The Catholic Church has, in the last decates, gone through many changes, and changes that are still happening. Those who have a certain age cannot recognise the face of the Church. Manym who still feel a sense of belonging to the Church are living in what psychologists call “the phase of denial”. Many Christians cannot accept what the Church is going through in its strive to be relevant to the human race of the third millennium. Our Archbishop likes to describe such Christians as living “in a state of shock”.

A sign of this is the tendency that is growing within the Church to turn the clock backwards. This is different than going back to the sources in order to radical. It is going back to were we left and fossilise the whole Church there.

In fact, some are dreaming of claiming back the triumphalism of the Church and clerical imperialism, with all the liturgical pageantry more appropriate to a classical theatre than to a Church that is called to go into the world at the service of humanity and the Good News.

Some are even wondering of going to the extreme of putting pressure on the Pope so as to condemn what they call “the errors of Vatican Council II”.

Providentially, during this year, we are listening to the Gospel of Matthew, written to a Christian Community that were finding themselves in a similar situation and with a similar temptation. The first Christians were Jewish. They thought of becoming disciples of Jesus Christ as a way of celebrating the fulfilment of all the Jewish aspirations. They never imagined of enroling to a new religion because of which they had to break up with the Jewish tradition. In fact, had they not been persecuted by their own kinsmen and relatives, and even expelled from their places of worship, from the Synagogues, they would have remained Jewish Christians. So they were challanged to face the true and fundamental meaning of following Jesus Christ.

St Matthew, as a wise apostle, seeks to enlighten them – and us – by reminding us how it all started, how Jesus began His ministry, especially in contrast to John the Baptist and his mission. In fact, Jesus too faced a fundamental choice: either to inaugurate His mission as soon as He was baptised, with the danger of being associated with John; or else to wait until John has finished his mission and then starts with His own mission that had to mark the beginning of the New Testament.

Obviously, Jesus opted for the latter course. Although John is the link between the Old and the New, and deserves great honour in discerning the appearance of the Christ and pointing to Him so that even his very followers might go behind Him, there is a great difference between His ministry and that of Jesus.

John developed his main activity by staying by the river Jordan, inviting people to go to him and be baptised as a sign of repentance. What he asked of the solders and of the publicans was to remain in their positions but to exercise their power and their service with honesty and justice. His the furthest that his preaching could go was: “because the Kingdom of God is near”.

Jesus’ mission was to go out and search “the lost sheep of Israel”. So much so that He did not have a roof under which to take shelter. The people He called, He challanged them for a radical choice of leaving everything even if what they were leaving deserved all honour: “follow me, and I will make you fisher of men! Even His Good News was different as He proclaimed that the Kingdom of God “is in your midst”.

The Church has changed because the world and humanity have changed. It needs to continue to change as it seeks to follow Jesus and risk all for the sake of the Good News of salvation. The Church is called to be faithful to Jesus and His Gospel than to one form of historical expression of faith.