Sharon has a great post (which I think I pointed to earlier) about the Birth of the Movements. I think it's really great and in light of a conversation on Memorial Day, I think it's important to refer back to it. There is a tendency to ask ourselves "Why the heck do we need movements?" This emerges from a perspective that asks "Don't we already have everything we need? The sacraments, the bible, the tradition and Tradition . . . aren't these enough?"
Why a movement? I think this is a valid question. I think Sharon does a good job of beginning to answer this question. She belongs to a movement, Communion and Liberation, which makes this question a little more urgent, I think. Not because we answer it now, but because it is a question that is important to us . . . why? Why has God chosen to give us life in this way, through this charism?
Pope John Paul II stated (to the participants in the Convention "Movements in the Church," Castel Gandolfo, Sept. 27, 1981) that the Church herself is a movement. This dynamic is described well in one of the last public addresses given by the late Msgr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the Communion and Liberation movement: "Faith is Given Us So that We Communicate It".
First, we have to swallow the fact that we cannot save ourselves. This will challenge our mentality because we tend to think of faith too as an achievement of ours. If we put enough in, we'll get the result we're expecting. But instead only Christ can save us; it is His initiative. And he has chosen the Church to communicate Himself, often using unenlightened, awkward and sinful instruments, and some saints, as the living true Way for us. The Sacraments are the privileged vehicle of his Presence, but this church of believers is the ordinary, daily place where we encounter Him as He comes to us, rather than in some way we would prefer to summon Him through our imagination and pride.
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