Start with your Heart

I want to focus on some delightful new glimpses and insights that are now emerging to enrich people’s faith. Millions are finding renewed and deeper ways of being Christian, of being Catholic, of being human. A radical new light is being shed on that moment of love 2,000 years ago, when God was revealed at the centre of our lives and of our evolving world.
Something amazing is happening. Something that could never have happened before now. There is a new turning – a new mind-set and a new heart-set are coming centre-stage. There is an opportunity for struggling believers to find their way once again; a radically different understanding of central dimensions of the Christian faith is now emerging. A fresh picture of the beauty of our faith is daily becoming clearer as the treasures of science and Christianity move closer together. We are being offered a new mountain view with an entrancing panorama stretching out in front of us. It is time for a courageous ascent.

We need help to grasp the depth and beauty and enormity of what is happening. We need to get acquainted with a new language so as to nourish a new spiritual ‘heart of flesh’ based on the divine nature of our being, on the wonder of creation and its evolutionary journey into the future. Nothing essential has changed in our beliefs. Yet many once-certain Roman Catholics are profoundly confused, caught between faith and life in an old church which is slowly splintering, and in an emerging church which is very exciting and challenging; between the old story of Creation/Fall myth, and the traditionally more authentic story of Original Blessing and Beauty.

A lost and delightful vision lies waiting to be recovered, renewed and reshaped in the light of a new impetus from the Holy Spirit, of an enlightened spirituality, and of the vision of Pope Francis. There is no point, he said, in hanging on to old priorities of Church life, preserving ‘adulterated forms of Christianity’. Christianity must be true to its ‘eternal newness’ as it dialogues ‘with changing historical circumstances’ (Laudato Sii 121). The purpose in writing this is to encourage us all to embrace this new story, to deepen this vision, and still to keep digging beneath the rubble of our fading faith to find these forgotten treasures of God.
(From an unpublished work by Daniel 2018)