Five years ago, a dear friend met my mother for the first time at Mass. They sat near each other in the same pew, and after Mass, my mother turned to my friend and complimented her on her children. “As soon as I heard her voice I knew her from your stories,” my friend told me later. They hugged, talked, and – in her usual way – my mother absorbed this friend into the ever-increasing hospitality of her heart.
There’s something lovely about preparing beloved people to meet each other. Something delightful about painting pictures of our friends and family and inviting other people in. I’ve learned that telling stories about my parents and friends is a great way to welcome other people into a relationship with them. When they finally meet, these friends, nourished with stories, are able to fall in love with the living person easily.
How Do You Know Christ?
At my baking guild, one of our bakers is returning to her faith. Last week, she asked a question I struggled to answer: How do you know Christ is the Messiah? When she asked, I hovered in my mind over safe, real, and reliable answers. Answers that any apologetics book might offer. Christ is the Messiah, here are some chapters and verses in defense of that statement. But I didn’t think that was what she needed. So I paused, imagining St. Peter, frowning at me from beside the mixer, shaking his head, and reminding me to “always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is within you” (1 Peter 3:15).
I didn’t have a ready answer except that I knew He was the Messiah because He said “I am the Messiah” and I believe Him. It sounds a little lame, but like all my relationships, my relationship with Christ is based on love, trust, and a cozy interior sense of knowing. Since my fellow baker is interested in getting to know Jesus personally, not simply proving to her rational mind that He is the Messiah, my more casual response was, fortunately, a first step toward a deeper conversation.
Apologetics or Introduction
I wonder if that’s part of the problem for many of us. The world of apologetics is a big part of how Catholics present the faith to those around them. If you’re interested in answers to “Why is Jesus the Messiah?” or “How do we know Mary didn’t have other children?” you can look it up in a book and memorize a nice, rational answer.
You can learn “how to talk to Protestants” or “how to talk to Pagans” – without ever taking the time to stumble your way through talking to the individual people behind those labels. Stumbling through conversations can be hard and painful, but it’s much more real – whereas talking to a label is safe and straightforward. You can have generalized, memorizable responses when you talk to A Protestant, whereas talking to Pastor Sam from New Baptist Church or Debbie working in the ER is going to be a much more unpredictable conversation.
Søren Kierkegaard stated once that “to label me is to negate me,” and I sometimes worry that negation of the individual and the individual’s relationship to God is too often what happens when we approach questions about “the hope that is within” us with an apologetic mindset. Reading St. Peter’s Epistles, you read the words of a man in relationship. He’s giving guidance to people, his “dearly beloved,” not to groups or types. It’s not that I’m opposed to apologetics, but sometimes, listening to Catholic apologists on the radio or reading their books, I think “I’m so glad my non-Catholic friends aren’t hearing this” because I know that they’d be repelled by the lack of intimacy or sympathy in the response.
I know Jesus is the Messiah because He said so in the Gospels. His friends believed Him and willingly died for that belief. Historians wrote about the people who followed Him and changed the world by introducing it to Christ. But mostly, I know Jesus is the Messiah like I know my husband loves me, like I know that autumn has arrived, like I know the sun is setting – because I live in relationship with Him and He reminds me every day:
You don’t walk alone, ever.
Not for a moment, never
is my profile separate from you
and in you it becomes truth
it always becomes truth…I have come to outweigh
blood with blood,
I have come to seek
weariness, being like you. (Karol Wojtyla)
It’s a lovely way to know, but it’s not always easy to cite chapter and verse. We Catholics do need to become more comfortably immersed in Scripture, of course, but not as a means to an end.
Poetry and Love
This year marks the 800th anniversary of the Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi, the saint who many say was most like Christ in the history of the Church. St. Francis wasn’t interested in education or argument; instead, he introduced everyone he met to Christ through his almost overwhelming love for Christ and his equally overwhelming love for each individual in Christ.
Francis longed to give over every aspect of himself to Jesus, and to invite the whole world to join him in this great love. He didn’t try to argue rationally, he didn’t teach his brothers to talk “to Muslims” or “to fallen away Catholics,” he taught them to love recklessly and live out God’s abundance as they had received it.
In this 800th anniversary, it may be time for us to reclaim some of that boundless enthusiasm. If you never can remember what the proofs of Christ’s divinity are, or you’re not sure how to talk to your fallen away friends and family, take a leaf out of St. Francis’s book. Forget for a while about answering correctly or memorizing facts. Focus on loving, on having a heart like an overflowing cup of welcome. Think of it as preparing beloved people to meet each other, and whether you do it with rational answers, with loving deeds, or with bits of beauty – let it always be an introduction of one Individual to another.
