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<\/source><\/picture>What could become a mighty worldwide spiritual tsunami is building in what many would consider an unlikely place: the Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Catholics, it can hardly escape notice that this revival has occurred as we are eight months into the \u2018Eucharistic Revival\u2019 initiated by the U.S. bishops \u2014 a three-year movement to renew the Church by rekindling devotion to the Eucharist, the source and summit of our life,\u201d wrote Mary Healy in The National Catholic Register. (February 22. 2023.)<\/p>\n
Healy was focusing initially on a student revival that was sparked at non-Catholic Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, igniting last February. At the same time, she says, Catholics had also been praying for renewal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe the concurrence of events is no mere coincidence, but a prophetic sign. It is as if the Lord, hearing prayers of so many Catholics for a restoration of faith and life amid a radically secularized age, is giving a picture of what revival looks like,\u201d says Healy.<\/p>\n
The Eucharist, in Catholic theology, is the taking of communion bread and wine that become the body and blood of Christ, according to Catholic doctrine.<\/p>\n
There are two practices in Catholic belief and expression that energize the Church and make it fertile for revival \u2014 exaltation and continuation (my terminology).<\/p>\n
\u201cExaltation\u201d is the lifting up and glorification of Christ in the Eucharist, and continuation is in the idea that Catholic doctrine and practice have been handed down through an unbroken and direct lineage originating in the first disciples of Jesus.<\/p>\n
Many churches in this age of upheaval have gone so far in the attempts to be relevant to a culture that is in a high state of dysfunction and confusion that they themselves have forgotten who they are as the manifestation of the body of Christ in a world desperately in need of His touch.<\/p>\n
The loss of focus on God\u2019s transcendent Being has brought many to that situation described by John Calvin when he said that \u201cman\u2019s nature is a perpetual factory of idols \u2026 the mind begets an idol and the hand gives it birth.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, In the loss of focus on transcendence, we are allowing artificial intelligence to eclipse the true God. Hence the importance of a \u201ceucharistic revival\u201d that exalts the Christ in a society that believes it has touched the ultimate just because it can fire mighty rockets into \u201couter\u201d space that can explore but explode and also be part of a deadly barrage.<\/p>\n
Whatever the case, there is the danger of absolutism in a mechanized society that suppresses the spiritual in our nature and the need to worship the transcendent God. Already, some technical experts are trying to improve Deity rather than the other way around. They have put words in the mouth of a chatbot they call \u201cJesus\u201d and a robot who can write Sunday sermons, to mention a few.<\/p>\n
The Roman Catholic Church has more than a billion members worldwide. If revival sweeps through that global Church, the world itself would experience spiritual renewal through the touch of the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n
As a young secular journalist in the 1960s, I witnessed and wrote about the impact of charismatic renewal upon the Catholic Church. It was transformative in many ways, opening the Church to a renewal of faith and commitment.<\/p>\n
It can happen again. If it does, the world itself might experience a \u201cblessed tsunami.\u201d Non-Catholics as well as Catholics should pray for that revival.<\/p>\n
Wallace B. Henley is a former pastor, daily newspaper editor, White House and Congressional aide. He served 18 years as a teaching\u00a0pastor at Houston’s Second Baptist Church. Henley is author\u00a0or co-author of more than 25 books, including\u00a0God and Churchill,<\/em>\u00a0co-authored with Sir Winston Churchill’s great grandson, Jonathan Sandys. Henley’s latest\u00a0 book is Who\u00a0will rule the coming ‘gods’? The looming\u00a0 spiritual crisis of artificial intelligence.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n