Origin and Destiny

Where am I from and where am I going?

When I graduated from twelve years of Catholic schooling, I didn’t really know the "end goal" or purpose of the Christian life. Sure, I had some elusive concept of the Kingdom of God and our eternal destination as a people of God…but I was never told or encouraged to embrace this as my truth, my way, my life, more so, my destiny. Sanctity was something persevered for those who had given their life to serve God as contemplative nuns, priests, or pious people out on the streets proclaiming the word of God in love and in truth.

Often I was left wondering: What’s all of this for? These uniforms, these commandments? What’s the purpose of the Mass? Why do I need to confess my sins? Why do we pray before we start our day? Why do I need to take class on Social Justice or Morality? Although these questions each have their own unique and necessary responses, there is an underlying insecurity that anchors them all: why am I doing whatever it is that I am being told, and am at times, forced, to do? This unsheathes the even deeper question: why? The bells and whistles, the hymns, the hallelujahs, the hallways covered in hearts and bible verses, my grandmother’s refrigerator magnets of the Sacred Heart of Jesus… at the end of the day, what, who, is this for?

My inability to respond well to these questions might be indicative of my failure to retain the Baltimore Catechism. However, it's more indicative of an overall Catholic identity crisis. I had received the mission (what I'm supposed to do...and not do) without the vision (who I'm supposed to be, more so, who I am). I clearly heard and knew the commandments without ever really receiving an invitation into the Spirit dwelling within them. Spoon-fed the Gospel without a coherent vision of Jesus as a flesh and blood, divine and transcendent reality, I couldn't muster enough strength to understand why or what I was implicitly ingesting. And without recognizing my purpose, I inherently misunderstood the full meaning of my Baptism into the life of Christ and the Church—those promises made for me (yes, where I rejected Satan, his empty promises and works as an infant!) by the witness of my parents and Godparents. I had no idea—NO IDEA—where I was truly from. So naturally, I had no idea where I was going.

Where I am from and where I am going

God made us for life, for holiness. We are called to be saints. I am called to be a saint. You are called to be a saint. This isn’t a privilege for the few; but rather it must be seen as a necessity and reality for the many. I wish I had known that I was a pilgrim on a journey home, called to live from God and for God. Nothing more, nothing less. I wish I had not simply received but heard and understood this good Good News.

Now some readers, especially fellow cradle Catholics must be thinking: yeah, that's nice, but that's not really want the Church wants us to hear or to believe. 

Well...flash forward to March 19, 2018: Pope Francis publishes an “apostolic exhortation” (a clarion call for the Church to stay on your toes, to pick yourselves up, to keep going!) called “Gaudete et exsultate.”

In the first paragraph, he writes that Jesus “asks everything of us” and “offers us true life, the happiness for which we were created.”

Jesus does not give us the business card of an employer with the best-paying salary, nor does he give us that car that we really, really want: he fulfills our deepest desires, those deep-seeded longings present in each of our hearts. And if Jesus asks this of us, you better bet He will provide a means for us to accomplish these tasks. 

He continues, Jesus “wants us to be saints and not to settle for a bland and mediocre existence.”

Our God wants us, wills us, to holiness, to sanctity, to sainthood. I’m made to for heaven, made from God and for God, to dwell with God for eternity. That’s the direction, the ultimate end-point, of our Catholic faith.  

Francis’s exhortation speaks to the deepest desires of our hearts because he is reminding us what we have been made for. This call is unique and personal to each and every one of us. No one is left out. 

Not until very recently did I realize that through the grace of God present at my Baptism, I’ve been given new life. Sharing in the Baptism of Christ, God the Father sends forth his Holy Spirit to dwell within us, as He cries out: “You are my beloved son,” “You are my beloved daughter,” “with you I am well pleased” (cf. Mark 1:11). This Baptism marks me as from God. I am a creature that has been created. I have a creator that not only knows me, but loves me as His only begotten child—His beloved. This Baptism inebriates us with the Spirit, with the grace of God which will “bear fruit in a path of holiness,” personal to me. 

This means that by my Baptism as a Christian, as Francis exhorts, I have been sent into this world with a mission: “Each saint is a mission, planned by the Father to reflect and embody, at a specific moment in history, a certain aspect of the Gospel.” 

What is this mission? 

Pope Francis states it succinctly: “The Father’s plan is Christ, and ourselves in him.” This mission is Christ. To be baptized into the life of Christ is to be baptized into his death—but let’s not forget that this especially means that we have been baptized into his Resurrection, that yes, we have been enabled and called and tasked to share in the glory of God!

This is what we have been made for—to live into the fullness of our Christian identity as a child of God, as the Body of Christ. Indeed, we have been called for nothing less than holiness, nothing less than sanctity. We've been called for everything more than we can imagine. 

Man…how I wish I had embraced this when I was learning about prayer in Mrs. Johnston’s theology class sophomore year; how I wish I had known this when I was celebrating Mass every month, praying each day with my classes in high school! How I wish I had seen the intentionality, the great love of the Lord invested into the very nature of my school’s mission statement... Live Faith, Embody Humility, Uphold Integrity, Achieve Excellence. 

And I don't blame my school or my upbringing. I never really willed to ask any of these hard, seeking questions until my first semester in college, where all of this seemed to “click.” I started asking questions and seeking to live this Christian life out of my own volition. And now I can’t help but see and dream to embrace what Francis exhorts the Church to see and embrace: “to see the entirety of your life as a mission.”

God wills us to holiness. This is our mission in Christ. As brothers and sisters of Jesus, we aren’t made to settle for "mediocrity." Our Father wants nothing less than greatness for us, His children. And greatness is not material wealth or comfort or pleasure or success. Greatness is Christ, it is Love, it is faithfulness until the end.