Fr. John-Mary: Father, in the first programs you talked about some of the greatest problems in the world today. Faced with such serious problems, we could easily become discouraged or even despair. How do you respond to this danger of despair?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: Many people today reject all relationships with their Father in Heaven, all reference to their Creator and, having become orphans, lose themselves in a pragmatic pursuit of material results. In reality, since these results neither save people nor satisfy their most spiritual and profound aspirations, people keep looking for stronger and better results. This is why people, when they no longer face their own source, throw themselves frantically into a false autonomy that they never stop celebrating. This recalls what is shown in the beginning of Scripture (Genesis, chap. 11) about men gathering to build the tower of Babel. For a long time I have meditated on this, and the other day I saw that the Holy Father, in one of his last encyclicals, said that today's humanity is also constructing a tower of Babel. And it is true: people no longer want to look at themselves because they are afraid of despairing. They then project themselves frantically into constant, faster and faster, more and more efficient activity. Even that doesn't satisfy the depth of their heart.

This is why we must understand this danger and respond to the call of the Pope for a renewal of our Christian life. Each time that temptations increase, each time that the enemy, the adversary - as Scripture says - the demon, the one who no longer loves but wants to lead man astray, each time that he tries to seduce us again, then the Holy Spirit gives us a stronger interior grace. I believe that we can understand today what Saul of Tarsus understood from God: "my grace is enough for you". Without the grace of God we no longer know where to turn, and risk despairing. But if we rely on what is deepest in our human and Christian life, we see hope of unceasing renewal. Christian life is a birth to divine life, and as long as we are on earth, this birth becomes increasingly profound as we progressively discover the Savior who is given to us. We must be careful not to fall into the despair of those who think of only one thing: building the tower of Babel, and who forget what is deepest in their heart. We must try to understand the mysterious, profound presence of Christ as Savior. "God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son". This word is a divine word which is always a living presence for the believer, always present for all men of good will, even those who do not explicitly recognize Jesus. All men of good will can listen to this Word. God so loved the world that he sent his Beloved Son, giving him to us. Renewal in the Church cannot be anything but returning to this source of grace, of divine life, light and love, rediscovering what we always tend to underemphasize because we are too taken in by immediate results, too taken in by the demands of today's world. Our chronic rushing distracts us, makes us forget the essentials, and focus on the pursuit of endless trivial "needs". Our culture has increased our "needs" so much that they fill our day. We cannot extend our day, we cannot say to the sun: "Stop, because we need to pray", for it now takes great courage to stop and pray. St. Theresa of Avila used to say, "For every great crisis, you need great means". And the greater the crisis, the greater the means must be. She was facing a great crisis in the Church, but today she would insist even more that we now need great means: prayer, mental prayer, interior prayer. I really believe that a very great, undeniable crisis confronts us today. The events which we now live, earthly events, confirm it. As the Psalms point out, God wants to speak though the earth, through the very extraordinary events we have been experiencing. Scientists have publicly recognized that the year l988 involved earthly events which had never before existed, and that l989 may be even more astonishing. We cannot help but think of the book of Revelation: "The earth comes to the aid of the Woman". The Woman is Mary, but is also the creature in her fragility, the creature who should believe but is afraid because she has been promised mirages, seductions. "The earth comes to the aid of the Woman": doesn't God speak to us through the crises which confront us and which tend to lead us to despair? Facing a cyclone, a very wise man and a very simple man have the same reaction. Great biologists and other scientists who have mastered scientific and technological progress are in exactly the same situation as a simple believer when facing a cyclone or an earthquake. Like the Apocalyptic earth coming to the aid of the Woman, the earth now comes to our aid and reminds us that we must return to a new, deeper interiority that believers have never totally abandoned. But they have perhaps neglected it because immediate preoccupations have distracted and hindered them from responding profoundly to ultimate goods and goals. Our renewal is in depth not in extension: renewal means the rediscovery of what is essential, what is absolutely necessary, what will give full meaning to our lives. Instead of uniting us, psychology today divides us, separates us, disintegrates us into many individual fragments of ourselves. Doesn't this call us to learn from nature, from the earth? The earth depends directly on God, on the Creator. Isn't there an urgent call to recognize our need for union with God? This bond of love with God is particularly evident in the face, in the look of Jesus, this marvelous man who was a witness of the love of the Father for him, of the love of the Father for us. We have to rediscover Jesus as witness, as the one who opens his heart to us, and who opened it in a very deep way: he wanted his heart to be pierced by a sword in order for us to understand the full extent of his vocation to love. We need to rediscover the primacy of love in the heart of Christ, which is what Jesus came for, so that we understand that each of us is loved with a unique and personal love by the one who is our Creator, by the one who gave us his beloved Son to be our Savior. The fundamental renewal in the Church is being embraced by responding to divine love and mercy, and rediscovering our faith in Christ the Redeemer. Jesus is more present to us through grace than we are present to ourselves. And with Jesus is our Father, our Creator; with Jesus is his Spirit who is given to us, the Holy Spirit. We are not only creatures that God looks at from afar and leaves free, but God lives in us: we are his beloved children, his friends. Seeing our struggles, God gives us an abundance of love: as little Martha Robin used to say, a Pentecost of love is given to each one of us in order to help us understand our Christian life in an entirely new way. This could have been understood at the Cross, and some Christians have in fact understood it. All the saints have understood that Christ is not a "Super-Law", but a gift of love: the true face of Christ is a face of love. It is this loving face of Jesus, this intimacy between us, that we need to rediscover. The disciples of Emmaus on the evening of Easter were discussing among themselves and were dejected over the death of Jesus and the great silence of God. However, some women had talked about an empty tomb. Then Jesus came right next to them, but they didn't recognize him. As a matter of fact, Christians are often like that: they discuss and their discussion can be very interesting, but it sometimes leads them to despair so that they end up saying: "What are we doing here on earth? Evil seems so strong, the devil so powerful, and we are constantly failing!" They don't take the presence of Jesus into account, this new presence, this new look revealing his heart as the source of love and light for us, enabling us to discover Mary, the one whom Jesus loved so much. We need to discover how much she is our mother as well as the mother of Jesus, to discover through her the mystery of the Church in an entirely new way. Too often we tend to look at the Church in a purely historical or sociological way, seeing all the mistakes that Churchmen have made. We then let ourselves be taken in by a judgement, saying "The Church is no longer for us." This new look or presence of Jesus should totally transform us. You asked a question before about the Church: it is perhaps good to come back to it.

Fr. John-Mary: Yes. These great problems which you have talked about are prominent in our society. The presence of Jesus, on the other hand, is very mysterious: his presence of love is often very difficult for us to experience. We can be especially disappointed not to find Jesus clearly present in the Church. How can we discover his presence?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: I will return next time to the presence of Jesus in today's Church. I would like now simply to underline our need for a new interior life. I remind you again of the statement of St. Theresa about needing great remedies for great crisis. For her, these great remedies are interior, or mental prayer. For great crises and struggles we need great answers: divine ones, not human ones with human power. Things like earthquakes, cyclones and tidal waves overwhelm us. Other things overwhelm us even more: atheist ideologies, the pollution of Christian culture, secularization, as well as the positivistic belief in science alone. To these must be added the false pretense of psychology to give a total explanation of all human experience. All such forces massively attack the human spirit. Like David, we are once again facing the great Goliath. Had David taken the heavy arms which were offered to him, he would surely have been beaten. (They had offered him the King's arms and armor, but he saw he was incapable of using them). What did he do? Moved by the Holy Spirit, he rejected the heavy arms and took light arms. I think Christians should always use light arms. If we use the enemy's weapons, we are beaten in advance, because they do not lead to the same goal as that demanded by Christian life. Our Christian life leads us to Jesus: we know that we are living members of Christ, and we must rediscover what that means: to be united in faith to Christ, united to the deep desires of the heart of Jesus in hope, united to the love of the heart of Jesus in charity. These light arms are ones in which we live the theological virtues. Through seven short periods of adoration each day our very simple faith will renew and reorient our lives towards the adoration of the mystery of Jesus and of the Father. Through grace we possess all we need for this simple renewal. We possess the leaven which has the marvelous capacity of raising human dough into bread, human substance into a supernatural reality made in the image and likeness of God. As images of God transformed by grace, we are one with Jesus, allowing us to present ourselves to the Father as his children. This aspect of our union with Jesus should give us a new view of Mary and of the Church. I believe that we should never separate what Jesus or the Father has united, and they have united Mary and the Church. I don't like the separate ways in which some theologians look more at the Church and others look more at Mary. No, if we follow Christ's way of seeing her, we see Mary as inseparable from the Church, and the Church as inseparable from Mary. But I love to respect order here: Mary is the first and most loved one. If I look at the heart of Jesus, what is important to me is discovering who are the ones whom Jesus loves first of all - and loving them in the same way. Renewal is becoming progressively more enlightened and inspired in heart and mind so as to look at Mary as Jesus does and love her as he loves her. From Mary, a living person and mother, I can then look at the Church. A mother is very simple, especially a true mother who is only a mother, who is completely given to her children, who doesn't keep anything for herself. It is through her that I can best understand the Church. Seen from an exterior, sociological point of view, the Church is very complicated: there is a temporal power, a spiritual power, as well as political relationships. The Church necessarily has its government and therefore its politics. If I consider only this aspect, I will misunderstand it, because I am only a poor little soldier who cannot possibly know everything. But if I look at the Church from the interior, then I see that the Church is the Spouse of Christ, that the Church is united to Mary, that it is the beloved child of Mary, that it is a family. It is indeed the people of God, but it is a family before it is a people. That is why, we Christians must all speak the same language. For me, the Church is a rich pasture where Jesus, the Good Shepherd, leads me so that I can become the well-fed sheep that God loves. The Church is the place where I can feed myself on the Word of God, feed myself on the Eucharist, feed myself on the will of the Father. Scripture strikingly and expressly points to these three types of food. Children understand right away what food is. We are Christians but we do not feed ourselves enough and do not know what our main food is. The Church is a rich pasture where the Word of God is given to us in its fullness. It is neither exegetes - however wise - nor theologians who are the first to give us the Word of God. It is rather the Church speaking to children and making us understand that the Word of God is a divine Word from a Father to his children. It is a loving Word, a Word which transforms my heart and teaches me to love.

The Church is the place where the Eucharist, the body of Christ, is given to me. Even more than the Word, the Eucharist is the heart of Jesus, the source of all love, a gift transforming us in the heart of Jesus. The Church gives us this Eucharist as its great gift. Finally, the Church gives us the will of the Father. The Church is the place where I can discover through Jesus the greatness of the will of the Father. Jesus himself said, after having found the Samaritan woman: "My food is to do the will of the Father." Jesus teaches us to say in spirit and in truth: "My food is to do he will of the Father," i.e., to be more and more united with the will of the Father so that it becomes my fundamental, main good. It is by looking at the Church in this perspective that we understand how it is at our service.