…in Christ, no less than 83 times in his writing corpus. For Paul, faith and the sacrament of baptism not only takes the believer deep inside the mystery of Christ but the Spirit also endows us with gifts that are given not just for our benefit but to be shared on mission for the benefit of others.

Engagement and Participation in the Church Fathers

With the Church Fathers, both East and West, this theme of humans being engaged by participation is strengthened. For Athanasius (c. 295-373) in the East, the incarnation was the pivotal moment when God became a partaker in our humanity enabling us to partake in his divinity: “The Word became flesh in order that we could become divine” (On the Incarnation, 54).

For St Augustine in the West, sharing in the life of Christ is not something external or extrinsic to the believer: “He (Christ)…did not disdain to take us up into himself, to transfigure us into himself, and to speak in our words, so that we in our turn might speak his” (Commentary on the Psalms, 30, 2).

Engagement as Mission and Action

This theology of engagement and participation has implications for how we view our activities in the world. For John Paul II, the work of Christians and God’s action in the world are not parallel activities. Rather, “humanity, created in the image of God, shares by their work in the activity of the creator” (Laborem exercens, 25). For Christians, awareness that human work is a participation in God’s creativity ought to permeate even the most ordinary everyday activities as they see their work and participation in society as contributing to the realisation in history of the divine plan.

In the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, ‘Participation’ is listed as one of the main principles of the Church’s Social Doctrine (Vatican City, 2004). This proactive involvement of Christians in the affairs of society was given fresh impetus by Pope Francis in ‘The Joy of the Gospel’ . There he decries passivity and describes the participation of Christians in the societies they inhabit as a moral imperative: “People in every nation enhance the social dimension of their lives by acting as committed and responsible citizens…Let us not forget that responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in political life is a moral obligation” (para. 220).

Engagement in the Life and Liturgy of the Church

For Christians, this participatory role in the world ought to be related to their active participation in the Church. Founded on the sacramental and mystical reality of their participation in the paschal mystery, Christ’s disciples should expect to find a participative culture mirrored in the Body of Christ that is the Church. Active ecclesial participation should not be governed by pressure to democratize the Church whose members are viewed as stakeholders who want a greater role in how decisions are made and how things are run. Rather, active participation in the Church is predicated on the deeper spiritual reality of Christians’ participation in the life of Trinity through the paschal mystery as brothers and sisters in Christ.

This call to active participation in the life of God and mission of Christ is celebrated and strengthened in the liturgy. Liturgies that promote the ‘full conscious and active participation’ called for at the Second Vatican Council, remains one of the most effective evangelical signs that lead us into the truth of our participation in the life of God and awareness of our missionary mandate.

At the Eucharist, the source and summit of the Christian life, we are invited to partake in the body of Christ as the body of Christ. At the Eucharist, God’s saving love is made present by word and sacrament as participants become immersed in the divine mystery, enfolded by the Trinity and conformed to Christ.

The mutual penetration of humanity with divinity celebrated at the Eucharist, reaches its climax at the reception of Holy Communion, described by the Council as “the most perfect form of participation in the Mass” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 55).  At this moment, “the outward action of eating becomes the expression of that intimate penetration of two subjects…the fusion of existences” (J. Ratzinger, Called to Communion, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 1996, 37).  Yet in this fusion of subjects, God’s primacy is retained for we participate in his life through God’s free gift.

Participation and the Synodal Process

In the light of this concept of faith being engaging, Pope Francis included participation as one of the pillars of the synodal process – the other two being communion and mission. At the outset of the synodal process, he said: “The words ‘communion’ and ‘mission’ can risk remaining somewhat abstract, unless we cultivate an ecclesial praxis that expresses the concreteness of synodality at every step of our journey and activity, encouraging real involvement on the part of each and all” (9th Oct. 2021). These words help us to appreciate the importance of participation that leads to:

“The flourishing of human beings, that is, the humanising of relationships at the heart of the project of communion and the commitment to mission. It safeguards the uniqueness of each person’s face, urging that the transition to the “we” does not absorb the “I” into the anonymity of an indistinct collectivity. It guards against falling into the abstractness of rights or reducing persons to subservient instruments for the organization’s performance. Participation is essentially an expression of creativity, a way of nurturing the relationships of hospitality, welcome and human well-being that lie at the heart of mission and communion” (Instrumentum Laboris for First Session of Synod, October 2023).

Here is the spirituality of active participation that animates Pope Francis’ call to all the baptised to play an active part in their faith communities as joyful missionaries in the world. It is a call from Christ through the Church to all who have become disengaged from their faith to get back into the arena for you are missed and needed.

This is a message sorely needed for the Church in our day. We have much to learn from other organisations like sports clubs that engage and involve thousands of young people with their energy and enthusiasm. As Church we need to maximise the engaging power of the Gospel that calls people by name and tells them that they are loved and chosen. A missionary disciple of Christ is someone who has first heard that call from the Lord to live a different life that is marked by service and adventure. It is a call that invites them to know Christ and love him before being sent on mission to share their God-given gifts and to become 'salt of the earth and light of the world'.

Conclusion:

Friends, young people in particular are sometimes critical of religion as boring. Understood properly, and presented vibrantly, Christianity is a religion that is never boring or passive. It engages us at the deepest level of who we are and who we are meant to be. Engagement and participation are key concepts to human growth and development. So too is the spirituality of active engagement that is at the heart of the Christian faith and ought to be at the heart of every faith community, parish and diocese. The flourishing of a synodal Church in the present and the future will depend on it.