{"id":164334,"date":"2025-04-08T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T05:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/?p=164334"},"modified":"2025-03-20T22:37:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T02:37:06","slug":"lent-2025-day-35-renewing-the-fabric-of-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/lent-2025-day-35-renewing-the-fabric-of-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent 2025 &#8211; Day 35 &#8211; Renewing the Fabric of Society"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"164334\" class=\"elementor elementor-164334\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t<div data-particle_enable=\"false\" data-particle-mobile-disabled=\"false\" class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-cbf6437 e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"cbf6437\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-2e5b222 elementor-widget elementor-widget-html\" data-id=\"2e5b222\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"html.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<iframe class=\"lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/1qR8lNvfIipVQRk5sxcSvO?utm_source=generator\" style=\"border-radius:12px\"  width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameBorder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-bee7262 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"bee7262\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p><b>Day 35\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Renewing the Fabric of Society<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Lay people\u2019s] own field of evangelizing activity is the vast and complicated world of politics, society and economics, but also the world of culture, of the sciences and the arts, of international life, of the mass media. It also includes other realities which are open to evangelization, such as human love, the family, the education of children and adolescents, professional work, suffering.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2014 St. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 70<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The goal of the apostolate, the goal of the Church\u2019s evangelization efforts, is to bring and constantly deepen the reign of Christ everywhere \u2014 into every human heart, family, community, and culture. We seek nothing less than to infuse every human reality with the redeeming truth of Christ\u2019s message and the redeeming power of Christ\u2019s grace. In Jesus\u2019s commissioning of his Church to fulfill that mission, notice the universal scope, the unlimited boundaries of his vision:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cGo, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.\u201d (Matthew 28:19\u201320)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All nations are to become disciples; all that Jesus taught and commanded is to be known, loved, and followed by everyone. That\u2019s the work of evangelization. That\u2019s our mission.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Transforming Humanity from Within<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jesus used a simple image to describe this process of cultural transformation when he explained the nature of his kingdom: \u201cHe spoke to them another parable. \u2018The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened\u2019\u201d (Matthew 13:33).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Not Just a Pipe Dream<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The development of western civilization in the Christian era demonstrates that this mission is more than a fairy tale. Greco-Roman civilization and Anglo-Germanic culture were both penetrated and transformed by the Christian ethos, creating a new culture. Over the course of a thousand years, the previously pagan scale of values was overturned by the influence of the gospel and its message of human dignity, divine mercy, and everlasting life. The institutions of European society developed under this spiritual tutorship, spreading wherever the Christians went to explore and to build. Many of the ideas found in the gospel were foreign and even contradictory to much of what the Greco-Roman and Germanic peoples adhered to. Concepts like humility and celibacy, care for the poor and inter-communitary justice (equality of human rights), and natural moral law were only vaguely present in pre-Christian worldviews, if they were present at all. Through the work and lives of Christians, they came to become common presuppositions in Western mentalities and legal systems. This led to flourishing achievements in every field of human endeavor, including science and technology, education, literature and the arts, and even politics and economics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Certainly it wasn\u2019t heaven on earth, as some Western civilization apologists like to claim. In fact Jesus had promised it would never be so until his second coming. In the parable of the wheat and the weeds, he promised that good and bad would grow up side by side throughout the history of his Church, and the full purification from evil would only occur at the end of the earthly story (see Matthew13:37\u201343).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>God\u2019s Ambassadors to Every Sector of Society<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">God calls all of us to share in this aspect, too. The first Christians didn\u2019t hunker down and go into hiding in the face of ancient Rome\u2019s aggressive, anti-Christian paganism. Yes, they prudently guarded their worship services and formation activities from prying eyes in order to avoid unnecessary trouble, but at the same time they brought their faith to bear on the world in which they lived. They believed in the power of Christ\u2019s message to transform the milieus in which they lived and worked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Christian philosophers challenged and dialogued with pagan philosophers. Christian soldiers courageously imbued their military service with honor and moral integrity. Christian families rescued infants legally abandoned in forest clearings outside the city limits. Christian merchants and politicians battled corruption and worked to transform legal structures and economic customs in harmony with the true common good. Christian doctors and teachers defended moral truth and created new institutions dedicated to serving the underprivileged as well as those who could pay. In short, every sphere of society was penetrated not by \u201cthe Church\u201d in the abstract, but by individual Christians whom God endowed and called to be missionaries within particular branches of human endeavor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new evangelization must include this same dimension; it must follow this same pattern. Imagine how different our culture would be if every Catholic \u2014 or even one in every ten Catholics \u2014 was fully aware and fully engaged in this kind of effort. We have no cause to wait for \u201cthe Church\u201d to Christianize culture; we are the Church wherever we work and live. And we are present in every nook and cranny of society. God is eager to give us the courage and wisdom to proclaim and build up Christ\u2019s kingdom right there. We just need to seize the opportunities, to believe, and to launch ourselves into the fray. If we don\u2019t, who will?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Questions for Personal Reflection or Group Discussion<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What idea in this reflection struck you most and why?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How firmly do you believe that Jesus really wants to convert the entire world, every single person? How firmly do you believe that he wants to work through you to help achieve that goal?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How can you better infuse gospel values in your workplace or other circles of influence with cultural implications?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">God calls all of us to bring the gospel into the circles of society where we live and work, through our way of being, our words, and our works.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What will you do today to use your personal gifts for God\u2019s glory and to further the Church\u2019s work of evangelization?<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I will sit down with a friend and ask him or her to help me identify my top three or four personal gifts.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I will spend some time prayerfully reflecting on the strong desires in my heart\u00a0 to take on a particular project or get involved in a certain apostolic activity, desires that have been resonating in my heart and may be indicating an invitation from the Lord, but which I haven\u2019t yet responded to. I will write these down and ask God to show me how to take the next step.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I will remember the idealistic dreams of doing something great for God that motivated me in the past, and I will prayerfully reflect on what role those dreams should play in my life now.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Write your own resolution) I will<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Concluding Prayer<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have a place in God\u2019s counsels, in God\u2019s world, which no one else has; whether I be rich or poor, despised or esteemed by man, God knows me and calls me by my name.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2014 St. John Henry Newman<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 35\u00a0 Renewing the Fabric of Society [Lay people\u2019s] own field of evangelizing activity is the vast and complicated world of politics, society and economics, but also the world of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":163124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6893],"tags":[2965],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-164334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lent-2025","tag-lent"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"","pp_force_visibility":null,"pp_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_force_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_subpost_visibility":null,"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.8 (Yoast SEO v28.8) - 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He was ordained a Catholic priest in 2003 and earned his doctorate in moral theology in 2010. He provided spiritual support on the set of Mel Gibson\u2019s\u00a0The Passion of the Christ\u00a0while researching the 2005 Catholic best seller,\u00a0Inside the Passion, the only authorized, behind-the-scenes explanation of the film. Fr. John has contributed news commentary regarding religious issues on NBC, CNN, Fox, and the BBC. He also served as the English-language press liaison for the Vatican\u2019s 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. His most widely known books are The Better Part: A Christ-Centered Resource for Personal Prayer and 60 Days to Becoming a Missionary Disciple. His most recent book is\u00a0Spiritual But Not Religious: The Search for Meaning in a Material World. Fr. John resides in Atlanta and serves as Territorial Vicar for the Legionaries of Christ. See all books, Regnum Christi Essays, Retreat Guides, posts, and online classes from Fr. 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John Bartunek, LC","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/622fd36594e05daecbf3cb6f50d7151c3066ae3991815fa200dc7c1865bc6a7e?s=96&d=blank&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/622fd36594e05daecbf3cb6f50d7151c3066ae3991815fa200dc7c1865bc6a7e?s=96&d=blank&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/622fd36594e05daecbf3cb6f50d7151c3066ae3991815fa200dc7c1865bc6a7e?s=96&d=blank&r=g","caption":"Fr. John Bartunek, LC"},"description":"Fr. John Bartunek, LC, S.Th.D, received his BA in History from Stanford University in 1990. He comes from an evangelical Christian background and became a member of the Catholic Church in 1991. After college, he worked as a high school history teacher, drama director, and baseball coach. He then spent a year as a professional actor in Chicago before entering the religious Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ in 1993. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 2003 and earned his doctorate in moral theology in 2010. He provided spiritual support on the set of Mel Gibson\u2019s\u00a0The Passion of the Christ\u00a0while researching the 2005 Catholic best seller,\u00a0Inside the Passion, the only authorized, behind-the-scenes explanation of the film. Fr. John has contributed news commentary regarding religious issues on NBC, CNN, Fox, and the BBC. He also served as the English-language press liaison for the Vatican\u2019s 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. His most widely known books are The Better Part: A Christ-Centered Resource for Personal Prayer and 60 Days to Becoming a Missionary Disciple. His most recent book is\u00a0Spiritual But Not Religious: The Search for Meaning in a Material World. Fr. John resides in Atlanta and serves as Territorial Vicar for the Legionaries of Christ. See all books, Regnum Christi Essays, Retreat Guides, posts, and online classes from Fr. John Bartunek, LC.","url":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/author\/jbartunek\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164334"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=164334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}