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I saw an Internet post the other day that moved my heart. A woman who was unmarried and eight months pregnant said she felt called to be baptized and received into the Catholic faith. She had reached out to Catholic strangers on the Internet because she was afraid, not knowing “how it would look.”
So many things welled up in me when I read this.
I imagine nearly every reader of this newspaper will get the basic question right, about how Jesus looks at this woman, and therefore how every disciple of his ought to do so. If we open up our Bibles and start looking through the Gospels, it wouldn’t be a passage or two that would tell us, it’s on almost every page.
This is Jesus, who said the angels in heaven rejoice at every sinner who repents. This is Jesus, who treated the woman caught in adultery and the Samaritan woman at the well so tenderly. This is the Good Shepherd, who leaves the 99 sheep to bring the lost one home on his shoulders. This is Jesus, who was not ashamed to eat with tax collectors and sinners but sought them out, and who, when challenged by the self-righteous, said, “I have not come to call the just; I have come to call sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32).
This is literally the point of our faith; it’s why Jesus came. Beautiful churches, stained glass and statues, liturgies, the sacraments, the clergy and religious, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s — all of it exists for this mission in Jesus Christ of reconciling us sinners to God, then walking in friendship with him, loving and worshiping him until we come to share the fullness of life and joy with him in heaven.
I wished so much this person would set aside her fear and begin to grasp the fullness of that. God isn’t saying to her — or to me or to you, whether our sins are visible to the rest of the world or not — that he halfheartedly tolerates us and “against his better judgment” lets us back in his good graces with a skeptical eye. No. He seeks us. He calls us. He embraces us. He completely washes away our sins and our shame. It’s a deep, personal, profound love and mercy that goes all the way to the cross.
Again, I think if this woman were at Easter Vigil in one of our parishes, we’d get it basically right. We’d embrace her with love and joy and not judgment.
But I’m not sure we fully grasp how deep this goes even for ourselves. And I’m not sure we fully get it when we walk out of the church building into mission territory.
After all, if this is what our faith is, why was this woman so afraid? Why did she think she might be judged or cause offense? How could she not know we’d be thrilled?
Years ago, praying at 40 Days for Life with a friend, I encountered an angry young woman and her boyfriend. She had had an abortion, and she thought we were there to condemn or judge her. We had just been praying for women who had had abortions, for their healing and peace, and when it became clear we had no interest at all in condemning or judging her but instead genuinely wanted good for her, the whole dynamic changed.
There’s a whole world of people out there like this, people who believe Christianity is about shaming and excluding, about making people feel never quite good enough. No wonder the world is also full of people who think their sins are so bad they can never be forgiven, their wounds are so deep they can never be healed, their lives so broken they can never be made whole, their circumstances so miserable they can never have joy.
When I think of why this might be, I think there are a number of reasons. Some of them are spiritual. As we come closer to the light of the all-holy God, the ways we are not holy become clearer to us. That’s a good thing, because it enables us to receive mercy and to grow in authentic love. But especially during those first steps, as we’re just coming to experience God’s love and mercy, the evil one, who wants to keep us from God, tries to thwart us with the lie that our sins are too great.
There is also, of course, the spirit of our age, which constantly tells everyone that judgment and moralizing are what Christianity is all about. Anyone who knows even the basics of Christianity would know that isn’t true, but in such a deeply post-Christian society, many people don’t.
But how much of it is our fault, as Christians? We have an obligation to bear witness to the truth, including to difficult moral truths the world doesn’t want to hear. We are often drawn into arguments about these things, both from the unbelieving world and from misguided souls within the church who think laxity or moral relativism are the way to show mercy. In fact, telling people that their sins are not sins denies them God’s mercy just as surely as condemnation and harsh judgment do, and in a more deceptive way.
But if we allow ourselves to be drawn into shouting those moral truths so loudly that it’s all people hear, what then? It’s a good examination of conscience, a good question to take to prayer. If a person in my life is struggling and looking for healing and hope, seeking God in the twists and turns of the human heart and the trials of this life, what does my life as a disciple of Jesus Christ say to them? Does it tell them they are loved, and that God is for them, and that there is healing and hope for them, beyond anything they can imagine? Or does it say something else?
I think one of the greatest lasting gifts that will come from the papacy of Pope Francis is his emphasis on the church as a field hospital and his teaching on accompanying people, meeting them and loving them where they’re at and walking with them in spiritual friendship as they grow in faith, even if it’s a long, gradual process.
If we are going to successfully evangelize, if we’re going to bring people the Good News that heals these deep wounds we all carry, I suggest it’s going to mean learning to accompany people in this way more and more deeply.
Deacon Kyle Eller is editor of The Northern Cross. Reach him at [email protected]