The article has three main parts. In the first part, the author analyses the concept of resilience. The term ,resilience‘ is used in different sciences and in different fields. The core resilience characteristics are extracted from these applications. The author finds that resilience is not about bare resistance to change, but that the key characteristics of resilience are adaptability, the ability to transform and responsiveness. Likewise, resilience does not mean security, injury protection and invulnerability. On the contrary, the author finds that persons can achieve resilience only because they are vulnerable. The resilience paradigm focuses on the challenges of events that are surprising, yet unknown and unpredictable. This is why resilience is such an important concept in a world which is increasingly complex, non-transparent, unpredictable, eluding control and changing tremendously fast. In the second part of the article, the author deals with the virtues of faith, hope, charity (love), and mercy in terms of resilience. He finds that all four may be important positive factors of resilience. This part, on the one hand, deepens our understanding of the mentioned virtues in the light of resilience, and on the other hand, it complements our understanding of resilience from the first part. In the third part, the author applies the findings from the first two parts to the question of the resilient Church. He finds that only the Church which responds to concrete problems of concrete people, especially the weakest and most vulnerable, is consistent with its mission and resilient. Its resilience does not stem from a rigid insistence on tradition, but from the fact that the Church, with all due respect for tradition, was at the same time able to transform and renew itself.
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