I’m a non-ordained pastoral presence in the parish, a kind of unofficial deacon. I try to bring the world’s questions to church, and I try to bring the presence of the church to the neighbourhood. When I go out into the world, I look for signs of the active, loving presence of God. Where is he at work? Everywhere. Always. Anxiously fretting as though God has fled the scene, or that we’ve so royally flubbed things down here that he’s hamstrung and his hands are tied—this is not true. Ours is not a position of fear and combativeness; it is one of gratitude and service. Bidden or unbidden, God is present.
Our anxious hand-wringing over “the decline of all things good” is not a virtue, nor is our doomscrolling, searching for evidence to bolster our opinion, the frenetic posting and sharing, exaggerating for the satisfaction of being on the right side of history, whatever you think that might be. Are we in a story of decline or a story of progress? Girard said it’s both simultaneously. The world is amazing: we’ve got it so good. Not everyone, I know, and not equally, of course. But the world is so unbelievably good, it’s not even close. And: some things are truly awful, disastrous, cataclysmic, and thank God we’ve even got the capacity to see that, to know that so many things are not as they ought to be.
Berry commends his readers to “be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.” If we’re not going to solve the big problems, we can stop telling the kids or anyone else that things are going to be okay, that we can fix things if we just put our minds to it. Nope. Not going to happen. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. It’s not our task to maintain a broad cultural appreciation of traditional Christian beliefs and practices. We have grown comfortable in socially accepted cultural expressions of our faith and respect for our beliefs, but that luxury is a historical anomaly. Culture doesn’t owe us its admiration, appreciation, respect, or gratitude.
But we are called to be and to do certain things, and we should not be surprised when we aren’t loved or admired for our efforts. When it looks like the end of the world, we might be looking at things the wrong way, and even when it truly is the end of the world, it’s not our job to fret and fight to make sure things go our way. We are, instead, called to maintain a faithful presence. We are called to joy.