Eric #11107 - part 1

Dear Eric #11107 - part 1

I am sorry I did not get to post in your thread now placed in the forbidden zone under pain of excommunication.  I am on vacation and a bit out of touch.  But it seems to me that the topic you were wishing to address is mission and evangelization.  You gave us your take on your personal mission and suggested evangelization approach -- you wish to preach a crusade, this time against other Catholics.  Would that this were a novel approach.

It is good that you are thinking about mission, about the journey and meaning of your personal life in God.  One of my passions is the communion of the saints, what Pius XII called the Body of Christ.  JPII shares this passion.  He has held up many models for us to ponder, who invite us into relationship with them.

At the moment I would like to consider one of my favorites, St Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  First you may wish to object that I call her a saint.  While her name is not yet in the canon (Latin for list), I have never met a Catholic who did not consider her a saint in their heart of hearts.  Her cultus is approved.  So calling her a saint is to recognize her heroic virtues -- as did the Hindus of her adopted country India, who gave her a state funeral.

Many saints experience a conversion experience -- not a flash of light or a vision, but a turning in one's life to a new mission.  SMToC's was different in that she was already a vowed religious when her conversion experience occurred.

The nature of her conversion experience was also special with respect to its goal -- its sense of mission.  Here in the United States most Catholics have experienced the mission of vowed women religious.  For persons of my certain age, it was typically as an educator or healer or contemplative intercessor.  They taught in schools, worked in hospitals, nursing homes, retirement homes, they prayed and worked in enclosure.

SMToC chose to be in the world.  She chose to minister in the streets.  She was called to minister to those rejected by the world.  And she chose not to teach them or heal them -- merely to be present to them as an alter Christus -- to wipe their brow as they died, to share a meager meal as they struggled for life.  As she herself said, she was not called to be effective but to be faithful -- faithful to the call of Christ.  To paraphrase Francis of Assisi, she preached always, but seldom used words.

Which, Eric, gets us back to your post.  You appear to be concerned with a lack of faithfulness in the Church.  You call us to orthodoxy and orthopraxy (as Casey Stengel said, you could look it up).

What I think you are doing is rejecting the call of the Spirit to be in, not to be of, but to minister to the world today.  You present to us the paradigm of crusade as the way of lifting up Christ.  I would submit that the witness (Greek martyrion) of the saints of the twentieth century shows us the two paths indicated by the comments on vow religious women above -- ministry of service and ministry of presence.

Service was modeled to us by Jesus when he washed the feet of the Apostles, when he listened to all, when he preached conversion by love -- of God and of our neighbors all, when he healed the sick.

Presence he modeled to us when he hung on the cross, dying, for us, yet be present to those who shared his fate.  He was present to them as brother irrespective of who they were and what they had done.

The opportunities are many;  many are called;  less than many heed the call;  fewer still answer the call.

But if you feel you are called to preach a crusade, then you must be trained and formed.  You have many choices -- diaconate, priesthood, vowed religious.  Gird your loins and prepare to do battle.  Seek the Lord where he may be found.