Catholics Must Become Christians
“If ever there was a time when humanity needed followers of Christ and fewer fence-sitters, that time is now.” (Doherty, Catherine: The Gospel Without Compromise, 76).
Catherine Doherty’s words—written nearly 40 years ago—still speak
to my heart. Humanity’s heart is wounded; we are witnesses to abuse and
abortion, pornography and power-hungry politicians. The list can, and does, go
on. Humanity needs followers of Christ, those who share in His prophetic
mission to “bring glad tidings to the poor,” to set the captives—prisoners to
injustice, addiction, and especially sin—free! And most importantly to proclaim
a “year acceptable to the Lord,” to announce in boldness and charity that now
is the time of Mercy (Luke 4:18-19); that Jesus Christ has come to reconcile
us, not to condemn us (cf. John 3:17). The Gospel is the battle cry on behalf
of the Kingdom of God—a message fulfilled in Christ, which must take root in
us.
Earlier this year, one of the professed friars that I live
with was preaching on the Bread of Life Discourse from John’s Gospel. He spoke
about the difficulty of living the Gospel life (which is the rule and life of the
Franciscans). He has been striving to live this life for over 40 years, and he
said that he feels like sometimes he has only dipped his toes into the
teachings of Christ. His testimony struck me; after years of profession,
ordination, and ministry, the call to give up everything, even our very selves,
and follow Jesus will never be easy, it will never be finished. Yet in the
midst of this struggle, God will never cease to amaze, to confront, to comfort
us—and most importantly, God will never cease to love us and to will the “one
thing:” our holiness, or our union with Him.
Today, there is a greater necessity for bold Christian
disciples since the snares of our enemies have snapped against us and even more
lie ahead. Pope Francis has reminded us of this in his most recent exhortation,
Gaudete et Exsultate: “The Christian
life is a constant battle” (par. 158). In other words: we are at war. The
Church is not only at war with the World and the Enemy, but the Church is
experiencing internal warfare. War within the hearts of our parishes; war
within the hearts of our priests; but more poignantly, more subtly, war within
our hearts—yours and mine.
Jesus asks us the same question he asked his disciples at
the end of the Bread of Life Discourse, “Do you also want to leave?” We have
the freedom to follow or to flee. Christ offers us a way through all that
confronts us—knowing that all that confronts us, if we ourselves are faithful
to His Word and His Church confronts Him.
Today, we cannot sit on the fence in the face of evil. We
must be especially attuned to the evil that is present within our own hearts.
Ruth Burrows, OCD writes: “If we are people of real prayer we know that the
same evil which could potentially destroy the world is within our hearts” (Through Him, With Him, in Him, 61). If this evil resides in our hearts, then we
must not be surprised when it dwells within our families, our spouse, or our
Church.
Ruth, a contemplative Carmelite, in the face of the pain of
the world, points us to “real prayer.” But is it truly possible, feasible even,
that prayer is a response to the crises our world and Church face today?
It must be;
otherwise, we constrain our catastrophe into the futility of forces and faces
beyond our own hands. If we are not people of true prayer, then we deny
ourselves of any and all channels of God’s restorative, transformative grace in
our lives, our families, our communities, and Church.
But what is “real prayer”? This must be more than mere
recitation of our complaints or fears to God. This is something I’ve become
especially keen on during my brief tenure discerning religious life. Every
ordained priest by canon law, under the weight of mortal sin, is invited and
expected to pray daily the Divine Office. Many religious communities share in
this expectation and opportunity, gathering in the morning and evening to pray
as and for the Church. But the celebration of the liturgy of the hours—a public
prayer—cannot and most not substitute for our own personal, private, and
intimate prayer lives. I say “prayer lives” and mean that prayer is the very
“personal relationship with the living and true God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2558). How sad would a marriage be
if the only time we spent with our spouse included the company of children,
friends and neighbors? We need personal time with those, whom we love,
especially our God who is Love Incarnate!
I am passionate about this because I do not see many of us
populating our pews, our pulpits and our formation programs, myself included,
taking seriously this call to prayer seriously! Recently someone discerning his
call to serve in the Church mentioned that it is great that so-and-so loves to
pray, but that he prefers to read. Prayer is not something we merely do or
recite; it is the very bedrock and refuge of our life!
Real prayer is what our faith demands and our Church needs.
When we sit on the fence, we are refusing to follow. We decide to watch and
listen from afar. We take in what we want, and we block out the rest. In our
comfort, we have become complacent. We imagine that we know all of the stories
of the Bible that we’ve heard this reading before; in short, we’ve “quenched
the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). To sit on the fence implies that we are not
followers, but fair-weather fans. Catherine writes, “We Catholics must become
Christians. We must have a personal confrontation with God and with His help
solve our crises of faith” (The Gospel
Without Compromise, 35). If many today imagine that we are facing “crises
of faith,” this must be our response:
confront God, to be confronted by His word and presence. We must become obedient—true
listeners to His Word, true followers
of His will.
Doherty continues, “Unless this personal dimension is
straightened out, squarely faced, and lived by each Christian, nothing will
really make any sense.” To confront God, we must confront ourselves. We must
embrace our weakness our poverty, our loneliness, our needs, and offer them to
Him in faithful prayer. And Catherine does not pull any punches—make no
mistakes, this is challenging work: “Faith is a country of darkness into which
we venture because we love and believe in the Beloved, who is beyond all
reasoning, all understanding, all comprehension. And at the same time,
paradoxically, is enclosed within us: the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.
Faith must go through this strange land, following Him who it loves” (Re-Entry into Faith 13). This
confrontation with the darkness of our selves and our world demands faith, and
as we extend our arms in hope, we manage to be embraced; we manage to embrace
the true and Living God. This embrace is our prayer life.
Prayer is the cry of a lost, wandering, and desirous
heart…it is a longing through which we look to God who is our Father. Imagine:
“real prayer” is that which allows
for us to transcend the difficult, the mysterious, the dark, the unknown—for
prayer is that relationship with God in Christ, through Whom we come to take on
the easy yoke, to confront and embrace the truth, to see and shine the light,
and to accept the known reality of God’s love, a love poured out for us on the
cross, given for us through the diffuse and dynamic gift of the Holy Spirit.
Catherine and Ruth are evocative writers that speak to my
heart because they are in, or at least strive to be, disciples of real prayer;
they sought constant conversation with the Word, who is both “spirit and life”
(John 6:63). Their words, then, become charged with the prophetic, priestly,
and noble “grandeur of God” (to borrow the line from Gerard Manley Hopkins)
because they themselves have caught the fire of desire—the Fire of the Holy
Spirit that seeks to not only illuminate us in our darkness, to vanquish all
impurity, excess, stain, and sin from our lives and the World.
Catherine writes: “The real answer to all our modern
problems, whatever they may be, is to turn to God with lifted hands, trusting
in His promises and mercy, and moved by love for men. There is no other answer”
(119). To turn to God, our Father, with lifted hands is to trust in His ability
to raise us up. Jesus told them that “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life” and that he will “raise” him or her “on the last day” (John
6:54). As Catholics, the sacramental life of the Church is the very sustenance
of our relationship with Jesus Christ as he comes to dwell among us, in us,
transforming us from the inside out.
It is through prayer and prayer alone that we come to
experience and maintain a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. There is no
other response to the cries of the world than the cry of our own heart in
faith…to let our prayers rise before our God who is just, who is Mercy, who is
Love. And there is no other way to know God who is Love, than for we ourselves
to will, to choose today, be loved, to receive love, and give love in return.
Prayer is nothing more than this: an exchange of Love. A
heart holding out in hope that God who is “all in all” will come and fill our
emptiness, bringing life, and bringing it in abundance. I close with more
rousing words from Catherine, because today, in order to live the Gospel
without compromise we must start from a place of love and not hatred. We must
begin in prayer and not spite. We must be a people sowing the seeds of hope and
not retribution; we must hop off the fence, bear the cross of love, and walk
the way of Life.
Comments
Post a Comment