What should we be doing to re-create this complete Christian life?
What we need to do is discover a new lifestyle. We have to accept that we are swimming against the tide; we need to find a lifestyle which is life giving and life enhancing.
I don’t mean that we should re-create an entirely Christian society, separate from our own society. That was the temptation of the hippies in the sixties and seventies; they tried to live apart from the world which they had rejected. In our pitiless society, it is a temptation to which all religious revival movements are prone. Christians are not asked to flee but to be more active in making their contribution so that society can be change.
More effort is needed to love than to fight against one’s enemy . So Christians need to show that they can love more. Their love must be strong enough to survive in a society which denies love. Their love must make them into living signs of love for those who do not know what love is.
So to be a Christian in any real sense is a very costly business. It takes a lot of time, not just an hour a week. Christians have to make choices which are different from other people’s. They cannot just conform to society as it is today; they have to discover a rationale which comes from God. They need the courage to share with the poorest and to welcome those who are awkward and importunate. They must discover new ways of praying in which everyone can really take part.
So what we need today is extra energy and extra love in order to live the kind of holiness which has to be discovered in relation to the world around us. This is true for us and it’s true for young people.
–Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger. Dare to Live. trans. M.N.L. Couve de Murville (NY: Crossroad, 1988), 97.
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