A Franciscan Friar of the Renewal offers reconciliation at a Youth 2000 retreat. Photo: CNS / Gregory A. Shemitz. Young people are “desperately looking for people who are authentic and religious,” said Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan during the Annual Solemn Novena at Whitefriar Street Church, urging Catholics to become “authentic disciples” by living out their faith in everyday life.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic afterwards, the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore said many young people are searching for a Christianity rooted in genuine discipleship rather than comfort or convenience: “I think people are looking, young people especially. An authentic disciple is one who sticks with the Gospel through thick and thin and doesn’t change his or her principles, and realises that the grace the Lord Jesus won for us is costly grace.”
Drawing on the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bishop Cullinan added, “Cheap grace doesn’t work.”
While authenticity is often understood today as openly expressing one’s beliefs, Bishop Cullinan argued that Christian authenticity begins in the hidden life of the heart before it is seen in public witness. “The authentic person is the person who not only lives his or her faith publicly, but privately…” he said, adding that, as Christ teaches, “out of the heart’s overflow, the mouth speaks.”
While acknowledging the challenges facing the Church, Bishop Cullinan said he was encouraged by signs of a gradual renewal among young Catholics. “If there was a very large spike in interest and in Mass-going and vocations, that would be unnatural. Because it’s slow and gradual, I think it has a better chance of being real.”
Yet he said the Church must continue finding new ways to reach people, adding that Catholics should move beyond a passive approach to evangelisation. “We’ve got to get away from the mentality of ‘let them come in’… You’ve got to keep trying it, and you’ve got to believe in it. The success is up to God. It’s not up to us. He wants us to try.”
In his homily, Bishop Cullinan illustrated authentic discipleship through the story of Fr Donal O’Sullivan, the 26-year-old Irish military chaplain who died ministering to soldiers during the First World War after hearing confessions and celebrating Mass before they went into battle. He said Catholics today are likewise called to become authentic disciples, bringing Christ’s mercy to others through ordinary acts of faithfulness.