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The archbishop’s column this week is condensed and adapted from his Theology on Tap remarks to young adults in Sydney, Australia, July 16.
No one can live a “half-way” Christianity. It never works. Every double life inevitably self-destructs. So the question facing every Catholic young adult who is serious about his or her faith is pretty straightforward: How are we going to live in this world? How can we lead a Christian life in a secular age?
We can’t really answer that question until we get a few things straight about what it means to be a Christian. And that means first getting some things straight about Jesus Christ. One of the by-products of our age is that we don’t really quite know what to think about Jesus anymore.
A few years before he became Pope Benedict XVI, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote something that is, unfortunately, very true. He wrote: “Today in broad circles, even among believers, an image has prevailed of a Jesus who demands nothing, never scolds, who accepts everyone and everything, who no longer does anything but affirm us. . . . The figure is transformed from the ‘Lord’ (a word that is avoided) into a man who is nothing more than the advocate of all men.”
We all know people—friends or family members or both—who think about Jesus in these terms. It’s hard to avoid. Our culture has given Jesus a make-over. We’ve remade him in the image and likeness of secular compassion. Today he’s not the Lord, the Son of God, but more like an enlightened humanist nice guy.
The problem is this: If Jesus isn’t Lord, if he isn’t the Son of God, then he can’t do anything for us. Then the Gospel is just one more or less interesting philosophy of life. Therefore, if we want to live as true disciples of Jesus Christ in a secular age, we need to trust the Gospels, and we need to trust the Church that gives us the Gospels. We need to truly believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the son of Mary. True God and true man. The One who holds the words of eternal life. If we aren’t committed to that truth, then nothing else about the Catholic faith can make any sense.
Jesus didn’t come down from heaven to tell us to go to church on Sunday. He didn’t die on the cross and rise from the dead so that we would pray more at home and be a little nicer to our next-door neighbors. The one thing even non-believers can see is that the Gospels aren’t compromise documents. Jesus wants all of us. And not just on Sundays. He wants us to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, and all our mind. He wants us to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is, with a love that’s consuming and total.
We need to take Christ at his word. We need to love him like our lives depend on it. Right now. And without excuses. Remember that man in Scripture who told Jesus: I’m ready to be your disciple, but first I need to plan my father’s funeral? The way Jesus responds is blunt and disturbing: “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. Follow me and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Of course, Jesus is not commanding disrespect for our parents. What he’s saying is that there is no more urgent priority in our lives than following him and proclaiming his kingdom.
Being a follower of Jesus Christ can never be just one more among many aspects of our daily life. Being a Christian is who we are. Period. Being a Christian means our life has a mission. It means striving every day to be a better follower, to become more like Jesus in our thoughts and actions.
Blessed Charles de Foucauld once said that, “God calls all the souls he has created to love him with their whole being. … But he does not ask all souls to show their love by the same works, to climb to heaven by the same ladder, to achieve goodness in the same way. What sort of work, then must I do? Which is my road to heaven?”
If we ask those questions with a determined and prayerful heart, God will always listen, and respond.
