Are Christians called to challenge the status quo?

February 2, 2025

“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”  This powerful and unsettling prophesy by Simeon warns that Jesus’ very existence would  be a source of great upheaval, full of challenges for many. And this is again echoed by Jesus himself when he says:“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Mathew 10:34-36 and  Luke 12:51-53).  Today, the question we could perhaps ask ourselves is whether this unsettling character, this challenge, that Jesus brought into the world, is still true about his message today.  Or do we consider that since Christianity has been established as a major religion in our world,  naturally his message would not be so unsettling in current times?  If so, I would question that.

It would seem to me that for most of us being a ‘practising’ Catholic/Christian means fulfilling certain rituals or allegedly ‘spiritual’ norms. But I would suggest that being a Christian is always a call to respond to Jesus’ teachings in new and challenging ways. Of course what is perceived as the challenge changes from age to age, from situation to situation, though right from the beginning it was believed that following Jesus was not going to be easy.  

Initially, just showing allegiance to Jesus meant that a person could be called upon to die for it. While those who did die were known as ‘Martyrs’, there were others, known as ‘Confessors’, who were so known because though they suffered much, even torture, because of their public confession of allegiance to Jesus, such suffering did not end in death.  So, it is a fact that right from the beginning, following Jesus was a challenge.  

But once the persecution of Christians gradually wound down and was finally made illegal by the Edict of Milan (313 AD), choosing to be Christian was no more a challenge. But there were always a small percentage in every era who wanted to live committed, challenging lives.  One of the first attempts in the post-persecution period of the Church led to the emergence of monasticism in the late 3rd century, when people like St. Anthony the Hermit, considered the founder of Christian monasticism, emerged as solitary figures who left towns and villages to  live ascetic lives in caves, or in tombs or in the desert, giving up what were perceived as the greatest obstacles to such a commitment, namely the desire for wealth and sex. As their numbers increased, some of them started coming together for weekly prayers, and so these eremite monks  (i.e. solitary or hermit-type  of monks which incidentally are also found in other religions)  gave rise to the practice of cenobite monks, or monks who chose to live in communities. Within such communities, for the sake of order, they chose to offer obedience to one among themselves as their ‘superior’, and thus chose to give up one more thing that human beings value,  namely the desire to follow one’s own will, or the desire to  have power over their own lives. Thus the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, were born in the Catholic Church.  These monks were then seen as truly religious, and since some of them were also priests, a distinction began to be made between religious and secular  (later known as ‘diocesan’) priests - the former being those who took the three vows, and the latter being those who did not renounce property and wealth, and were often married (in the first millennium), even as they carried out the pastoral care of the people in the diocese .

Later, over the centuries, different challenges surfaced.  After a few centuries it was felt that living lives cut off from the world was not contributing towards bringing about the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed.  The challenge was to engage with the world and to try and change it.  So gradually some of these monks started themselves going out into the towns and villages near their monasteries to preach the word of God, and thus in the middle ages, the mendicant (travelling and often begging) orders like the Dominicans (Order of Preachers) and the Franciscans emerged.  These Orders by their very lifestyle challenged the prevailing culture that valued a person based on his/her individual financial and social status.

Or again, in the 16^th century, a new challenge arose when the Protestant Reformation shook up the Catholic Church, and the Spanish ex-soldier, Ignatius of Loyola, who was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, the foremost university in Europe at that time, felt the Church needed educated and missionary priests who could defend the Church, by bringing it back to a reasoned understanding of the faith, and away from the kind of superstitious faith that the practice of indulgences represented. Moreover, Ignatius introduced the idea of the ‘contemplative in action’, challenging the earlier idea that for contemplative prayer to be possible, one must withdraw from action. And so he questioned the need for priests to break off from their active work 8 times a day to recite the Divine Office, - which was the rule at that time - and so got special permission from the Pope for his Jesuits to pray the entire Office at any one time during the  day.

In  the 19th century, in Italy a young priest, Don John Bosco responded to another challenge of how to assist the street children of Turin whom he saw as being in dire economic and moral straits.This outreach soon metamorphosed into a religious congregation that became known as the Salesians of Don Bosco.  

These are only some examples of how, over the centuries, various ‘religious’ orders/congregations emerged in response to various challenges.  Unfortunately, as is always the case, as these groups became more and more part of an institutional Church, and grew in wealth and power,  they became less and less a radical expression of commitment as they themselves became part of the status quo.  In this context one may remember the words of  Martin  Luther King, the Baptist civil rights leader who saw the unwillingness of the Christian Churches in the USA to stand up for the blacks, and remarked with sadness: “So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent – and often even vocal – sanction of things as they are.”

And it would seem that this is true even today, among the majority of  priests, religious and the laity.  Of course there would always be individuals within these groups who would break out and forge new paths.  The story of Mother Teresa (20^th century) is an example of this, for she felt challenged by the plight of the desperately poor she saw on the streets of Kolkotta, and decided to leave her own Congregation of the Sisters of Loreto, and eventually started her own religious congregation, the Missionaries of Charity.  Some others have remained within their own congregations, and yet forged a prophetic path, - but these seem to me to be the exceptions, rather than the rule.

For the most part, most religious congregations and priestly groups are just a part of the status quo, their members having convinced themselves that just by joining a religious or priestly group they are responding adequately to the challenge of living their Christian commitment in a radical manner . So, if their congregation is running a school, they too will be part of the running, but nothing more. If their congregation is offering a ministry of healing the sick, they too will be part of it, but nothing more.  And so on.

Consequently, if a youngster today has a fire within him/her to challenge the status quo, or change the world, it is highly unlikely that s/he would find inspiration within the priestly or religious communities already existing in the Church, which have, in most cases, become part of the status quo.   Rather, that limited percentage of youngsters who are filled with some kind of inner fire to make a difference in the world today - e.g. the challenge to fight for human rights or other basic needs of human beings, etc - tend to prefer to join other groups, like activist NGOs, CBOs, revolutionary groups and others of the kind.

The point is that each of us has to ask ourselves what is the challenging way in which each of us can respond to our Christian vocation.  For each it will be different. But to adapt the words of Simeon that we heard in today’s Gospel, we need Christians who can be a sign of challenge in our world today, because they will not quietly acquiesce to the status quo, whether in the Church or in the world. We need Christians who will respond in ever new ways to the challenge of Jesus’ good news. 

First Reading: Malachi 3: 1-4

“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.  He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.

 

Second Reading: Hebrews 2: 14-18

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

 

Gospel: Luke 2: 22-40

When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”,  and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
    you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
     which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
     a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
     and the glory of your people Israel.”

The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him.  Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

 

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

 

When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth.  And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.