Debate - THE PRIMATE OF HUNGARY, Péter Erdo The World Needs Christ It seems that the Church and the world are so far separated that we can speak today of failure. In this phrase “the world” seems to indicate the Western social and cultural environment in which the Church of Christ, today, that is to say the Churches and the Christian communities, live and are historically rooted. Another basic notion is that the Church is not simply a “visible” society, nor a merely cultural phenomenon, but is the People of God, a community that implies and transmits communion with Christ Himself and with the Holy Trinity. As St John writes, “Our communion is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” This is why the Second Vatican Council speaks of the Church as sacrament of salvation, the world’s salvation: Lumen Gentium, light of the peoples. Therefore, the Church, of its very nature, because of the mission received from Christ, the mission that is the Church’s raison d’être, is referred to the world. So when we speak of the Church’s presence in the world we cannot do so without speaking of Christ’s own presence in the world. The world needs Christ. If it had no need of Him, the Father would not have sent Him into the world as Savior and Redeemer. The question invites us therefore to examine our conscience: are we Christians truly in a living, deep and radical communion of life with Christ? On the other hand, this truth constitutes a comfort for us, because Christ cannot not be present in the Church; it was He who founded it and He will not allow it to disappear. The Church cannot be totally unfaithful to its mission to the end of the world. This is precisely why He has granted the Church the gift of permanence of faith. And yet that silence disturbs us, that open question of Christ’s: “When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on earth?” So what characterizes the Church is not a commodity guaranteed, but a duty of commitment, of action and suffering, so as to remain in the faith of Christ and carry out His mission. On the basis of this fundamental fact, we can feel that typical tension for the way the Church exists in the world of which Christ spoke. We are in this world, but we are not of this world. Our existence, therefore, must always be open to the world, because we have a great message to transmit to this world, be the world good or bad, friendly or hostile. So we must always keep ourselves up to date; we cannot be satisfied with the mechanical repetition of forms of expression and behavior. We have to reason, distinguishing the so-called “substance” of the Christian message from the so-called “accidental” forms. If only we still had the clarity and the conceptual certitude of the majority of the Vatican II Fathers, still certain of being able to distinguish the substantia from the accidens! So we are living in the force-field of obligatory on-going aggiornamento, and we must never forget it. At the same time, we have to testify the presence of God in the world. And the presence, the Glory, the divine Splendor is always the term of a tremendous comparison, like Moses who in God’s presence had to cover his face, or take off his sandals before the burning bush. This is why, while we adopt the methods of the modern world, we must not let ourselves be carried along by the current of the world or of the environment, but we must take all the influences with a healthy criticism. We have taken a series of rules, customs and ideas from the Hebrew world. We have transformed the substance and the message of many pagan symbols and feasts. We have used many elements of the German peoples’ culture and of others who reached Europe, or who live in other places far off in the world. But Christianity has transformed the culture of peoples. It has not cancelled anyone’s identity, but has rather created a rich diversity of cultures influenced by Christianity itself. The same is true today. We live in an electronic, audio-visual and global civilization, but we do not yield carelessly or automatically to the ever-new trends of our world. So we buy as if we had no property, we use the most modern means as if we were using our bare hands, we make plans and organize events, but not in order to be successful as efficient managers, because … “the form of this world is passing away.” This typically Christian vision is strange and hard to understand in our age, but it is attractive and arouses hope, a hope that can make us able, even in the coming centuries, never to lose courage, to take up everything again, despite all the defeats, because we live in the context of that History which has sense, which develops in the context of God’s plan of salvation. Christians are not a fatherless generation: we have a Father, who is omnipotent and merciful.