This post is my wife's fault
I was wandering along the web, reading blogs, and I ran into an interview game here. I looked at the first question and the answer popped immediately into my head. I told my wife and she said I had to blog it. Thus, question:
If you were a chess piece, which one would you be and why?
Answer
A pawn. Because you start out as fairly insignificant, but through hard work you can become anything you want (except king).
In other news, the people at the parish have decided to delay the survey until the beginning of March. Keep praying for us - the ones trying to get the program going and those for whom the program is intended.
If you were a chess piece, which one would you be and why?
Answer
A pawn. Because you start out as fairly insignificant, but through hard work you can become anything you want (except king).
In other news, the people at the parish have decided to delay the survey until the beginning of March. Keep praying for us - the ones trying to get the program going and those for whom the program is intended.
posted by Virgil Petrisor at 10:34 PM
2 Comments:
You did not imagine – did you? – that Christian mission in post-civilization is any easier than it used to be in the idolatrous Roman Empire or amid the savage, cannibal tribes of the infamous colonial era.
Surely, you should not fear of – or hope for! – martyrdom. The post – civilization pagan will not torture you, neither he will eat you. He will simply ignore you.
The pagan of the old good times was a natural, genuine pagan: a mixture of ignorance and innocence. The nowadays pagan is a manufactured one: cultivated, premeditated, wicked. Beware…
Anyhow, remember some of His methods. He started with two and in some more than three years He gathered seventy disciples only. (You may ignore the multitudes which sometimes followed Him, mostly in search for miraculous healings…).
He called Andrew and Andrew called Peter. He called Philip and Philip called Nathanael… Think of small things like these ones.
T of Q
I actually see many similarities between the situation of the Roman Empire (especially in the period right after Christianity became the official religion of the empire) and the situation in the US/Europe today. There were large numbers of nominal Christians, pagan practices/philosophies were sometimes mixed in with Christian worship, so the Church had to work very hard at maintaining her identity and proclaiming her message in the face of all these problems. So, to answer your question, I do not expect anything Christian to be easy.
In order to see a quantifiable impact (such as we'd have in increased attendance to the Liturgy and Church School) it would probably take a couple of years. This is why, if by the grace of God I remain here, I plan on returning to the parish next year even if I do not have a parish assignment there.
In this context, I very much appreciate your comment. Sometimes I forget the basics; the simple idea that the longest journey begins with one step or, in this case, one person. Because, when you bring it down to the basics, that is actually the driving force behind this project: creating an environment in which to get to know each person and helping that person, to know the Church - not so much on a cognitive level, as a living, experiential one. After all, Christianity is not something you "know", but something you live (if I may be allowed to oversimplify things somewhat). Thank you for your reminder.
On the other hand, I would disagree with you on one aspect. I do not believe that, most often, the "nowadays pagan" as you call him is cultivated, premeditated, wicked. I actually see today's person much closer to the pagan of ancient times, with a mixture of at least ignorance, if not innocence.
The situation is, in this case, different in that a pagan knew what he believed. In today's society many beliefs are hidden behind common practices and very rarely explicitly articulated. Materialism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, individualism are belief systems, with values, norms, and even rules of conduct. However, by living with these every day, we rarely rise above them in order to analyze and question them.
So, personally, I see ignorance as a big part of the problem; ignorance both of the implicit assumptions we have on life (based on our life-experience) and of the Christian faith most of us in the US associate with in some form or another. And, I believe, it is this ignorance that needs to be dispelled - again, as I mentioned before - not simply by "academic" instruction (beneficial as that is) but also by understanding the Christian way of life.
In Christ,
vp
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