Totalitarian Faith Enfleshed

Br. Matthew's post made me think of an example of "totalitarian faith" as expressed in a particular person's life. Would that it were my own... Nevertheless, here's an example.

About two years ago, I met a young adult male, then 33 years old, who I'll call Adam. Just six months previous to my meeting him, he had undergone a huge conversion that had radically changed his life. He had quit drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, swearing, and was attending daily Mass, praying throughout the day, reading scripture and studying the catechism. All of this was due to an encounter with the love of Christ, which itself was an answer to five years of graced prayer in which he asked to know that love. I don't know that I've ever seen someone so beautifully changed by Christ.

But I was a little unsettled in some of our early conversations. I had learned to be wary of the enthusiasm of new converts. They want to do all kinds of crazy things, like enter religious life or the seminary – so we require them to live their faith for a few years before doing something precipitous. His enthusiasm was wonderful, but I wanted Adam to be prepared for the fact that this fervor wasn’t going to last. One evening while we were sitting at the kitchen table, I gently tried to warn him to be prepared for his spiritual intensity to wane. I likened it to the infatuation we have when we first start dating someone. Adam responded indignantly: “Why should my love for Jesus simmer down? I don't want it to. I don't ever want to forget what God has done for me. I don't want to go back. I don't want to lose God."

I was struck silent. I didn't have an answer. What I had just witnessed was the virtue known as "the fear of the Lord." Not a fear that God would punish, but a fear of losing a relationship with Him.

So I began to re-read some of St. Paul's letters. I figured Adam's experience was like Saul's encounter on the road to Damascus. I read St. Paul saying to the Ephesians, "you must lay aside your former way of life and the old self which deteriorates through illusion and desire, and acquire a fresh, spiritual way of thinking." (Eph 4:22-23a)

And "May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, and may charity be the root and foundation of your life. Thus you will be able to grasp fully, with all the holy ones, the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ's love, and experience this love which surpasses all knowledge, so that you may attain to the fullness of God himself." (Eph. 3:17-19) Both of those quotes sounded like Adam's experience.

I asked myself, "Had Paul's love for Christ, initiated on that lonely stretch of road, 'simmered down?'" He boasted that, "five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes less one; three times I was beaten with rods; I was stoned once, shipwrecked three times; I passed a day and a night on the sea. I traveled continually, endangered by floods, robbers, my own people, the Gentiles; imperiled in the city, in the desert, at sea, by false brothers; enduring labor hardship, many sleepless nights; in hunger and thirst and frequent fastings, in cold and nakedness. Leaving other sufferings unmentioned, there is that daily tension pressing on me, my anxiety for all the churches." (2 Cor. 11:24-28)

Of course, we know Paul eventually could add imprisonment and beheading for his faith in Jesus to his list of trials. No, rather than "simmering down," that relationship with Christ only grew stronger through the years, as any good relationship does.

Then I read Galatians, and came across these words, "I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me. I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal 2:19b-20)

What had always sounded like an exaggeration was what I was witnessing in Adam. He'd practically said as much. I was ashamed to realize that my own love for Jesus – a love that had led me to give my life as a religious - had waned. I had lost what passion I had had for Christ. I had taken back the life I'd once offered. And I had taken that loss of zeal as normative.

Now when I think of intentional discipleship, I often think of Adam, and how Christ has changed (and continues to change) his life. Is it too much for us to hope to know something of the love of Christ in this lifetime? Are we willing to take the Gospel seriously enough to allow it to challenge our "common sense" and even change us? Are we willing to cooperate with God's grace to love each person we meet as though Christ were standing before us? Are we afraid of no longer "fitting in" with our families and friends if we our faith, expressed as a relationship with Christ and His Body, becomes the center of our life?

I find myself shaking my head as I read the Scriptures these days, because it seems clear to me that Adam's behavior is much closer to what Christ asks of us than my behavior. Jesus teaches a crowd and his disciples, "Whoever would preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will preserve it." (Mk 8:35) It would seem that only one who is prepared and willing to risk all for Jesus and for the gospel will truly become himself or herself. It would seem that if we are to know Jesus intimately, we have to answer his call. Certainly my friend Adam has learned a lot about Christ in a short time because he tries to take Jesus at His word, and tries to cooperate with God's grace in order to live according to that word.

Adam's not afraid to speak of what Christ has done for him, and his words are supported by his actions. Both have evangelized me, so that I am seeking a renewed relationship with my Lord.

Is it possible that our expectations of what it means to live as a Catholic Christian are set too low – especially for ourselves?