The Need

1. The greatest need in our modern world today is the need for faith. We live in a post Christian society and the general atmosphere of our society is one of secularism, a growing loss of the sense of God. For too many people, it is very difficult to believe. Numerous questions are wrestled with: Is there a life after death? Has prayer any sense or is it just some form of introspection? What about the Eucharist? Is Jesus really and truly present, body, soul, and divinity in this piece of bread? Can a person really believe the bible? Does God really exist at all? And the questions go on and on. We want to be witnesses of this faith to the world.
   
   
2. This crisis of faith has far-reaching consequences. When there is no faith, the very meaningfulness of life becomes a question. And when there is no purpose or value to life, any suffering becomes too great and despair becomes the prevailing disposition. When faith is weak or missing, people experience loneliness as a greater threat. In a society imbued with faith, people are drawn to solitude where they can find God. But when God is perceived as dead, solitude is experienced as lonesomeness, and so people would rather gather and talk together so that their loneliness can be driven away. We want to be witnesses of faith.
   
   
3. When faith and a sense of the spiritual is lacking, this can lead to an overemphasis on busyness and accomplishments giving rise to a work oriented culture rather than a God oriented one. This leads to greater suffering since those unable to work feel worthless and useless. But even for those who work, lives become filled with frustration and misery as their work situation and its time demands take them more and more away from their marriages and family life. We want to be witnesses of faith to the world.
   
   
4. The Church, herself, can lose some of its interior strength and inspiration when the spirit of faith and prayer weakens in the faithful. The result can easily lead to an over-emphasis on externals which may cause unevangelical suffering to individuals and harm to Church credibility, which in turn can reinforce in a vicious circle the crisis of faith. We want to bring interior strength and inspiration to the Church by our being witnesses of faith.
   
   
5. The serious injustices that continue to grow in the world at large seem to have some connection with the weakness of faith that appears to be growing in our society. When faith is weak, injustice grows and quickly becomes institutionalized. Lack of concern for these injustices in the world by countries thought to be Christian makes faith unacceptable to those of the non-Christian world. We want to be witnesses to the faith so that justice may prevail.
   
   
6. Why such a life? Fr. Van Breeman states it so well and I quote, "I see a small, radical band of people who really want to follow Christ with their whole heart . . . we find them in communities everywhere. They will be liked by the people because they are one with them and really belong to them. They are available -- and yet, at the same time, they are strange, cannot be fully understood. They have a mystery which they carry within themselves and to which they witness. And they are happy in doing so. The people living that radical, incomprehensible life radiate joy -- and they do 'refer' to God."