In 1708, an enormous warship, the San Jose, sunk in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Colombia. Laden with cannons, artifacts of all kinds, and silver and gold, the San Jose was part of an armada that encountered British warships. In the ensuing battle, the San Jose erupted in flames. As that mighty ship sank into the depths, some 600 souls were lost, including the captain.
Nine years ago, the San Jose was definitively located by divers and marine archeologists, with many of its treasures and artifacts still intact. Since then, every effort has been made to bring those treasures to the surface, into the clear light of day.
We can only imagine the effort, expertise and courage it took, not only to locate the wreckage, but also correctly to identify the lost ship and to bring its treasures from the depths. While the divers played a most critical role, they could not have accomplished this feat without the scholarly and technical assistance of many others, not to mention financial backing.
At this point you may be saying, “That’s interesting, but what’s the point?” Well, here it is.
My greatest preoccupation, the thing I pray about daily, is the large number of Catholics, including and especially young people, who have disaffiliated. And in many cases, they have not simply stopped practicing their faith – they have abandoned any real belief in God or in anything God has revealed. Some have substituted belief in misguided secular values for the faith bequeathed to them in baptism.
Their lost faith is like a sunken treasure. It is deeply buried in layers of silt way below the surface. How did it get there?
Perhaps it was the casualty of ideological wars. When religious faith becomes the servant of ideologies of either the right or the left, confusion often results in the minds and hearts of many. Perhaps it was sunk because of the inattentiveness or malfeasance of captains and crews aboard the barque of Peter, that is, the Church. Or the faith may have been lost because of bad example, trauma in the family, the distractions and anxieties of life.
Evangelization is often a matter of helping those who have lost or abandoned their faith to find it again, to bring to the surface a sunken treasure. Sadly, many do not realize what a treasure they lost when they gave up their faith. They do not know the beauty of God’s love. Many have not encountered Christ in a deeply personal way. Nor do they realize how close the Lord is in Scripture and the sacraments. To evangelize is to help them rediscover and resurface the joy of the Gospel, the joy of believing, the joy of sharing the faith with others in the communion of the Church.
Perhaps the first challenge is convincing the unchurched that the faith is worth retrieving. And if, in the grace of the Holy Spirit, they agree, then more hard work lays ahead: helping them to open the deep waters of their heart and soul to the Holy Spirit who enables them to “unearth” the sunken treasure of faith and bring it to the surface. For it is only in the clear light of day that the truth, beauty and goodness of the faith shines forth.
And just as the divers who found the San Jose did not work alone, so too those who are retrieving the faith do not work alone. The principal agent is the Holy Spirit who plumbs our depths. But our prayers, gifts, dedicated work and witness, and that of the whole Church, plays a crucial role in this process.
The treasure field is vast! Let us put out into the deep!
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