Bound in Love

Practices that incarnate the Christian vision

The world is somewhat blind to the spiritual reality that is actually more real than what the world sees. So part of our mission is to have the spiritual world become a living force in our minds and manifested in our lives. We have to become those witnesses that Pope Paul spoke of. To be an authentic witness, we have to reject the dominant narrative that says religion is a private matter. We do not have to put on a sandwich board and go and preach the gospel at the corner in front of the grocery store. But we do have to be distinctively Christian such that people know that the Christian faith directs our behavior. We have to boldly proclaim the faith in our lives. We have to be willing to be the Bible that other people read. After they’ve experienced the Bible through us, we can actually give them a real Bible to read. But they can only be taught if we’ve been good witnesses.

We need to be willing to be distinct. In a Christendom culture, even in the United States, the practice of not eating meat on Fridays was widely understood, accepted, and supported. Coming out of the Second Vatican Council, the American bishops said that it didn’t have to be not eating meat on Fridays. That’s what many American Catholics heard. The bishops continued that we had to do something penitential on Fridays because Friday still recalled the sacrifice on Mount Calvary. But most American Catholics did not hear the second part of the Bishop statement. That’s why most American Catholics eat meat on Fridays. It is now apostolic to return to meatless Fridays. It is apostolic because it’s a lot harder than it was 50 years ago. You have to think hard about what you’re going to do and where you’re going to eat on a Friday if you’re following the traditional Friday abstinence.

In our worship, the liturgical practice of the mass was greatly modified after the second Vatican Council. We spent a great deal of time talking about this couple of years ago. Thinking the wind was behind us, the church generally got very accommodative in its liturgical practice. If we recognize that the wind is no longer behind us but is actually blowing in our faces, then it apostolic mode of worship might include returning to those distinctively Catholic practices at the mass.

Praying in Latin, for example, is no longer the norm but does say something profound. Kneeling — assuming you can get back up — and receiving on the tongue — the centuries-long normative way to receive holy Communion — dropped out of favor after the second Vatican Council but now can be a sign of distinction that the faithful Catholic knows who it is that he is receiving at holy communion and who it is that is being given the gift of the reality of Jesus Christ, body blood soul and divinity. It’s easy to say the words of the centurion — that we are not worthy that he should come under our roof — but in an apostolic age we can make sure that our behavior in our religious practice matches our statement of faith.

Our relationship with the priesthood and apostolic age should reflect our love for our priests and our willingness to support them in their ministries, but it should do all of this understanding fully that the priest is not fundamentally a better man than me. His vocation is different than mine, but it’s not higher or better than mine. He has given up the good of family life for a consecrated life set apart for priestly service to God and his people. He’s not a prince or even a king, he is a priest of God. He should receive the respect he deserves but not more respect than he deserves. It does seem as we watch these young men who come through our parish as seminarians that we are blessed with strong men who love God and are willing to give up a lot to serve him in the ministerial priesthood. That already reflects an apostolic awareness. One of the ironic blessings of our cultural decay in the West is that the priesthood is no longer a place where oddballs hide out. There’s no need for an oddball these days to hide, so the priesthood holds no particular utility for strange men. We are seeing strong, well grounded, normal men choose the priesthood, and that is a great blessing. It is a great blessing that we should pray to God in thanksgiving and also in how we can support these men in their vocations.

Apostolic messiness

That’s not to say that we won’t have quirky charismatic leaders in an apostolic age. The church needs to be ready for some energetic messiness if she wants to remain alive and capture the wider culture. Because the age of Christendom is no more, church administrators should probably not waste too much time trying to enforce orderliness. The apostolic age will be a messy age. Consider St. Paul. Anyone who reads his letters can see he was a difficult fellow, and he was the one willing to rebuke St. Peter at the Council of Jerusalem. Consider the sons of thunder, the apostle brothers James and John. Jesus needed to rebuke them from time to time even though they were clearly in the top three of the 12 apostles. They were the ones who went with St. Peter to Mount Tabor and witnessed the Transfiguration. But they were also the ones who argued about where they got to sit when they got to heaven. So we should not be surprised if we have interesting eccentric characters in our apostolic church.