While I have believed in God to a greater or lesser degree my entire waking life, until I became Catholic six years ago at the ripe age of 53 I held what were probably typical notions and opinions regarding Christian religious practices. Literal or fundamental biblical "interpretations" struck me as quaint, at best, and depressive, at worst. God, I was quite sure, simply wanted everyone to do their very best based on, well, whatever that meant for that person at the time. Insight, inspiration, and catechesis however has put to rest my "fundamental" skepticism regarding scriptural truth, allowing me develop a somewhat more developed ethos than what I was born with or drifted down to me through life in the suburbs. Why Christians, and Catholics especially, should hold to practices drawn directly from the Bible, measuring their days, as it were, against standards thousands of years old, makes perfect sense to me now. But the only reason this makes sense now, when it didn't before, is that I have come to accept and believe the tenets of the Catholic faith, expressed fully and conveniently in the Nicene Creed.
Nothing could be simpler. If a person believes a thing they are bound to act in accordance with the thing believed. It would be a failure not to, either hypocritical, or deceitful, or both. I prefer not to be any more hypocritical than is absolutely necessary. And as to deceit, I do not like the flavor of it. Not one bit. I hold that it is better to fail by one's lights than to merely succeed in the eyes of others, but who knows how I adopted this belief or where I got it from or from whom. It doesn't matter. What matters is now. I hold up to the light of Christ what I do, say, think and feel. What holds, abides. What fails must go. I do not pretend ever to be a model or substitute for Jesus Christ as everything I do, while it may not utterly contradict Him, is at the very best a pale substitute. But that's okay too, because my faith tells me so: my heart and the Church, who are closer to each other than I sometimes allow even myself to believe.
What concerns me here though isn't me per se but the topic of what we do when we believe and we set out to act on that belief. Furthermore, I will not be writing about politics. I know that must be a bit of a shock, and perhaps I should have warned you somehow that I would make such an outrageous promise. But I am convinced that, as important as political action is, it should be held somewhat to the side, or incidentally. That "incident" is the fact of the politics of one's time (giving unto Caesar what if Caesar's) whereas the practice of one's faith should be positioned directly before oneself and held to be first and foremost now and forever.
As Christians we are allowed a good deal of latitude on how we act, both in terms of what we do and how we do it. Christ himself provides concrete instructions to (and I paraphrase) love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves, to perform the Corporal works of Mercy, with the understanding (via St. Paul) that to each one of us different but equal gifts of the spirit are accorded. And so, you can imagine that your typical Christian, in addition to considering Jesus Christ as a model for their overall behavior, spends a good deal of time "discerning" (as the expression has it) what he or she has to give and what he or she should do with it.
This question of what to do with oneself is certainly an engaging one. It's what leads men and women to adopt the religious life as priests, deacons, nuns, or sisters. It's what leads laypersons in less dramatic fashion to lend their talents or propensities to church affairs or in actions on behalf of persons in the community. And it's not a cut and dried matter as one's faith is always evolving and deepening, and so new and different sorts of work may be presented to oneself. For my own part, as a poet for 30 years or so before I became Catholic, I was drawn to reading at Mass. Of course, it's all a bit more complicated when you consider that the reason you were given the gift of writing and reading well may have been so that you might one day read at Mass - but that's a conversation for another day. I was drawn to reading at Mass and to writing on the subject of faith (thus my OpenCatholic website and this blog) even as my life blossomed and was filled with various graces, and I was drawn to serving the poor, helping out at my church, etc. So, there was a lot I was drawn to and I have been quite busy besides Mass and prayer.
But all this leads to something - as blog articles so often do - and that thing is preaching. I am fascinated by preaching or what it means to preach the Word of God. What exactly is it to "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature"? (Mark 16:15) It can be many things, including the performance of good works and modeling good Christian behavior - but it is also, well, preaching. Speaking to other about their salvation in direct, certain terms. It is not something I have done...directly. I have written a couple hundred articles on this site that deal with faith or issues related to the faith, and you might say that is a form of preaching, and I would not disagree. You might say that reading at Mass is preaching, and I would probably agree there too.
But there is another form of preaching. The form, where a person speaks to another person about the salvation that is Jesus Christ. I have in mind that preaching is a form of confession of belief, on the one hand, and an admission of debt, or guilt, on the other. If all that mattered was that I am saved, I would not need to preach, No one would. But the fact that one feels personally charged to "go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature" means that a genuine obligation exists here, one that simply must be fulfilled.
But how to do it? I will consider that whats, hows, and wherefores in my next article, accompanied by related considerations, I am sure.
Peace be with you
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