Mission and LIFE
Vol. XVI
No. 8
SEPTEMBER 2004
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Healing The Emptiness Inside
ANTIDOTE TO DEPRESSION AND DESPAIR
For those living in a depressing and desperate society, there is no therapy like prayer, says Cardinal Godfried Danneels.
The archbishop of
Malines-Brussels and president of the Belgian episcopal conference affirmed
this in a written commentary for the recent launching of the Catholic Agency
to Support Evangelization, a project of the Catholic bishops of England and
Wales.
Entitled "Christ, Hope for a New Millennium," the cardinal's address will
help to stimulate the launching of the agency, created to support and train
Catholics to share and spread their faith, according to the Communications
Service of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Present picture
Cardinal Danneels writes
that evangelization must be carried out in a context where "in every street
there is someone who is depressed about our times, and no day passes without
at least one newspaper headline containing discouragingly bad news,"
reflecting "war and violence, genocide, unemployment, crime and terrorism,
and great ethical confusion."
The present picture is one of a society "that has lost confidence in itself:
it is floating helplessly like an astronaut in his spaceship who grabs hold
of anything solid he can find. The gravity that emerged from the great
religious ideals in Europe has disappeared," the Belgian cardinal contends.
Alarming proprotions
To "the crisis of
interiority" is added "the disappearance of ideals and projects," which
makes mankind "narcissistic and consuming," he states.
"There is a great inner emptiness, loneliness and dejectedness," and it is
young people who are the first to suffer the effects of this, he adds. "Yet
the question still persists: How can I be happy?"
In their journey, people are looking for "guiding lights," Cardinal Danneels
notes. But these are only "short-term therapies."
Such therapies, he says, range from medication - which "has taken on
alarming proportions in our time" - to alcohol and drugs; to publications
that exclude any path to happiness "that might require reflection,
self-control, effort, conversion or searching for a more spiritual and
ethical life."
"Or if there is an allusion to spirituality, then it is situated in the area
of esotericism and techniques for automatic salvation," he laments.
"Conversion of the heart and of the inner person is not considered."
Another "escape route" is the phenomenon of replacing the entire Christian
legacy "with a parallel world of visions, divine warnings and apparitions
... designed to make one happy," an approach that is influenced by the New
Age, he says.
Key is hope
But the key to this whole
situation is hope, Cardinal Danneels stresses.
"The person is a being composed of desires who continually and eternally
wants to realize himself or herself," but feels himself or herself finite
and "constantly encounters the borders of death," he says.
People feel "trapped in the temporary and yet open to the infinite" and they
"know that within the borders of earthly existence they will never be able
to realize what they most desire," the cardinal explains.
"Thus they can do nothing other than hope: That is the way the human person
is made," he says.
The One in whom we hope
There is a way in which
Christianity understands hope: a "bringer of hope will come: the Messiah. He
will fulfill the promises and realize hope," the Belgian cardinal adds.
"The alternative to utopia is the belief that God himself intervenes in
human history," he writes. "Hope is not made by us, it is granted: there is
a promise that we will live on after death."
"In short: Christian hope rests not on people but on God's promises and on
God's power," something on which the Bible is very clear: "God fulfills all
of his promises and he is cause of hope," the cardinal adds. The final
promise is fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ, where "Christian hope
finds its definitive foundation."
Exercising hope
"Prayer is also patiently suspending oneself between the past and the future," he says. It is also "to look forward with burning heart to the days to come, to the return of the Groom."
"Prayer is expressing gratitude for all that is behind us but also delving into the promises that have yet to be fulfilled," he continues. "For a culture (and a Church!) in depressive times, can there be a therapy as efficient as that of prayer?"<WM
Copyright © 2004 World Mission Magazine