The Evangelistic Gift of Being Weird

As we cavort amid an embarrassingly secularized and confused society, unmoored as it stands from the threads of a shared past or the common experience of wider human history, it is imperative that Christians cling tighter to the beauty of our tradition.

Much can be said about the via pulchritudina and the avenue for union with God that beauty provides. I have long held that it is, if not the primary means, at least one of the most critical means for overcoming the barriers of sharing the gospel in our age.

By glimpsing the arresting glory of the sun kissing a high rose window­­ – or falling to our knees amid a dense cloud of incense and chanting with our brothers and sisters as the blessed Host is raised aloft, “My Lord and my God!” we are caught up in the glory of an eternal reality.

The Daily Beauty

God is of course present in the pots, pans, diapers, and even (heaven help us) spreadsheets we encounter day-by-day.  He meets us there, in the mud and in the sweat, shouldering the plough with us as of old Christ showed us the way in the miracle of His incarnation.  Indeed, there is something eternally right in our straddling the ancient-future chasm bridged upon the arms of the cross which also invites us into that eternal economy of Faith, Hope, and Charity which is found in perpetual fullness in the mystery of the triune Godhead.

We plant one foot in the bloody moment of Calvary – or in the intimacy of the upper room and the Last Supper – and the other in the promised splendor of an eternity where all wrongs are made right and Christ our King reigns eternally in the new heavens and new earth.

This kind of metaphysical transcendence is the ever-presence of God with us and is the mediated participation of man in that omnipresent God for whom every moment in the grand tapestry of time past, present, and future is marked by an accessible immediacy.

Justice itself demands that if God is made present to us in the mystery of the Eucharist – if Christ Himself offers Himself on our behalf to the Father in loving and unceasing covenantal atonement for us – then we must cultivate a greater sense of the sacredness of both the Mass in which the great miracle occurs and (by extension) in the life of God’s faithful people.

Extension of the Sacred

This extension of the sacred into everyday life is part of the gift of taking the truth of the gospel into the world, baptizing, and making disciples of all nations.  When we walk publicly as a body of faithful in processions, following the Cross of Christ, we proclaim in no uncertain terms like our Master before us that His Kingdom is not of this world.

Not of this world, but indeed in the world. The world itself is sustained by the very undying love of God which has willed it into existence and continues willing it. From the first, God has described Himself to us as an involved Creator. He scooped the dust together to form Adam, and of Adam carved out Eve so that they might together be a complete reflection of His image and likeness.  Christ traced His finger in the dust of Palestine, and into that same dust flowed the mingled blood and water from His loving, Sacred Heart.

“Go, Therefore,…”

The Incarnation made the intimacy of God with His creation incredulous. Like a jealous father, God has pursued His wayward children to the far country where they have sold themselves into a slavery of debt and fear and made the way for them to come home free once more.

It is somewhere deep in the thrumming chest of these layers of metaphor that we find the heart of the matter.  God has transformed life, death, and even time itself into a theater of marvelous and uncanny war.  He has commissioned us, His covenant people, as operatives to carry out this war in the uncommonly difficult campaign of sanctification.  He has tasked us with nothing less than the reclamation of all His creation.  “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” begins our commission. In inviting the nations into His midst, Christ has transformed the face of the earth by “baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

This baptism is, of course, a baptism into Christ as St. Paul exhorted the Corinthians in his first letter.  We are submerged into the life of Christ such that the old self is truly dead and the new is simply the transforming work of Christ in and (praise God) through us.

Conversion and Evangelization

As Catholics, we believe that God not only baptizes people as individuals, but that nations and cultures can be submerged into the life of Christ and made new. This is the oldest and truest form of our evangelization, and it was the work of the Apostles and of great missionaries over time.  St. Augustine of Canterbury, sent by St. Gregory the Great to convert England to the faith, and St. Patrick in Ireland followed a similar playbook – whatever was not incompatible with the Christian faith was retained and served to proclaim the gospel of Christ.

It is precisely because of this physical and tangible work of engaging with the world around us that Catholics simply must not lose sight of the ancient tools we have inherited to hand on the faith to a new generation.

For a clear example, take the moral issue of the sanctity of life. Our culture needs to see a consistent witness to life, certainly in the joy of our families through the mutual care and support native to a deep love. Further, a culture of life builds up a rich beauty in the daily experience of the wider culture as well. This means growing organizations to support children, mothers, and fathers at all stages of life. So much of this has already been done, yet we persevere in the face of ridicule and aspersion.

Transforming the Culture

People today often discuss the decline in common decency.  I am no sociologist, but it is little wonder that people don’t consider their neighbor – they hardly consider their own mothers. This freefall in common-sense morality cannot be divorced from the broader de-evolution in our spiritual and emotional intelligence.  I’m not insulting the emotional/spiritual IQ of Western Culture – rather, it is a logical reality that a society built on the virtues of Christian belief, which in turn built upon the local religious sensibilities and experience of our pagan forebears, cannot deny those beliefs and tenets without great consequence.

Because I loathe the doom-and-gloom of much of the so-called informed world online today, I will gladly offer a simple, down-to-earth solution for the myriad problems which fill our present and darken the edges of our children’s future.  The Church must simply stop apologizing for being weird, and get on with the business of transforming the culture around us.

People are drawn to confident, unique, and self-aware individuals.  Good leaders are those who possess these traits and have the acumen to instill them in others. In the work of the Kingdom, we must not shy away from the hard realization that we simply are different from the non-Christians around us. This does not make us evil, nor does it make us aggressors. It simply means that we are a people living at peace with our own beautiful tradition and inviting others into that narrative.

The Need for Ongoing Conversion

This means that we must once more have processions, sing Sunday vespers, pray our daily offices, and unite in times of common prayer and fasting. In other words, we must live like we believe the scandalous, miraculous claims of our faith.

If each parish, regardless of its size committed to embrace our counter-cultural, bizarre tradition, bound as it is with the fruitful marriage of Faith and Reason, we would meet others drawn into it out of both curiosity and the quickening of their heart as they see at last the reflection of what God has been whispering in the quiet of their souls.

I know this to be so because it is precisely this transcendent-yet-tangible, sacramental worldview which drew me into this glorious and rich tradition and which inspires and edifies all the facets of my life and ministry.  Certainly, the fire of Christ’s gospel message means the transformation and renewal of all peoples, places, and times, and that is no small task.

It will require conversation and cooperation.  It will require more (but certainly not less) than beautiful liturgy and vibrant traditional Catholic praxis.  It will require the conversion of our hearts and the renewal of our covenantal union with Christ and His Church.  May we cultivate that faith in our own hearts through the participation of our whole selves as joyful Catholic witnesses, and raise each generation to join the fight to see His Kingdom come and His Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.