Deacon Mike: 'So what's it going to take?'

So what’s it going to take?

Strap yourself in. This one is going to feel heavy, but the world is heavy right now.

A friend sent me a video, unsubstantiated though it was, of a man driving along an interstate which ran parallel to railroad tracks. As the man drove along, he was shocked to see dozens of flatbed railroad cars carrying army tanks headed for somewhere. His video caption to me, "Dear God, what could this mean?" And I responded, "Yeah, so what's it going to take?"

Like many others, I have been brought to my knees with images from the Middle East and Ukraine, horrific acts of violence that, in our own culture and times, we might say are not conceivable, at least, not here, right? I'm quite sure people during World War II said the same thing until they witnessed the barbarism of Nazi Germany. Lest we become too complacent in our times. We are living in what many have called the Age of Martyrdom, where more people have died for their faith than in any other time in human history. And my response, what's it going to take?

Consider that we are the same people who stood horrified in the 1960s at the assassination of President John Kennedy and then again at the attempted assassinations of President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II many years later. We are the same people who can recall precisely where we were and what we were doing on Sept. 11, 2001, something we thought was not possible in this country. We are the same people who filled churches in response to those horrific acts and many others. Yet, just as quickly as those churches filled with people, they just as quickly emptied. And my response, what's it going to take?

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What it’s going to take is radical transformation in each of us; something we all individually need to pray about. Not so ironically, the instability of the world is happening in a time of historic secularization, not just in our country, but in our world as well. I suppose I can eliminate the threat of dying for the faith as long as I deny the faith, right? As a culture, we've strayed far from God, and yet history has proven time and time again that we are unable to save ourselves. Jesus already did that, but now it’s up to us to respond. That’s what it’s going to take.

Our culture, like every culture before us, will be defined by how we respond to our deepest challenges.

Deacon Mike serves the Monroe Catholic Family of Parishes, St. Mary Catholic Central High School and Monroe Catholic Elementary Schools. He can be reached at dcnmike@stmarymonroe.org.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Deacon Mike: 'So what's it going to take?'