Franciscan at Home

One day about 6 years ago, when I worked as a Director of Religious Education for a rural Catholic parish, I was in my office browsing Facebook. I saw an image of a Catholic evangelist on a boardwalk out in public evangelizing a man wearing a Darth Vader helmet and riding a unicycle. Of course, I had to click through the link to read the story about St. Paul Street Evangelization. I contacted the ministry and started a team at my parish. I admit that I didn’t actually expect that direct evangelization would be fruitful, at least I didn’t expect that a 2-minute conversation with someone that I never met could lead to a genuine conversion to Jesus Christ and his Church. I thought most of our work would just be arguing about doctrine and planting seeds. After all, wasn’t everyone walking down the street wondering whether Catholics worship Mary?

Therefore, I didn’t know how to react when, the second time I went out to evangelize in our community, we met a man, Tom, who had just read the Catechism of the Catholic Church and wanted to know more about Jesus. He didn’t know any Catholics and was too afraid to walk into a random Catholic Church. I was floored that after we explained the Gospel, his heart was “burning within him” and he wanted to know what to do next.

How were we going to help him at that moment to satisfy his need for Jesus in his life? I knew my priest wouldn’t be pleased if my team baptized him right then and there. Telling him that he should just “go to a program” wasn’t a satisfactory answer. A program a few weeks distant would not address his need for a relationship with the Savior who loves him right now.

In Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s 2011 address to the bishops of the Philippines, he states that “your great task in evangelization is therefore to propose a personal relationship with Christ as key to complete fulfillment.” That moment on the street may not have been the right moment to baptize Tom, but it was the perfect time to introduce him to Jesus. We prayed together to thank God for Tom’s life, repent of our sins, and ask Christ to come into Tom’s heart, to give him all of the graces God had for him. We led him to Jesus.

The most memorable statement from the angry email was, “This is not what my son signed up for.” Three weeks prior to departure, I had finally informed our youth group of some final needs for our summer mission trip to Hardin County, Kentucky: a sleeping pad or air mattress, as we would likely be sleeping on a floor, and a swim suit—mainly for the tarpaulin-screened bucket baths we would be taking. “Kevin McQuiggen’s” mother was distressed by the conditions in which her son would be living for the week of the trip. The theme for the week was Catholic social teaching, so I replied how our “difficulties” for the week would be a good exercise in solidarity with the people with whom we would be staying to try to assuage her objections.

My town has only a few people I would consider “rich.” The population is mainly mid to lower-middle-class. Kevin’s family is solidly middle-class, and his parents are understandably happy that their children have a comfortable life. Kevin was a regular altar-server, but wasn’t involved in much else at our parish. When he did attend some youth activity it was for him primarily a social event. I was somewhat surprised when his mother turned in the paperwork to have him make the trip, really. The first time I had tried to recruit some teens after a Mass he had jokingly asked, “Can’t we just write a check and stay home?”

Find out what happens to Kevin and how God changes his life. And find out about Laura, who believes God doesn't love her...can't love her.

“I know my kid has problems, but at least she’s not on drugs!” You’ll hear this uttered by moms appealing to their child’s teacher or by fathers trying to rationalize their son’s lackluster behavior. The intent of the phrase is to make one’s existing defects of character seem less significant when compared to someone who has “real” problems. In fact, I remember a mildly heated conversation during my own teen years, when my parents were beside themselves trying to get me to manage my personal life. My mom, sensing the tension and realizing that I really was a good kid, paused at one point and said, “Son, we really are pleased with you, at least you’re not on drugs.” Comforted by this low bar, I continued in my mediocrity.

While this statement is intended to give comfort, it offers a skewed perspective on our purpose for living. Our purpose is not to achieve an absence of vice but to pursue the presence of virtue (Gal 5:22-24; CCC 1784, 1803). If our life is simply measured by the lack of destructive behaviors, we will have set a low bar indeed.

Many parish RCIA processes operate on the “at least you’re not ___________” principle. They measure a candidate’s progress by the lack of obvious sin, more than the presence of virtue or adherence to the Gospel. Due to the challenges in the conversion process, a pastor or RCIA director can unwittingly believe that as long as one is willing to be baptized and there is no presence of serious sin, the RCIA has done its job. If you have found yourself in this place, allow me to inspire you to raise the level of expectation and transform your RCIA into what the Church intends, that is, to generate unbaptized evangelists.

Great Expectations

The expectation of the Church is that the RCIA is supposed to train catechumens (apprenticeship) in the entire Christian life.[i] By entire, the Church really means entire. By God’s grace, everything that should be part of the post-baptismal Christian life, with the exception of sacraments, should be present in some form before baptism: faith, hope, charity, repentance, prayer, moral life, good works, etc. (RCIA 75.1-3). There is one more aspect in which the Church expects catechumens to participate: the apostolic work of evangelism. The Church says, “catechumens should also learn how to work actively with others to spread the Gospel and build up the Church by the witness of their lives and by professing their faith (RCIA 75.1, AG 14).

So often those working in RCIA are just hoping catechumens will come to Mass every Sunday, and the thought of including catechumens in the apostolic work of the Church never crosses their minds. Most RCIA processes are structured for catechumens to only be receivers and not givers.

Since its initial presentation almost forty years ago, Pope St. John Paul II’s catechesis Man and Woman He Created Them (henceforth “Theology of the Body” or TOB) has borne inestimable fruits in the personal faith lives of countless men and women, in the life of the Church and its theology, and in the world at large. In my own work, I have seen firsthand just how transformative the TOB vision of sex, love, marriage, human personhood, and the mystery of redemption in Christ can be for those answering Christ’s call to discipleship. So much good has come from St. John Paul II’s gift to the Church that I think we can rightly stand in awe of all that God has been able to accomplish by way of this singular catechesis.

At the same time, I realize, like so many others, that we are still just tapping into the full potential of TOB and that important elements of the catechesis have yet to make their full impact.

One of those underdeveloped elements is what St. John Paul II refers to as “an anthropology of the resurrection,” which he describes as having “key meaning for the formation of our theological anthropology as a whole” (TOB 66:6).[MOU1] In saying this, St. John Paul II teaches us that the truth of the resurrection and the glorified state of humanity in heaven are decisive for our self-understanding and for understanding how God is working in us already in this life. Rather than being merely something that we celebrate at Easter and in our other liturgies, or merely something we look forward to in the next life, the resurrection is a truth of our faith that has great significance for our daily lives in the here and now.

To help us bring the relevance of the resurrection into our daily lives, St. John Paul II encourages us to cultivate “the hope of everyday” (TOB 86:6-8), which extends our hope in the resurrection of the dead in the future world of heaven into an expectation that the saving power of God will begin to conquer the death of sin and give us a newness of life in Jesus Christ already in this world. Simply put, hope enables us to grasp that if God can raise a corpse to everlasting life in him in heaven, then God can even make sinners like us holy in this life. The hope of everyday essentially means being convinced that he is going to do both.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s work consists of over 800 paintings and focuses on classical and religious subject matter. We can appreciate his mastery of technique in this painting of “The Holy Women at the Tomb,” set on the morning of Christ’s resurrection. It illustrates well the mystery of the resurrection and is a window into the first announcement of Christ’s triumph over the grave. We will use this work to dive deeper into this particular scene and explain how the composition creates a contrast between death and life.

This scene depicts four figures, three women and an angel, completed in the Realist style. We will focus on Mark’s account of the resurrection, since his Gospel names three specific women who went to the tomb the morning of Christ’s resurrection. The Gospel writer tells us these women are, “Mary Mag′dalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salo′me” (Mk 16:1). Just three days prior, they must have experienced immeasurable distress as they witnessed Christ’s passion and death by crucifixion. Their dark clothing and expressions marked by grief illustrate the toll of his death upon them.

The event depicted in the painting takes place on the Sunday morning after the Sabbath, following Christ’s crucifixion and hurried burial, which was due to the approaching Sabbath. Jewish custom would have prevented any of Jesus’ followers from tending to his body on the Sabbath. Therefore, these women returned to Christ’s tomb to anoint his body at the first permissible moment. The Gospel tells us, “And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen” (Mk 16:2). The rising sun can be interpreted as a symbol of hope. The morning sun has also been interpreted as a symbol of rebirth by many past cultures. It seems to foreshadow what the women will encounter.

Experience repeatedly shows us that those who live through a crisis without losing faith are often the best able to bear hope to those who are suffering. This is true whether the suffering one endures is of body or of spirit. Perhaps we all know someone who has survived cancer and becomes an extraordinary advocate and helper for those who receive that frightening diagnosis. The cancer survivor is deeply attuned to the emotions that come with that diagnosis, to the difficult path of surgery and chemotherapy, and to the immense joy that comes if at last remission is declared. All of the Twelve Step programs, a time-proven gift for those who struggle with addictions, are rooted in the compassionate understanding of those who have faced the same challenges. The one who has fought the constant battle to overcome addiction to alcohol, drugs, or other means of seeking to cope with painful realities can be a life-changing support to another who wakes up to the devastating effects of addiction.

En efecto, el cristiano no es un profeta de desventura... La esencia de su anuncio es lo opuesto, lo opuesto a la desventura: es Jesús, muerto por amor y que Dios resucitó la mañana de Pascua. Y este es el núcleo de la fe cristiana.

The Christian is not a prophet of misfortune. …The essence of the Christian proclamation is the opposite, the opposite of misfortune: it is Jesus who died for love and whom God raised on Easter morning. And this is the nucleus of Christian faith. If the Gospels had ended at Jesus’ burial, the story of this prophet would have been added to the many biographies of heroic figures who expended their lives for an ideal. The Gospel would then be an edifying book, and also a comforting one, but it would not be a proclamation of hope.

But the Gospels do not end on Good Friday. They go beyond it; and indeed, it is this additional fragment which transforms our lives. Jesus’ disciples felt dejected on the Saturday after the Crucifixion. The stone that was rolled against the door to the sepulchre had also sealed the three thrilling years they had lived with the Teacher of Nazareth.

“It would make no difference to my faith,” someone once assured me, “if they found the bones of Jesus.” He spoke only of his faith not being shaken and did not claim anything about the faith of others. About the same time, I received the results of a questionnaire on the resurrection presented to several hundred college students. Almost 90% agreed that they could not believe in the risen Jesus unless his tomb was found empty. They accepted the underlying argument of the graffito one sees on walls in the springtime: “There will be no Easter this year. They have found the body.”

What is the historical evidence that underpins accepting the empty tomb? And how does the empty tomb center Christian faith in Jesus risen from the dead?

Evidence of the Resurrection
The New Testament offers at least three strands of evidence that support the historicity of the empty tomb story: the testimony of Mark 16 (followed by Matthew 28 and Luke 24) that three women discovered Jesus’ tomb to be open and empty on the first Easter Sunday; the probably independent witness of John 20 that Mary Magdalene made that discovery (immediately confirmed by Peter and “the beloved disciple”); and the implications of Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 15.