Haggai 1:1-15. The prophet Haggai is stirred to go to the governor of Judah and the high priest and proclaim that the Lord wants them to rebuild his house. Through Haggai the Lord says that his people tell themselves that the time is not right to rebuild God's house, yet they live in comfort and attend to their own houses. "Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your panelled houses, while this house lies in ruin?" He says they eat and drink but they are not satisfied, they earn wages and "put them into a bag with holes." They look and work for much and it comes to little, and even that little the Lord will take from them. He warns that he is calling for a drought upon the land that will dry up the grain, the wine, the oil, the men, the cattle, all of their labors. Zerubbabel, the governor, and Joshua, the high priest, listen to Haggai''s words and begin to rebuild the Lord's house. God is pleased, averts the drought, and tells them "I am with you."

The whole reason I started putting my journal into blog form is because I've heard this same message - God wants us to help him rebuild his house which is, in our case, the Church. He has begun the process, I see it all around me. In In Sinu Jesu, Jesus gave the message to a Benedictine monk that he was beginning the process of rebuilding his Church by first rebuilding his priesthood - calling all priests back to him and raising up new, holy priests. The messages in that book were given over a period from 2007 through 2016. Now, I am quite certain, he is moving his call out to all of us. I get this message over and over, and it is becoming more urgent.

We Catholics, especially in the West, have become complacent. We are living in our panelled houses, keeping them oh-so-nicely, paying for the best education for our children, eating such good food, drinking such good drink, and just generally enjoying all of God's gifts and abundance, yet our churches are emptying rapidly. God's house is in disorder, and we are feeling the emptiness that Haggai describes here - we have all this stuff, the best of everything, and we are not satisfied. We are not paying attention to what we truly need - the Church - God.

I believe we have been saying to ourselves that the time is not right to rebuild because we are so afraid of countering the culture, and rebuilding the Church will require taking a hard stand against our modern culture in the West. I know I have been afraid of this myself. But because of that complacency and hesitancy, evil has been allowed to really take root and is affecting all of us, especially our children who are leaving the Church in droves.

Now is the time, I know it, I can feel it, I have been told it, we must rebuild. Let's be like Zerubbabel and Joshua and listen to God, let's begin the work of rebuilding his Church. He will be with us and we may avert the drought.