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April 25, 2024Last week I was having dinner at the home of parishioners, and before dinner, the husband and I were talking about some of the books we are reading. He spoke about one he had just finished about the Battle of Plattsburgh during the War of 1812. It was certainly a nice moment of humility for me because while I like to think I have a working knowledge of the War of 1812, I had nothing I could offer the conversation. So instead, I listened while he spoke about battle tactics and the effects the battle had on bringing the British to the negotiating table. I eventually got to thinking “this must have been sort of what it felt like when the Gospel was first being spread.”
We take so much for granted when it comes to our faith because even if we were not raised in the Church, we live in a region of the country that is saturated in the history of Catholicism. Many people outside the Church have somewhat of a working knowledge of the faith (or at least what they think the Church teaches). However, how foreign the Gospel must have sounded to the people that first heard it. A faith that teaches it is better to serve than to be served, that we need to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and that the Son of God willingly gave Himself up to death for our sins. These concepts would have felt strange to hear and though we can imagine they caused a lot of questions to arise within them, the first converts likely didn’t know how to immediately respond.
Understanding our faith is not enough to evangelize. There have been many great thinkers in the Church who have been better suited for the classroom than a young adult event, because they come to their relationship with Christ as an academic pursuit rather than an encounter with the eternal. If we are to spread the Gospel, we need to do so with some enthusiasm. People may not completely understand what we have, but we ought to present it in a way in which they want it for themselves. Put another way, you wouldn’t teach someone to love baseball by handing them a rulebook and explaining how the dimensions of the field are calculated. If you want someone to fall in love with baseball, you take them to a game. They may not understand the rules at first, it may even feel boring at times, but the beauty of the game permeates the mind when it’s a nice summer day, the drinks are cold, and the runners are at the corners with two outs in a tie game.
Faith is the most important thing that we have in our lives because it gives meaning to our lives. In a world that continues to feel disconnected as people respond to one crisis after another, we need to proclaim the Gospel. I did not know anything about the Battle of Plattsburgh before last week, but through one conversation I came to a greater knowledge, and because of the enthusiasm of the speaker, I wanted to learn more. If a conversation can lead one to desire to read more about a little-known battle from a little-known war, how much greater can our conversation lead others to a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.
In Christ,
Fr. Chris
