Significantly timely advice for the second emergence of the cover-up scandal among bishops around the world. Words for bishops and discouraged laity alike:
137. Complacency is seductive; it tells us that there is no point in trying to change things, that there is nothing we can do, because this is the way things have always been and yet we always manage to survive. By force of habit we no longer stand up to evil. We “let things be”, or as others have decided they ought to be. Yet let us allow the Lord to rouse us from our torpor, to free us from our inertia. Let us rethink our usual way of doing things; let us open our eyes and ears, and above all our hearts, so as not to be complacent about things as they are, but unsettled by the living and effective word of the risen Lord.
You can check the full document Gaudete et Exsultate on the Vatican website.
“unsettled by the living and effective word of the risen Lord.”
It might help us to remember that the disciples themselves were not exactly permanently unsettled by the Resurrection itself. That is, Scriptures attest that at least some among them went back to fishing (John 21), and even at the time of the final Great Commission, some “still doubted” (Matthew 28:16). It wasn’t until Pentecost that they were set afire, as it were.