The False Lure Of A Costless Christianity Looking for ‘freebees’ is a behavioural hallmark of our time. What’s not free, we want for the lowest price. People become accustomed to this behaviour applying the ‘me first and last’ outlook even to human relationships, sometimes without realising it. The noun ‘Advent’ announces an ‘notable arrival’. Peripheral Christians, if they learn about the coming of ‘Advent’, may view the Church season as a sort of liturgical ‘merry-go-round’, a ‘here we go again’. Is the homilist likely to break the mould and wake us up? The present Bishop of Rome is waking up Christians and others all over the world. You can catch him via Google and the like at Vatican Radio and TV at –http://www.radiovaticana.va/player/index_agenda.asp Many admire the pathways Pope Francis is indicating for himself and us. There are probably fewer prepared for the cost of personal engagement! Some Christians seem to hold that heaven can be achieved at little or no personal cost! Satan endlessly works hard to sell the fantasy! ‘Swords into Ploughshares’ and ‘Spears into Sickles’ – Isaiah 2:1-5 in this Advent Sunday’s First Reading – sounds comfortingly reassuring and the ‘right path’ so long as it’s someone else’s ploughshares and sickles! The old adage comes to mind – ‘somebody somewhere ought to be doing something about this’! If the Bishop of Rome knocks on our door this Advent what will be our response? Will we act out Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 22? “Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them …. ” Have Western European Christians been duped into believing in a costless Baptism? I’m not referring to the offering made to the church when a person is Baptised. I’m referring to the considerable, daily, personal cost of an active loyalty to Jesus of Nazareth that covers all times and seasons. Jesus himself sets the standards in Matthew 16:24 – “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, that person must deny them self and take up their cross and follow me.” As if anticipating that the starkness of this definition of discipleship may frighten would-be followers, Jesus had previously reassured us that the way of the Cross is a way of enduring partnership with him: (Matthew 11:28-30) “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Too many have been seduced by the ‘free-faith merry-go-round’ that sees a single, involuntary act, done for us as an infant, as our ticket to eternal oneness with God? The Bishop of Rome wants to wake us from such false security because he fears we are living an eternal precariousness in which we can be compared to the ‘foolish bridesmaids’ in Matthew 25:1-13. What value has a lamp with no oil in a blackout? Some 100,000 people overflowed from St. Peter’s Square last 7th September for an evening vigil from 1900 hrs. to midnight. Pope Francis had issued the invitation just six days previously. Excuses for a paltry response in the UK centred on a shortness of notice! Well, yes! There were only six days of warning. But Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel for this Advent Sunday: “Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.” It is also true that ‘jungle drums’ communicate in seconds when there’s need or panic! Take, for example, a threatened strike affecting supplies of bread, milk, sugar or fuel. The supermarket shelves and petrol stations will be emptied in an unbelievably short time, often before the news is officially broadcast! Six days is ample warning for those who are alert. In six days any European diocese should have been able to muster a sizeable response provided that the Baptised are ‘awake’! That is engaged, aware, committed, ready and willing to answer the invitation to be the visible, audible, vibrant Church of Christ on earth. If you doubt that that describes your parish/diocese, then maybe this Advent is the time to ask yourself how your life, today, reflects Jesus Christ in his on-going, very costly struggle for the salvation of humanity? The willingness of a widow to part with her last ‘two small coins’ (Mark 12:42) still echoes clearly down the centuries! This Archdiocese of Liverpool, awaiting the appointment of an Archbishop, can be compared to a massed orchestra and choir awaiting a conductor. The conductor plays no instrument and does not sing. Making music is the unique, collaborative contribution of each orchestra and choir member. And, yes, it is a costly and skilled contribution demanding intentional harmony to which each willingly contributes. The skill of the conductor is in valuing each musicians’ musicianship thereby bringing the best out of each to enhance the harmony of all and uplifting the souls of many. There’s the tendency to imagine that a new Archbishop will be answer to all our church problems! He is a Bishop, a successor of the Apostles, not a magician. His role is to give leadership to a living, vibrating, praying and fasting body of the faithful fully ready for the personal, individual demands of evangelisation! A mission in the name of Christ for these precarious times. This Advent, why not review your personal role? Check to see if you are ‘awake’ and your ‘swords’ and ‘sickles’ reconstituted, through Reconciliation, Prayer and Fasting, for the arduous, enthralling mission that is The Church in the Archdiocese of Liverpool. Through which we are in communion with Pope Francis, the Bishop from the ‘ends of the world’ – perhaps in more ways than one.