“Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours …” 1 Chronicles 29 :

In a world threatened again by major conflict in Iraq, a world which sees daily evidence of hunger and need, a world where violence seems to dictate events, a world where the nature of evil questions so much of traditional Christian teaching on goodness – those who follow Christ need a new confidence in believing.

Many of the traditional ways of expressing and accepting that this is God’s world are challenged as never before. The evidence of evil which often engulfs this world challenges traditional ways of proclaiming that we worship the God of creation, the God of goodness, the God of justice and truth. There is a crisis of acceptance and communication today for the Christian Church. We need a new confidence in accepting the eternal truths of God in a world of questions – questions which have no easy answers. We need a new confidence in expressing to that world that the truth of Christ is in fact the answer to the needs of that world.

The Church needs not only a new confidence in itself – it needs a fresh awareness that its message must be given in ways this world will see as relevant and realistic.

Here in Ireland the Church faces the same challenge on a local level. Modern life has a new set of priorities compared with those days when the present St Peter’s was built. Today the Church has no captive audience and its message is not delivered above and beyond critical analysis. In fact the greatest challenge in a secular society is indifference, irrelevance and cynicism when many people look at the Church.