He talked of where the Church has failed in Kenya, choosing power over service, with bishops preferring to visit the house of the President over the houses of the poor.  He spoke of how it all changed 20 years ago.  What happened 20 years ago in Kenya?  I don’t know but I did think from my own experience, how Church has suffered under the issue of sexual abuse, how younger priests can be more clerical and less focused on the poor and social justice, how the Church has lost its label of authenticity in society because of being seen as irrelevant or self-engrossed.

As I was reflecting, it was striking me that I was feeling negative about what I was hearing.  I had to stand back as I do not know Fr Gabriel and why should I be critical of him, a man taking risks and doing great work?   Then it hit me.  Listening to him was putting me in touch with fear within, the fear of how we can easily become outdated and left behind.  If that happens, what do we do?  In fact, most do nothing. 

This time of the next new normal calls forth risky initiatives and creativity, or else we do face the possibility of becoming outdated.  So we need to move beyond the safe shelters of the institutions of our time, acknowledging who and what really matters.  We are all sacred, created, and loved by God.  We show that not just by what we do in safe, institutional confines but by what we do on the margins of life.  We need more than institutions to sustain us and make us relevant.  

In the words of a great theologian of last century, Karl Rahner: 

“The Christian of this century will be a mystic or nothing at all”

Extraordinary.  To think it took a virus and an Irish priest in Kenya to remind me.