Getting a take on Jesus.

Over the next ten years, I think a very great challenge for the laity--for the magisterium, too, no doubt--will be coming to grips with the discoveries, conclusions, and implications of the last generation of biblical scholarship and biblical theology. How we read the New Testament and indeed how we "see" Jesus--our entire Christology--is going to have to change radically, and I fear the process will prove jolting for many of us (it certainly has for me).

The church, particularly (but of course not only) in its parochial form, does more for me than I can repay or deserve. Not least, she helps me to improve my ability to serve her--specifically, these days, as a confirmation class teacher. I struggle in deep frustration (but even deeper satisfaction) to try to find fresh and cogent ways of making Jesus' "offer of meaning" understandable and desirable to a group of thirty or so sixteen-to-eighteen year olds. Only after arriving at some kind of take on Jesus is it possible to expound the church's message, traditions, and demands in ways that prove at all persuasive to (some) teen-agers, the majority of whom are interested, even passionate, about things spiritual but astonishingly ignorant and sometimes apathetic, disaffected, or outright suspicious where the Roman Catholic church is concerned. In general, as I come to know and love my local faith community more deeply, I marvel at, when I do not worry about, the virtually epistemic gulf between the current view of the church promulgated from Rome and the vision that is alive and comparatively well in my upstate Wisconsin parish. In short, over the next decade, there will be more reason than ever to go on striving to hope, believe, and trust that the Holy Spirit is present in the church.

Steven Englund is a free-lance writer who specializes in French history and culture. He lives in Waupaca, Wisconsin.