Worth Revisiting - Listen Once Again to the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

Thank you Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for another opportunity to re-publish our favorite posts on Worth Revisiting.  

 

Go there now and be nourished spiritually. Be sure to visit Allison at Reconciled to You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb during the rest of the week. You will be glad you stopped by.

 

This is what I decided to share:

Listen Once Again to the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
 
(Originally published July 24, 2012) 

There have always been prophets among us. Unfortunately, far too often we either do not hear them or intentionally ignore them. How different our Church and world might have been had we listened to Venerable Fulton J. Sheen.

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The good news is that much of what he wrote still is readily accessible to anyone who wants to read what this often ignored messenger tried to share during his earthly life and what God is now allowing so many to re-discover and appreciate.  May more of us listen to this prophet. His wisdom and insight are timeless.

The following gem was quoted some time ago on Church Militant and is well worth sharing here:

“The world in which we live is the battleground of the Church. I believe that we are now living at the end of Christendom. It is the end of Christendom but not the end of Christianity. What is Christendom? It is the political, economic, moral, social, legal life of a nation as inspired by the gospel ethic. That is finished. Abortion, the breakdown of the family, dishonesty, even the natural virtues upon which the supernatural virtues are based, are being discredited. Christianity is not at an end. But we are at the end of Christendom. And I believe the sooner we face up to this fact, the sooner we will be able to solve many of our problems.

Thirty or forty years ago it was easy to be a Christian. The very air we breathed was Christian. Bicycles could be left on front lawns; doors could be left unlocked. Suddenly all this has changed; now we have to affirm our faith. We live in a world that challenges us. And many fall away. Dead bodies float downstream; it takes live bodies to resist the current. And this is our summons.

We will have to begin to be a different Church. We are for the moment on the trapeze. We are in between the death of an old civilization and culture, and the swing to the beginning of the new. These are the times in which we live. They are therefore wonderful days, marvelous; we should thank God we live in times like these.”

(Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen from Through the Year with Fulton Sheen: Inspirational Selections for Each Day of the Year)