response to a radio broadcast: Martha and Mary

this was linked here on a forum
my response ran as follows:
Thank you for the link Nicholas. It was a long recording and sometimes grim listening but absolutely worthwhile: it raises issues which are important to all of us. I found the lady lecturer in pastoral theology at the Jesuit college in Melbourne particularly lucid, and inspiring too. Her positive recognition of the way in which the Spirit is at work in the church today really made me rethink my view on the 'problem' of the lack of religous vocation in many parts of the world. Perhaps it is not the 'problem' that we tend to feel, but, as she bravely states, a very slow but sure response to the original call of the Second Vatican Council. I was aware however that the creep of secularism - with religious living busy, integrated lives cheek by jowl with social workers, well-meaning government officials, and teachers is a Very Present Danger, and I was once again acutely aware of the essential, urgent and sacramental place of the contemplative community in the church. This perhaps takes us back, Nicholas, to where I think you were starting this thread - as a response to the apparently irrelevant subject of hairshirt and negation?
The busier and the more involved religious become with the society which they are serving, (and let it be this way!) the more essential it seems to be to keep our eye fixed firmly on God: first in the Sacramental nature of the Church (and especially the Catholic Church which has such a unique and essential part to play in the life of the Christian Church in its broadest sense) and second in Prayer. Carthusians, hermits, Camaldolese, Carmelites, and, dare I say it, we 'Hidden Praying Laity' too have an essential role in all of this.
This leads me on to ponder the way in which the internet (through forums very much like ours) is opening up new arteries through the fabric of our church, reaching parts of it that were before perhaps unreachable, thus transforming, almost before our eyes, the way in which the church both lives, bears witness, and sees itself. The future, far from being a bleak decline, seems bursting with hope and possibility - if only we can stay open and listen.