The Catholic dilemma
Non-practicing Catholics are the highest percentage of the church in the United States. In every parish it is common knowledge that hundreds of our brothers and sisters will make an appearance only on Christmas, Easter and perhaps another special event.
It’s not uncommon to hear these comet-like parishioners say that they are spiritual but not religious. By saying this, they wish to underline that they have faith and a relationship with God, but that they do not belong to that group of people of pious or devote practices who need to be in the church.
The word spirit in Hebrew is ruah, in Greek it is pneuma, and in Latin, spiritus. It means the air over the waters in the narrative of creation (Genesis 1:1-2), the breath blown into the nostrils of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:7) or the powerful gust of wind which pushed the apostles to share their encounter with Jesus. (Acts 2:2)
To be spiritual, therefore, is to recognize that God is the Creator of everything, that he sustains the existence of each person and that he compels us to share our relationship with Jesus with others.
Religious in Latin means to be bound to, or to have a relationship with someone. That intimate relationship, that bond, fosters devotion or piety, eusebeia, the one for the other. The intensity of that relationship or religiosity creates within us the most intimate sentiments of God’s person or of the men and women with whom we share our lives.
I would say that with contemporary globalization we need to be very “religious.” That is to say, we have the obligation of seeing reality for what it is and being intimately connected to it. We need to be connected with the reality of our family, our neighborhood, our city, our country and our world in order to experience and share the joys and sorrows of all.
It is also necessary that we be very “spiritual” in order to persevere in our service to others with an upright heart that only seeks to bring others into the presence of Christ, who is the only one capable of changing hearts and making us see the faces of our brothers and sisters around us.
All of us should have an intimate relationship with Jesus and we should be strengthened directly by that relationship in order to develop Catholic charity, universal love. You can’t give what you don’t have. We cannot give God to the world if we are not filled with God. Otherwise our service quickly wears out and it leaves us empty inside and out.
We are not called to do social works of charity. As disciples of Jesus, we are called to create a brotherhood, a family in whose veins flows the same blood, that of Jesus Christ. The breath of our lives and the wind which pushes us to serve is and must always be the breath of God’s love for his children.
Our religiosity must move us to feel with the heart of Jesus, to feel his sorrow deeply when we see injustice and inequality in the world and among believers, to feel the sorrow of our Lord and Savior’s heart when we reflect on our indifference toward the homeless we see on the street or those who reach the borders of our land, fleeing poverty, persecution, violence or the lack of opportunity caused by the insatiable greed of a few others.
To feel with Jesus means that it hurts us as it does him that there are hearts full of hate, bitterness or the desire for vengeance because of the mistakes we make in life and bad testimony. To feel with Jesus makes us rejoice with him when we see the many hearts who are offering joyful hope and fidelity during difficult times, and who are even willing to lose their lives if necessary.
Our spirituality makes us recognize that we cannot make a difference by ourselves. It must be the Divine Breath which renews and continually molds the face of the earth and our souls so that we may live authentically rather than just surviving.
Folk wisdom has coined the saying, “Not so much that it burns the saint, nor so little that it doesn’t allow him to see.” Using the image of traditional candles lit in front of sacred images, this saying is meant to emphasize that we need to be balanced in all our acts. In his letter, the Apostle James says to us, “Show me your faith without works and I will show you my faith by my works.” (James 2:18)
As disciples of Jesus we are called to be very “well-balanced,” or in other words, very holy. We must love God over all things and our neighbor as ourselves. (see Mathew 22:37-40) In that way, we will be very religious and very spiritual at the same time, which, in short, is our true earthly vocation.
Mary was one of those who knew how to be well-balanced. During her life she learned how to be of God which enabled her to listen and accept whatever the Divine Will asked. She also knew how to be very human, and that is why she ran to visit her cousin Elizabeth. If we look to her example, we will learn how to resolve the Catholic dilemma.
Northwest Catholic - June 2016