These are the days when more people are reaching for Bibles, and hoping there is something in those pages that they – and their generation – have overlooked. It seems to be precisely the time for Great Catholics to step up, the kind of times that make Great Catholics great.

Growth is occurring because existing churches around the world have committed resources and leadership to it. Most of it, however, is happening because there are serious believers in those places who see the need, and are answering it.

The problem is not, and has never been, that God is somehow concealing Himself and His intentions for humanity. The problem is that some people simply don’t like the nature of the evidence that God has provided.

We are living at a time when many of the gifted young are beginning to suspect that their fluid intelligence, powerful and creative as it is, is not enough, and are seeking the crystallized treasures that they were once taught by fellow influencers were a waste of time.

This is characteristic of all the evangelists who have had the biggest impact on history. They have all been outliers and headaches to the established Church authorities, and those authorities have always had to run to catch up to them.

People in our time are looking for meaning and purpose, which have become critically absent as the world has grown more secular. They are finding it among people who have Bibles in their hands, and pray with the scriptures daily, several times daily.

Was what Judas did really that much worse than what Peter did? Or the rest of the disciples? Peter denied even knowing Jesus. All the rest of them ran away.

The sign of Jonah proclaimed by Jesus was saying to the Scribes and Pharisees, shouting to them as it shouts to the Church: “There are lost people out there whom you’re supposed to go see. God made them all, God loves them all, just the same as He loves you. So go!

Do we think that there is nothing left about Jesus that is really surprising, that it has all been fully known, considered, written?

The Church - an institution that is already very good at bringing people together, creating bonds that help, heal and hope.

It takes the Church to understand what Jesus is talking about, that is serious about praying, thinking, reading, writing, and knowing Jesus.