Diminishing Fervor in the Church Today

Nowadays, it is hard to imagine that anyone would spend two weeks preparing for Communion, or two weeks in thanksgiving afterward. How much we Christians take God for granted today! Consequently, we do not witness the miracles we should. We do not avail ourselves of all the power the sacraments afford.

Granted, today, developing an expectant faith and fervor is not easy. We are living in a toxic atmosphere of secularism, humanism, materialism, and hedonism. We are gradually being poisoned, and almost imperceptibly our faith is becoming enfeebled. It is the gradualism that makes the process so deceiving. The old analogy rings true: You can throw a frog into scalding water and it will jump out immediately, but if you put the frog into lukewarm water and increase the temperature only gradualy, the frog will boil to death. Likewise, the gradual erosion of our faith kills us spiritually.

Unfortunately faith among Christians today is diminishing more and more. We only have to look at he statistics. Marriages are collapsing; the divorce rate in the United States has skyrocketed; the institution of the priesthood has been racked by scandal. In the various reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary during this century, she has often spoken of Satan’s diabolical plan to destroy marriage, the pillar of society, and the priesthood, the pillar of the Church. This is Satan’s plan, his last hurrah. Gradually, we are succumbing to it. We know, by Jesus’ promises, that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, but they may come close to doing so, especially diring the coming time of the great apostasy predicted by Jesus.

This is not the first historical period in which people’s faith has been put to the test, and perhaps it is not the last. But times like these are precisely why Jesus put the following question to all his followers: “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk 18:8, NAB). In this passage, Jesus is speaking about the point in salvation history when he comes not as Redeemer, as he did the first time, but as Judge.

St. Paul speaks about these times in 1 Timothy 4:1-2 (NAB); “Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the last times some will turn away from the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and demonic instructions through the hypocrisy of liars with branded consciences.” And he further elaborates on this in 2 Timothy 3:1-9 (NAB):

But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power. Reject them. For some of these slip into homes and make captives of women weighed down by sins, led by various desires, always trying to learn but never able to reach a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so they also oppose the truth – people of depraved mind, unqualified in the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their foolishness will be plain to all, as it was with those two.

Many things happening in the world today clearly foreshadow St. Paul’s scenario for the great apostasy, when the forces of evil become rampant on the earth. At the time some people who think they have great faith will leave the Church. At that time people will even abandon the teachings of Sacred Scripture: “Yes, days are coming, says the Lord God, when I will send famine upon the land: Not a famine of bread, or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the Lord. Then shall they wander from sea to sea and rove from the north to the east in search of the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it” (Am 8:11-12, NAB). When we come to those times, we will see how little faith there is.

We need to take a good hard look again at Jesus’ question, “When the Son of Man comes again, will there be any faith left on earth?” (Lk 18:8). Those who pride themselves on having great faith are the ones who are likely to fall the hardest when the apostasy really comes. They will be disillusioned and confused by all the conflicting teaching from some of the clergy, fused by all the conflicting teaching from some of the clergy, and from liberal versus conservative extremes within the Church. We might be experiencing a foretaste of this right not as we read about battles between the ultra-conservatives and the ultra-liberals, both of whom are “enemies of the Church” within the Church, as Pope Paul VI said. These factions are causing tremendous conflict, contributing to the loss of many people’s faith and gradually destroying the body of Christ. To contravene this, we need stability. We need a source of truth. We need to adhere to Christ, the Bible, and the magisterium of the Church Jesus founded “on this rock” (Mt 16:!8) – “the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tm 3:15, NAB).

We need Christ in our hearts; we need the kingdom of God within us. Most of all, we need Christ abiding in us through the Eucharist. We need his corporate presence in the assemblies at the Sacred Liturgy, and we also need a frequent, fervent, personal, intimate contact with Jesus in Holy Communion. The Church has been proclaiming this truth for twenty centuries. If people approached this sacrament intent on availing themselves of all the power it affords, the hemorrahaging of the faith in the Church would stop. Unfortunately, most persons who attend Mass and who receive Communion are totally unaware of Jesus’ presence, both corporately and physically. They might know it theoretically perhaps, but as we have already seen, as many as seventy percent of today’s Catholics do not even believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Consequently, because of this ignorance, apathy, and unbelief surrounding the sacrament of the Eucharist, few people obtain the benefits that Jesus makes available.

This excerpt is from the book The Healing Power of the Eucharist, by John H. Hampsch, C.M.F., originally published by Servant Books, an imprint of St. Anthony Messenger Press. This and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.