Jesus came to light a fire on the earth, the fire of the Holy Spirit, the fire of faith, and the fact that we exist now as a church 2000 years later is a sign of the persistence of that fire. Robert Barron writes that this question, which is left disturbingly open, anticipates the Lord’s second coming, the final coming of Christ when He returns to the earth. Will he find faith? Here are a couple of disturbing facts: We are always one generation away from the extinction of the faith. Faith is caught like a contagion. I got it from my parents; my generation got it from the previous generation, and we passed it on. If we fail to pass on the faith, that’s it. It can fade away in one generation. There are places on this earth where the Christian faith was once very vibrant and has ceased to exist: Turkey, Asia Minor, Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, and Western Europe. In these parts of the world, great people of faith were at work: St. Paul, Saint John Chrysostom, Origen, the Desert Fathers, Saint Augustine, Cyprian of Carthage, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Thomas Aquinas. We worship, after all, a crucified God who was put to death by cultural and political forces. So, what is it in the contemporary culture that is opposed to the proclamation of the faith? The symbol of what’s wrong with our culture is that we are a very individualist, self-regarding, self-contained culture. Niche, of course, is the very influential German philosopher who said, “I determine value based upon the decision of my will. What’s good is what I declare to be good. My values are mine because they flow from my will.” In today’s culture, we invent our own values and our own truths. This directly contrasts God’s truth. The church proposes a truth to the world that is not my truth; it’s not your truth but “the truth.” We propose a moral structure that doesn’t flow from my will or your will but from God’s will and that confronts us as an objective value. We suggest something is beautiful not because I say or you think so but because it is beautiful. We have to be aware that the subjectivism, relativism, and nicheanism of our culture are opposed to the faith. We must be willing to defend the objectivity of the faith over and against these cultural moves, in line with the gospel and the great scriptural tradition. In a religious tradition, it’s not primarily passing on beliefs that come. It’s first and foremost the passing out of practices, things that we do: prayers, rituals, sacraments, processions, signs of the cross, putting your hand in the holy water, genuflecting, kneeling, gesturing with your body, doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Maybe the best way we can hand down the faith is by putting the moves of the faith in the bodies of the next generation. Don’t privatize the faith; make it something interior. The culture is opposed to us in many ways. Ways, though, that we can fight with beauty and with practice and thereby hand down the faith. Will the Son of Man find faith on the earth when he returns?