The Light of Faith in a Postmodern Darkness

July has been a busy month. I’ve realized that the end of July really means the beginning of the end of summer. Here at CCFM, we’ve already begun planning (and re-planning) a year’s worth of youth nights, trying to consistently deliver evangelization and catechesis. It isn’t easy but we’re up to the task.
But there has also been a lot of other exciting stuff going on this past month! The Church celebrated another incredible World Youth Day this past week (the first for Pope Francis!), and those of us who couldn’t physically be there, bitterly attended in spirit. The week before that, CCFM attended the St. John Bosco Conference hosted by the Franciscan University of Steubenville. It was an incredible experience, and I would invite anyone in ministry to look it up and plan on attending next summer. There’s even a water gun fight! (which we may or may not have started...) And most importantly, at the beginning of July our Holy Father released his first encyclical for the formation of all people of faith.
Lumen Fidei, Latin for the light of faith, is meant to conclude Pope Emeritus Benedict’s encyclicals on the theological virtues; faith, hope, and love. He resigned his office before finishing the encyclical, and Pope Francis took it up and made it is own. It is a beautiful letter, and I would invite you to prayerfully reflect on it as your schedule allows.

Now, as you can tell from the picture (that’s my personal copy of Lumen Fidei), I could spend hours talking about all of the wonderful inspirations offered by Pope Francis, but I won’t. Ain’t nobody got time for dat. (it’s a pop culture reference)
No, I want to focus on a specific message that Pope Francis gives us in the very beginning of the letter and then constantly looks back to.
In modernity, that light [of faith] might have been considered sufficient for societies of old, but was felt to be of no use for new times, for a humanity come of age, proud of its rationality and anxious to explore the future in novel ways. Faith thus appeared to some as an illusory light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in quest of knowledge. —Lumen Fidei 2

It’s a very simple assessment of the evolution of our culture. Faith is shoved off as old widow superstition and a tool to keep the undeveloped in line. I love the way our Holy Father is able to describe our current society in one phrase, “proud of its rationality.” Because aren’t we? We are a very prideful people. It becomes a sinful pride when we boast in ourselves and not the glory of God reflected in us. This pride goes back to the very first sin, to the gate of evil that opened through our first parents.
But the snake said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.” —Genesis 3:4-5

It is in this darkness of temptation that our first parents chose pride over faith. Rather than accepting the truth revealed, they had to experience other options to make sure the truth was true. We clamor over our own brilliance yet continue seeking more when it does not explain everything completely. Now our rational intellect is a gift from God and is certainly made in His image, however, if it is not illuminated by the light of faith then “everything becomes confused; it is impossible to tell good from evil, or the road to our destination from other roads which take us in endless circles, going nowhere.” (Lumen Fidei 3)
There are many times that I watch the news and see this example of “endless circles, going nowhere.” One of the many insights I received from the St. John Bosco Conference came from a workshop titled Engaging Youth Culture. The speaker, Bob Rice, began explaining the various cultural eras leading up to our current time. He spent a large amount of time looking at the era of Postmodernity, which most sociologists and philosophers agree began in the 1950s and extends into the present day. He wanted to describe it, so that we as evangelists and catechists could better serve the students of this culture. Now, he had to make generalized statements, because no sentence could perfectly describe a whole person, but the descriptions he used were quite frightening.
While he described the dependence of media, the replacement of truth with tolerance, the acceptance of relativism, etc, I slowly realized that I connected with the majority of the things he was talking about, because I have been completely formed as a postmodern person. The culture I am surrounded by and is subconsciously a part of my life, is one that I try to fight in my ministry and for my youth. It’s like you’re a doctor trying to find a cure for a highly infectious disease, and then you realize you’ve been a carrier of it for a very long time. Now, I am an active Christian and ideas like relative truth are ridiculous to me (although if you don’t think so, I will accept your truth as equal to my own), so I may not completely fit the stereotype. But I am typing this on my Macbook while listening to Pandora radio on my iPhone.
The lack of faith in this postmodern era is scary and not something to be taken lightly. Pope Francis tells us that “the opposite of faith is shown to be idolatry” (Lumen Fidei 13). The majority of us don’t like to think of idol worship, because it involves pagan gods and awful child sacrifice (*cough* Planned Parenthood…), but it shows in our culture that we have invented civilized idol worship. In the encyclical, our Holy Father says
It seems better to worship an idol, into whose face we can look directly and whose origin we know, because it is the work of our own hands. Before an idol, there is no risk that we will be called to abandon our security —Lumen Fidei 13 (emphasis added)

We create idols for ourselves, so that we can feel like we have power. And believe me, I am calling the kettle black, when I say this, because I consistently build idols to distract my mind from realizing how powerless I am. I think we have this innate desire for power because the moment mankind sinned, we lost our power and realized the emptiness of evil. So we grab anything we can that will create temporal feelings of control in a pathetic attempt to prove to God that “we are like gods.”
So we build altars to our own glory and wait for our power, which was never ours, to come back. And I know it sounds completely hopeless, but this is where the light of faith comes in. It is in the person of Jesus Christ, that God our Creator descended into our darkness and brought light. St. Paul understood this when he preached in Athens. He traveled around the city looking at all the shrines that the pagans had built to many gods trapped in their manmade images, and then he spoke the light of Christ.
“You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.” —Acts 17:22-23

Our God is not a God who destroys our reality, but rather He is a Father who restores it. And I think that this is hopeful. It is a bright light in a dark soul. It may be blinding at first, but eventually our sight comes back fuller and better than ever before.
 
I’m sorry that this post was so long, but I think it is such an important topic to look at. How is God speaking in our society? Where is God present in popular culture? What does the New Evangelization mean? Why does Kyle write so much? I want to answer these questions, recognizing my own faults living in a postmodern era. So I invite you to follow my new personal blog, Work In Progress, where this is exactly what I will be doing. I’ve also done some research into postmodern philosophies and am excited to share them with you. Please check it out and share it if you can. God bless.


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