Disciples of All Nations

One of the goals of our Weekly Update is to reframe our vision to be truly Catholic: this includes reflecting upon the Church on earth as “catholic,” or universal. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, before Christ ascends to his Father he commands his apostles to preach to all nations.

This command has been exercised over the 2000-year history of the Church. The Gospel has indeed reached all nations, with countless individuals heroically playing their roles within the greatest epic adventure story ever lived (much less written.)

One epic story is the life of the recently-retired Robert Cardinal Sarah, who became a bishop at the age of 34 in 1979 and had to navigate the turbulent waters of a dictatorial regime. He became one of the highest-profile sub-Saharan African churchmen of all time, and is well known for his fortitude and scholarship.

Cardinal Sarah is a high-profile face of an emergent portion of the people of God. During the twentieth century, the number of Catholics in Africa grew tremendously. In just the past 40 years, the Catholic population of that continent has increased from 45 million to 234 million, and the percentage of Africans who are Catholic has increased from roughly 12 percent to 19 percent during that time.

When we make comments on the state of the Church, our western minds may gravitate to the change of our post-Christendom world with a sense of grief and dismay. But when we take on a global perspective, we see that the Catholic Church is flourishing in corners of the world of which we might be inclined to be unaware.

Pope Francis is preparing to visit Iraq, which will be the first visit of a successor of St. Peter to that country. The Chaldean Christian communities of Iraq are some of the most ancient Christian communities in the world and have been the subject of frequent persecution.

The small Christian community in Iran has received a new Archbishop. They have gone six years without a bishop and are observing the rise to sainthood of a martyred archbishop from the early twentieth century, Archbishop Jacques-Émile Sontag.

Stateside, the secular news outlet The Atlantic is publishing a series by Arthur Brooks on “How to Build a Life.” Recently, he wrote in the context of Lenten fasting on the benefits of "giving things up."

Music from pandemics? The Lenten piece “Media Vita” is experiencing a resurgence of attention.