An Unlikely Agenda

Fr. Bob Bedard, CC

To suggest that the Church needs renewal is not to place one’s self in opposition to it, but
rather to stand within it at its very heart. To espouse the cause of reform is to obey the
voice of God himself, just the way good Pope John XXIII did when he called the Second
Vatican council, just as all the bishops of the Church did on that occasion where they
assembled in Rome to pray, to share, to invoke the Lord’s wisdom, to listen to the Holy
Spirit’s promptings, and to obey his directions.
The Church has always stood in need of renewal. It is divine in its founder and head, but
very human in its members. The Latin statement “ecclesia semper reformanda” (the
Church always needs to be reformed), used repeatedly by Pope John during the
preparations for the Council and as it actually got underway has set the tone for the
Church in this age.
The council’s decisions and documents have charted the course the Spirit of God has
given even though many years have passed, they have only begun to be implemented.
I am convinced that Vatican II was an act of the providence of God, a very tangible
intervention on his part, designed to begin preparing the Church for the momentous times
we are now only starting to move through.
The timing of the council was remarkable. It began as the foundational structures of
human society, for some years weakening and sagging noticeably, began to fall badly
apart. The elation experienced in the wake of World War II came to a jolting halt. The
family, society’s very basic unit, was crumbling in the face of a soaring divorce rate.
Respect for parents went into a corresponding nose dive. Traditional moral values, now
called freely into question, were everywhere sinking.
Those in the forefront of the entertainment industry began to vie with one another to see
who could contrive the most daring or permissive presentation. Scandals broke out in the
highest political circles. Cults proliferated. Violence in the streets and a general spirit of
lawlessness grew. The so-called ‘cold war’ intensified with the Cuban missile crisis and
other frightening confrontations between nations, some of whom had nuclear capability
and were threatening to use it. The abortion movement began to flourish as never before
and the assault on the most helpless of all human beings, the unborn, escalated to new
levels. Authority was questioned on all sides. Certainty seemed to disappear. the media
became more and more cynical as nothing whatever remained sacred. The word
rebellion’ is not too strong a term to describe it. The rebellious generation had arrived.

The Church itself was not unaffected by all this. Attendance at Sunday Mass
began to drop sharply, even in places that had been universally regarded as veritable
bulwarks of the Catholic faith. Quebec, where the alienation from the Church has been
devastating, is only one example of this phenomenon. Dissent became popular as
scholars eagerly lined up to take issue with official Church teaching. The reaction to Paul
VI’s Humanae Vitae was but the tip of the iceberg. Resignations from the priesthood and
the religious life became commonplace as a badly shaken Catholic population continued
to wonder whatever had gone wrong. Seminaries and religious houses, not so long before
fairly teeming with activity, began to empty. Many closed altogether. The Catholic
divorce rate, once strikingly low, climbed in most places to everybody else’s average.
The overall result has been a wide spread confusion throughout the Church.
Vatican II was planted in our midst just as all this was breaking out. Can we have any
doubt at all that the Lord knew well what he was doing?

The Church is in need of renewal. In this age we have simply not had the power to deal
with all this. The Lord has never intended the Church to live without the power
something that only he has, to carry out the mission he has entrusted to us from the
beginning.

It is not as though the Lord’s power is unavailable to us. It is and always has
been. He withholds it only to call us to a deeper faithfulness to him. He wants us to hear
what he is saying to us today. END OF SECTION 1.

I believe the Lord is saying that, in order to bring us forward to minister to a world that is
in the process of falling apart at the seams, he wants to bring us back to unity that we
have not experienced for a long, long time. He is telling us he will not tolerate the
present situation much longer.

The Church is badly divided. Not only are there hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
different Christian denominations, there are serious divisions within the Catholic Church
itself. Although the present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, is continually and
with great emphasis pleading with us to come together in a unity of belief and practice, to
“be of one mind and one heart” ( ), as St. Paul would say, we remain badly divided.

We demand the right to dissent from official church positions and we don’t hesitate too
long to disobey directives from those who are in lawful authority over us. The Lord
wants us to hear his word. “Obey your elders,” the author of Hebrews tells us, “for it is
they who must give account.” “( ).


The divisions within the Church are a scandal, not only the factions within our own fold,
but also our separation from the other authentically Christian Churches. This has never
been the Lord’s intention. We have to get very serious about patching up our
differences. The Lord ha actually not left us any option.

The New Testament is filled with relevant references, but, to me, the most telling passage
is recorded for us by St. John. He recounts what I would call Jesus’ most fervent and
impassioned prayer on our behalf: “Father, that they may be one, just as you and I are
one….. (John 17:21)
Jesus puts his finger on the basic reason we do not experience the power to deal
effectively with our present situation. Can we not see it? Our principal mission is to
proclaim the Good News of salvation and call people to embrace it by throwing their lot
in with Jesus Christ, but we fall so badly short.

Do we not know that it is our division that rob our proclamation of the gospel
of the power with which God has always wanted to endow it.
Jesus said it plainly: if we are not one, the world will have trouble believing the truth we
proclaim.
Despite admirable efforts, Catholic non-Catholic alike, to reach the world for Christ, the
world does not believe. Although we are practically covering the globe with a televised
witness, our efforts have relatively small effect. Missionaries in every corner of the
world work tirelessly to bring the message of salvation, but the results are not very close
to what they yearn and pray for. We have not even been able to
reach our own cities. They remain largely unevangelized.
Where’s the power? Where’s the power to reach the great mass of non-believers the
world over? Where’s the power to bring those we call ‘nominal’ Catholics and other
Christians into a lively faith? Where’s the power to transform the comfortable pew and
galvanize it into a body of eagerly committed followers of Jesus, fully yielded to the
prompting of the Holy Spirit, and anxious to carry out every facet of the
Father’s will?
Our divisions have done us in. Our disunity is the principal barrier to a powerfully
effective witness to the truth of Jesus’ gospel. END OF SECTION 2.
I believe the Lord is speaking a rather startling word to us today about all this. Unlikely
as it may seem, God intends to restore his Church to a much deeper experience of his
power and to full unity in our day. He means to deal with our present situation, and, in
fact, has already begun.

This is not the kind of prediction one makes if one wants to sound like an astute observer

of the human scene. To suggest that the Church as seriously divided as it is, is coming

soon to a radically new day, a day of power and unity, is to sound preposterous. To

maintain that such a move is already well underway is surely to lose credibility

in the eyes of all sensible people.

Yet, this is what I maintain. It is, to say the least, a very unlikely agenda.

I believe the signs are all in place. I believe the Lord has given us a clear word and

every indication that he is quite ready and able to intervene at this point in history to

renew his Church, to conform it to his original plan.

Unlikely, you say? No question about it: It is extremely unlikely. But that does not have

to stop the Lord. In fact, if it’s unlikely, all the more reason. I would suggest, to believe

it. The Lord seems to be in the business of doing unlikely things. END OF SECTION 3.

Can we not see the Lords’ hand in many of the vents of the last few years?

Even if we limit ourselves to the Catholic context, the one I’m most familiar with, the pattern, I believe, is unmistakable.
When, Pope PiusXII died in 1958, the cardinals, the present day Church’s principal elders, gathered in conclave to elect his successor. Predictions, inevitably came from all quarters as to who would be called to the chair of Peter. But the man selected as bishop of Rome was an unexpected, or unlikely, choice. Angelo Roncalli, the archbishop of Venice, was in his late seventies and was said to be an ‘interim’ pope and one who would preside for a few years until electors could come to more of a consensus. His summons to the papal office was considered a compromise, and very little was expected of him.
But John XXIII surprised everybody. Several months after he became pope, he to a dumbfounded Roman audience, an assembly which included a good number of curial officials, that he intended to convoke a general council of the Church. There hadn’t been one for almost a hundred years and it came like a bolt from the blue. It was unlikely. Pope John told his listeners that he had felt ‘prompted’ in prayer by the Holy Spirit.
The reaction that most seasoned observers expected from the curia, the Church’s administrative arm, was vigorous protest. The work burden to be thrown upon them was enormous. Organizing a council is a gigantic task. But the various congregations, after a bit of mild demurring, bowed to the pontiff’s wishes and pitched in with a will to make the necessary preparations. This was surprising.

The first document published by the Vatican Council, the one that remains as its major achievement, Lumen Gentium, was a statement on the nature of the church. It is a masterful synthesis of what the church of Christ was founded to be. It is widely quoted and is regarded as a landmark in ecclesiology.
(page 14) Unexpectedly, right in the middle of the document, ( ) specific l mention is made of the charisms of the Holy Spirit as outlined by St. Paul (1Cor12: ). The point is made that these have always been present in the church and are intended by the Lord as ministry gifts. They are to be used to build up the Body of Christ, while we are cautioned to focus not on the gifts of the Lord but on the Lord of the gifts, we are urged to cultivate and to treasure the gifts. Surprising?
At the opening of the Council on , 1962, the Holy Father had led the bishops, advisors, and observers in prayer. The text is well known. He had begged the Father in Jesus’ name to send the Holy Spirit upon the Church in this age “as in a new Pentecost.”
Shortly after the Council’s close waves of renewal began to multiply throughout the Church. The surprising charismatic renewal was one of these. The little seen charisms of the Holy Spirit, made specific mention of in the Council’s Lumen Gentium, began to be experienced at every level of the Church. Another unlikely event.
In mid-council, his God given task, we must believe, completed, good Pope John died. His earthly journey finished, he proceeded toward that complete union with God for which he had, like any true believer, long yearned. The archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Baptista martini, succeeded to the papal office.

It was just as Paul VI was beginning his new task that the so many of the underpinnings of human society seemed to begin to give way. The age of protest and rebellion was underway in earnest.
Pope Paul was, by nature, a rather timid and retiring type of man. Though he had accepted his election to the papacy as a call from God himself, the very public nature of his ministry (no office in the world is more subject to such an intense, never-ending scrutiny), was among his greatest burdens. Yet, the way he was able to hold the Church together and keep it on the Lord’s track, despite his being constantly buffeted from all sides, was truly remarkable. It was unlikely.
The death of his successor, Pope John Paul I, was unexpected, of course. But surely the election of the present pontiff was one of the most startling surprises of the modern age. The first non-Italian in hundreds of years and from behind the iron curtain at that! The world was stunned. The hand of God? Unexpected, to say the least.
I was present at the 1954 American charismatic conference at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Among the sharings was one by Sally Lynch, one of the directors of the Association of Christian Therapists. She testified to an unusual experience she felt the Lord had given her sometime in the mid-seventies, while Pope Paul VI was bishop of Rome. One night she had a remarkable clear dream in which she saw the face of a man, a total stranger to her. So vivid was it that she woke with a start. She puzzled over it for a minute or two, then sat on the edge of her bed and asked the Lord if he were saying anything to her. She had the sense he was saying to her: “Pray for this man. He will be Pope.”
When Paul VI died and the college of cardinals chose John Paul I, she knew this was not the man in here dream and she began to question the whole experience. But, a few short weeks later, when she saw the picture of the present Holy Father, she had every reason to believe again in the supernatural (nature of the dream. John Paul II’s face was the one she had seen!
I see the hand of God in all this in an unmistakable way. He has something very unusual in mind these days. These are momentous times, pivotal, I believe in the history of the world, and the Lord is leaving no stone unturned to prepare his people for what lies ahead.

And his surprises continue to this day. Without trying to influence or anticipate the officially appointed commission that is discerning it at present, I feel compelled to give my own unqualified endorsement to a series of apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary that are reported to be taking place, even at this writing, in Yugoslavia. I cannot say without reservation that these are authentic. I can say only that I believe them to be so.

She comes as a true prophet, sent by the Father with a message for the Lord’s people. She calls us to turn away from the sinful patterns in our lives and to turn back in total conversion to the Lord. She urges those who are in the process of doing this to pray and fast that millions of others will do the same. Unless we come back to the Lord in great numbers, she adds, the world stands in grave danger of a major calamity of disastrous proportions.
These visits of the Lord’s prophet to the five young Croatians have been occurring virtually every day since June 24, 1981. A truly surprising and unexpected initiative of the Lord on behalf of his people. Very unlikely.

These are but a few of the Lord’s many unusual interventions in this current age. And this is only from a Catholic perspective. I’m sure our non-Catholic brothers and sisters could share similar observations.
Lest we lose sight of the Lord’s overall agenda for this time, let us hear it again: God intends to restore power and unity to his church in our day. We all know how unlikely this sounds. Perhaps all the more reason to believe it. END OF SECTION 3.
The prophet Amos says: “The Lord never does anything without first revealing it to his servants, the prophets.” (Amos 3:7). The Lord is ready and able to intervene in human affairs whenever a faithful, repentant people come persevering before him in intercession. Although his moves will catch the world off guard, his people, provided they are listening, will be ready.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the ‘angelic doctor’, expressed the consistent teaching of the church right from the beginning when he said that the Lord never leaves his people without the prophetic word, that he sends prophets to every age of the Church. Our age is surely no exception.
It is my firm conviction that the Lord has provided us with two major prophets today” the man in white who occupies the chair of Peter and the day clothed with the Lord’s own radiance who comes from heaven to us.
As is customary, prophets agree. It is profoundly enlightening and moving to note how strikingly similar are the words that Mary and John Paul are speaking.
One example might be in order for now. Marty is reported to have said in Medjugorje that as the Lord renews his Church, his glory is going to be manifested most in Russia. One doesn’t say things like that if one wants to sound good. It is a very unlikely word. And yet, she said something very much the same at Fatima in 1917. While it was in the throes of a convulsive revolution, a third rate world power at best, she said that Russia would spread its errors (atheistic communism) throughout the world. This has been fulfilled. She also said Russia would be converted and an era of peace would be granted to mankind.
I recently heard Father Tom Forest relate a private conversation he had about a year ago with Pope John Paul. They got to discussing the present State of the Church in Europe, not especially encouraging at the moment. Father Forest told the Holy Father he thought the day was coming when missionaries from the third world would have to come to bring the faith back to Europe. The pope’s reply was astounding. He said something like” ‘Yes, I believe there’s some truth to that. But I have a very deep sense that the major effort to re-Christianize Europe is going to come from Russia. ‘Amazing’! Are we listening to the prophets the Lord has provided for us? Are we taking them seriously? END OF SECTION 4.
The prophetic word has a remarkable consistency to it. The Lord is pointing us to a time of revival within the church that, perhaps, many of us have only dreamed of. He has been speaking of a rather thorough-going restoration of the whole Church, something that, in all probability, is difficult for us to envision. We are anxious to believe him, but perhaps, find ourselves puzzled as to how it will all come about. Though it may tend to boggle our minds a bit, we can understand what the end product may look like. But the process, how we are to get there, may have us puzzled.
However, the Lord, through his prophetic ministers, has not exactly been silent about the process.
Listen to what Pope John Paul II said in Fulda, Germany in November 1980: “We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future, trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives, a total gift of self to Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it. It is only in this way that the Christ can be effectively renewed.”
The pope speaks of a time of trial, of testing, that is coming upon the world. But we are not to be in fear or dismay, he says, because it is only through such an experience that the church can be purified. He even seems to be urging us to rejoice in great anticipation of what the Lord is in the process of doing.
Those who know him well and see him frequently say the Holy Father seems to be driven forward by a great sense of urgency. Despite the pleading of many that he make changes in his schedule, that he reduce his sixteen and seventeen hour working days and cut down on his pilgrimages, as he calls them, of faith, hope and love, he presses on. His work-load is staggering. Those who try to keep up with him for even a few days at a time inevitably wind up exhausted. But, if anything, he is actually picking up the pace instead of slowing down.
He said in Winnipeg (September, 1984) that we must never resist the Holy Spirit. As he repeated the word ‘never’ a couple of times with a rising crescendo, the people responded with a thundering affirmation. It occurred to me that this was the sacred behind his seemingly boundless energy, his ----- will, his never-flagging determination to speak the Lord’s word and do what he’s doing. He does not resist the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God drives him on..
The urgency is not new with him. When, as Cardinal Woytyla from Poland, he attended in 1976 the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, he said: “We are now facing the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever gone through. I do not think the wide circle of American society or the wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now up against the final confrontation between church and anti-Church, Gospel and anti-Gospel.”
His reading of the signs of the times comes, I am convinced, from his openness to the Holy Spirit. I believe the Lord is speaking this within him. Unfortunately, not all of us are listening.
Mary, too, appearing in Medjugorje,sent by the Lord to prophesy to the Church, is saying the same thing. She makes frequent reference to the fact that we stand on the brink of world-wide cataclysm, a profound shaking of the structures of human society, something we are ill-prepared for. As the level of din rises, she says, the degree of breakdown increases. A time of severe judgment just may be on its way. But, through it all, the Church is to be dealt with, trimmed up, purified, brought into a far-reaching state of renewal. Again, the prophets agree. And they are not alone.
Catherine Doherty is the foundress of the Madonna House community in Combermere, Ontario. She is a widely read author of several books on the spiritual life. The community has gained admiration and respect throughout the entire Christian world for the admirable simplicity of its life-style, its aggressive pursuit of the Lord’s wisdom through the use of the pustinia in particular, and its total dedication to the service of the poor. Mrs. Doherty, “the B”, as she is affectionately called, has long been listening with great care to the Lord. For the past ten years she has been sensing the approach of a time of profound universal disturbance, a kind of large-scale breakdown of the structures of human society. She has urged the community to become as self-sufficient as it can so that, if need be, they can teach the rest of us how to live as they do.
The gift of prophecy, never absent from the Church in any age, has been undergoing an interesting revival of late, especially within the ranks of the charismatic renewal. Numerous prophecies, well tested and discerned, have been making mention of the coming time of trial for the world, purification for the Church, and triumph for the Lord through his people. At the international conference of 1975, held in Rome, words of just this kind were spoken in St. Peter’s basilica. “Days of darkness are coming upon the world, but a day of glory is coming upon the Church…victory for your God.” the
Message went on to speak of “a day of evangelization that the world has never seen.” In fact, for the last 150 years, the burden of Catholic prophecy has been precisely the same. Different deeply prayerful people, like
Have spoken of a major series of disasters to fall upon the world in the latter part of the twentieth century. Pope Leo XIII claimed to have had an inner vision from the Lord to the effect that the works of Satan would multiply, that he would plunder and divide the Church, and that it would all come to a kind of climax after about a hundred years. That’s why he instituted the prayers after Mass that some of us will remember, the Leonine prayers they came to be called, which, among other things, invoke the protection of the archangel Michael, the one who battles the great dragon (Rev. ---). He received his word from the Lord in 1884.
So, perhaps, we must look to and be prepared for a series of disasters which will massively disturb and re-arrange the structures under which we live. The roots of some civilizations could even be pulled right up.
The nature of the shaking? Hard to say. Most of us think right away of nuclear war. That may or may not be it. Or all of it. It might involve a string of natural calamities, a collapse of the world’s economy, a breakdown of law and order, a rise of totalitarian regimes, or perhaps a combination of them all.
Am I trying to frighten people? Not at all. The word to concentrate on is the promise of the restoration of the Church. The Lord’s own victory. Let’s not forget that at Fatima Mary promised an era of peace. We’re getting close to that, no matter what happens, we really have nothing to fear. Those who trust in the Lord have him, as their rock of refuge. The real believer knows that, even if he has to pay with his life, the Lord will deliver him to eternal glory. Mary speaks encouraging words at Medjugorje. Pope John Paul tells us not to fear, but to anticipate with eagerness the long-awaited purification of the Church.


Let’s try to sum if all up. It just may be that the Lord is telling us something like the following could occur in the foreseeable future, perhaps much sooner than we think.
1) the world may experience a time of severe trial and see its most reliable structures collapse; The Church may experience a thorough going purification in the Lord’s power and to full unity;
2) An extended era of peace may follow the period of turmoil.
END OF SECTION 5.

A very severe shaking may shortly be in store for the human race and the planet we inhabit. The root cause of it all is our sinfulness, our rebellion against God and his law. We have to expect to suffer the consequences of our own actions. We may be in for an experience of what is called the judgment of God.
But there is an understanding we need to have about this that we do not yet have. It is not so much that God is just waiting till our rebellion against him reaches a certain point so that he can then intervene and give us the treatment we deserve. It is, rather, that our society and the earth we live on tend to get out of order to the degree that God’s law is broken.
The Lord has created the universe and everything in it to follow a certain set of laws. All the inanimate things and the non-human animate creatures obey these laws automatically. But mankind, the highest order of the universe’s creation, is free to choose. Because there is a unity to creation, order tends to break down at all levels in proportion to the degree that we human beings disregard the laws of God under which we are meant to live.
We are talking about sin, the breaking of God’s law. We are one with the earth in a way our native people understand better than we do. As we rise in rebellion against God, are more and more sinful nature tends to use in rebellion against us. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes and the like multiply. Strange weather patterns become more frequent. Drought or flood will be more common, and unfortunate food shortages follow But it isn’t as though God is sending these disasters because we’re offending him. It’s all built into creation’s design. It is planned to follow an orderly set of laws. When the laws are broken, things tend to break down.
If war, crime, violence, poverty, hunger, starvation, disease etc are on the rise, and it would seem they are, we need look no further for the cause than human sin.

It is not that God sends us direct punishment. It is not he who is the cause of our problems. We ourselves are the reason for the ills human society faces. It is our sin, our refusal to submit to the Lord’s order, that does us in.
END OF SECTION 6.
God is on the move. His plans for his people far exceed our own. He means to accomplish nothing less than the restoration of the Church to full power and full unity.

But it will not likely happen without considerable difficulty. The renewal will probably come as the result of considerable purification. It may well be preceded by a period of fairly severe trial.
Is the trial inevitable? It is impossible to say, I guess but it is my own firm opinion that it is. I believe we are headed for very tough times. I feel the intensity of it all can be mitigated by our prayer and fasting. And as well, the length of time it will take can be shortened by what we do.
It is pointless to speculate for very long on the nature of the trial. Most people will think first of a nuclear exchange. This may not be it. It could be an economic collapse. All it would take would be for a few of the nations of the south to renege on their debt payments. The large banks that hold the mortgages would begin to fold and considerable political chaos would not be far off. It could be a proliferation of natural disasters. It could be a combination of many factors.
In any case, the Lord does not want us to concentrate on the trials we may have to face. He wants us to concentrate on him. Jesus continually urged his followers to trust him in such a complete way that there must remain no room for fear. “Fear not, little flock”, he said. “it has pleased the Father to give you the kingdom” ( ).
We have every reason to believe he is giving us the same assurance today. No matter what circumstances conspire, the news is awfully good. A great victory for the Lord is in sight. After all, at Fatima, Mary did promise the conversion of Russia and an era of peace.
These are critical times. Momentous events could well unfold. What a challenge for the Lord’s people, the Church! What a privilege for us if we can be part of it!
As the world endures a through shaking, the Church will undergo an extensive purification. So goes the thinking of many who are trying to listen attentively to the Lord.
What will the Church look like after it is purified? No doubt it will be more conformed to the original pattern left to us by Jesus himself. In any case, we should not really try to anticipate the future inspirations of the Holy Spirit.
My conviction, nonetheless, and it is strictly from me and not from the Lord, as St. Paul would say ( ), is that the Church in its restored condition will be fully evangelical, fully pentecostal, and full catholic.