“Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…” ~Hebrews 12:1
It is no use denying the reality that the challenges to living a life of faith right now are legion. Gone are the days when faith permeated every aspect of the culture. Those were the times when shrines to Our Lady marked public crossroads, when national holidays coincided with the celebration of great feast days (i.e. holydays), and when the overwhelming social pressure was to go to Mass or Church on Sundays. Shopping on Sundays wasn’t even an option, and practically everyone was at least familiar with the basic outlines of key Scriptural stories, etc.
We, instead, live in a steadfastly secular culture.
As Cardinal Robert Sarah writes in The Day is Now Far Spent, “A little while ago, young people bathed in the great bath of the undisputed values that resulted from Judeo-Christian civilization. Today, those values are rejected as maladjusted and dilapidated, and they are combated.”
In a searing passage in the same book, Cardinal Sarah diagnoses the “decadence” of our age. He describes how this has produced a society that is utterly closed off to transcendent values. In our secular age, he writes, ….
