Reflections on Evangelization: Laughter should come easy

"May the good Lord deliver us from gloomy saints!"
                                                                            --St. Teresa of Avila

Humor is essential for growth in the spiritual life.  It is therapeutic and refreshing, lifting the weight of our cares. In fact, abiding humor is a sign of a healthy soul.  But it isn't just any form of humor, for even the demons laugh and find some refreshment in their jokes and gags.  The humor of demons' springs from malice and pride--their jokes always point back to their own prowess or cleverness, and what they find easy to despise (namely, us).  As Christians, it should be expected that our sources of humor run in the opposite direction: not in pride, but in our littleness and dependence on God; not in our own craft, but in welcoming the providential surprises of God; not in despising the follies of his "poor banished children of Eve", but in a gently pitying mirth.  

In the past several decades we have all heard laymen and religious reject talk of sin, the devil and spiritual warfare as gloomy and destructive of joy, but they have it exactly wrong.  In fact, it is only through a sober understanding of sin that we are freed for the joyful fruits of humility, and it it only by living each day in spiritual combat that we can laugh at our topsy-turvy world.  An abiding sense of our sin and weakness is not a psychological or spiritual handicap, it is actually a great grace from God!  Once we recognize our dependence on God's mercy and our need for angelic aid, then we will have the ability to laugh at ourselves and our circumstances.

There have been many amusing moments as I walk the streets and many of those moments point back to my own weakness and foolishness.  I think, for example, of the first time I walked the streets in my freshly sewn tunic.  A powerful wind repeatedly blew the front 'yoke' of my tunic with the Jesus Caritas heart right back into my face.  I'm sure the demons had a good laugh and I conceded it was funny since I had set out with such a solemn sense of purpose, a hidden belief in my own importance.  On another occasion a woman who knew how to party (what some people call a 'barfly') saw me coming and stepped out in front of me to block my path.  She straddled the sidewalk in her faded jean shorts, and firmly planted her hands against the pink tank top at her hips.  I looked into her wrinkled tan face, at the black eye-liner and sparkling lip gloss, and watched her erupt in hoarse laughter as she reached out and poked at my tunic.  I immediately joined her laughter.  She was right:  I looked like a fool, like a wayward time-traveller walking the streets.  If a Christian can't laugh--especially at himself--then he is finished.  He will collapse under the weight of his own seriousness and the gravity of the times.  He will collapse because he has secretly placed himself at the center of things rather than trusting that Christ has overcome the world.

St. Therese having some fun as Joan of Arc

The other day I was gripped by the seeming absurdity, the utter implausibility, of the traditional Catholic worldview.  In the age of microscopes that can peer at "invisible" organisms, and telescopes that can examine distant solar systems, who can still maintain a belief in invisible spirits--both holy and wicked?  Who can believe that all of our good and wicked actions will reverberate into eternity?  Where is this all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God with his Kingdom of Heaven and barren desert of Hell?  Hasn't science, the ingenuity and industry of man, uncovered everything and finally rendered life safe and predictable?  Mankind no longer has to cower in caves, fearful of the creatures in the forest, mysterious diseases and the wrath of the gods.  Civilization has finally won!  Or so it seems.

But all is not what it seems, and the faithful Christian needs a healthy sense of humor about these things.  When I walk the streets and a wounded, self-righteous person glowers at me as though I am his enemy, I laugh inwardly because he has it exactly wrong.  It is a moment of absurdity.  So often I want to say, "But I am the best friend you've got!  I will pray and sacrifice for you, and I want nothing in return.  But those whom you call your "friends", what do they want from you?"

We must have humility, humor and gratitude because the scales have fallen from our eyes, and what God has kept from the learned and powerful, he has revealed to the little ones.  It is a great grace and a great responsibility.  May we have the good humor to continue undisturbed along the Lord's path.

Where are the Catholic Street Evangelists?

Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians.  Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: "What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!"  I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and talents entrusted to them.    
                                             --St. Francis Xavier, from a letter recently featured in the Divine Office

The saints have a way of getting our attention.  Today the Church is blessed with countless laymen whom God has entrusted with "learning and talents", and yet so few take the faith to the streets.  Pope Francis has even implored Catholics to go out into the world, but perhaps his call has gotten lost in the headlines.  There is an abundance of Catholic books on seemingly every subject (with more published every year), and there is a dizzying number of online ministries and blogs, and yet all we see on the streets are Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and the occasional fundamentalist.  Yet St. Paul, the most piercing theologian the Church has ever known, was also her most tireless street evangelist.

The great saints agree that writing is secondary to the direct care of souls.  St. John Marie Vianney, the Cure of Ars, writes, "St. Francis de Sales, that great saint, would leave off writing with the letter of a word half-formed, in order to reply to an interruption."  In other words, any human need, any interruption by a soul "made in the image and likeness of God" commanded his attention over the demands of his writing ministry.  He still managed to write his pamphlets and books, but they were secondary to his face-to-face encounters with his fellow man.

Writing a book or managing a website can be an enjoyable and rewarding use of our time, but it can also be a time-comsuming process that only yields a small circulation among readers.  I'm writing a book like everyone else (hopefully my only book), and whenever I have a block of free time I ask God, "Should I write my book, or do the street ministry?" I always get the same impression: I should walk the streets.  The book will get done, but on God's schedule.  In fact, there's a secret: if I walk the streets when called, the next time I sit down to write, the word pours out quick and fresh. God's grace more than compensates for the time I've "lost" writing my book.  But it also goes deeper than that.  The material I write is also livelier because street evangelization rekindles the sacred fountains of the Christian imagination.

There are many reasons Christians don't pursue street ministry, but there seems to be one universal reaction to the apostolate: "Be safe!" or "Be careful out there."  or "That sounds dangerous."  Now there are better neighborhoods to walk if you'd like, and all neighborhoods need a visible Catholic presence, but I've been walking the grittier streets for a year and I've never felt threatened.  Not once.  The threat seems to be in the mind.  Perhaps the real threat, is walking out our front door and mixing with those we don't normally associate with.  The prostitutes, the angry young men, the at-risk youth, the addicts, the ex-cons.  But sometimes they are better company, more real, more compassionate, more substantial than we could ever imagine.  For my part, I used to sit in academic conferences and listen to secular professors and graduate students indulge in dreamy, narcissistic "social theorizing", and think, "I actually prefer the company of my solid cons back in maximum security prison.  At least they know what real life is like, what it means to love and hate and suffer and struggle."

But it's easy to see why people avoid doing street ministry.  Take last night, for example.  As I passed a food cart pavillion on SE 82nd, two young men jeered at me in between eating Philly cheesesteaks.  They hoped they might get a rise out of me, and so they shouted louder and louder until I was gone.  Then a john and a prostitute in her early twenties passed me traveling in the opposite direction.  She wore an electric pink down jacket and cap, and wearily trailed the john by three yards.  As I passed she gave me a sarcastic reproach, "Sorry I spit on the sidewalk."  A half hour later I passed the john again, but he was alone this time.  He cast his head down and avoided making eye contact again, but this time his head gave an unnatural jerk to the side as I passed, as a man flinches when a flashlight is shone in his eyes. I thought it had a spiritual significance, as though he were recoiling from Christ.  Perhaps it was like the reprobate who dies and then impulsively flees from the Lord upon seeing the glory of His love.

Fifteen minutes later I saw the young prostitute by the entrance of 7/11, waiting for the next john.  It's the usual hang out for prostitutes and the rare pimp.  She saw my discreet wave, but just stood watching me.  I couldn't read her expression. I kept looking back in the hope she would leave her post to talk, but she just watched me until I passed out of sight.

When I was near home, I passed the window of a little shop on Foster that had recently changed hands.  The shop used to be called "Vice", and sold smoking paraphernalia, lingerie, lubricants and sex toys.  Now it had a large poster in the window with a Latin title and symbols that seemed Catholic at first glance.  I felt a twinge of hope, maybe I've got some new friends in the neighborhood!  The poster had a dove and a cross and a chalice, with the title "Ordo Templi Orientis". But as I looked closer I realized the poster was merely aping Catholic imagery, and was an occultist inversion of the faith. When I got home I googled the name, and saw it was a secret esoteric society once associated with Aleister Crowley. Now this "secret society" is silly nonsense, a self-important pipe-dream of two or three lonely souls in the neighborhood, but they need prayer and sacrifice.

In fact, our cities are full of people just like the ones I met last night, and we desperately need Christians to witness to them.  Our Lord's words are timeless, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few."  Join St. Paul Street Evangelization, witness at Planned Parenthood every week, visit the abandoned in care facilities, or even start your own street apostolate.  But get out there!

Happy Feast Day, Blessed Charles!

Today is the Feast Day of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, patron of the apostolate and of so many other worthy lay and religious groups.  He was murdered 98 years ago today by an anxious young tribesman who was assigned to guard him while the rest of the warriors pillaged Charles's little compound.  In honor of his feast, I was intent on walking the streets today, and I had some hope that something special might happen.  I wasn't disappointed.  Well, at least I wasn't disappointed in Blessed Charles's sense of humor.  A cheerfully intoxicated fifty year-old woman followed me and insisted that I share her fried chicken leg.  Perhaps the chicken was meant for Blessed Charles's feast?  If so, I missed the clue. Instead I managed to distract her enough with friendly questions to avoid eating the leg.  She was great fun though, and could certainly use a few prayers.

After walking the streets I went to the archdiocese to talk to Todd Cooper, the acting Director of Evangelization, about the apostolate.  He was surprised when I pointed out that he had scheduled the meeting on Blessed Charles's Feast day, but as we know, Heaven is full of surprises.  I think the meeting was very rewarding for both us, and he was very patient when I went to tears talking about some of my old convict buddies.  Some of those buddies did me a great deal of good behind bars, and they are still in prison today.  Todd assured me I had Archbishop Sample's blessing, and said that when it comes to street ministry, "You're all we've got."  That made my eyes widen, and I felt like stepping out into the cold to resume the apostolate.  I'm sure the Lord will send Portland more workers soon since we know that Heaven's not stingy. God has already sent us Josh in Louisville, and there are plenty of good men in Portland.  My Mom's already agreed to sew two tunics to have on hand, and I've already got the fabric ready!

A Model for the Re-evangelization of the West

For the last decade Fr. Michel-Marie Zanotti-Sorkine has walked the gritty streets of Marseille, France in a cassock.  He walks the streets so that he might know all of his people, and he patiently waits for them every evening in the confessional.  He has brought many back to the faith, and has earned the respect of all the people of the diverse seaside metropolis.  The parish he was given was once almost empty, and now it is the busiest parish in Marseille.  His example has not gone unnoticed.  In fact, he has even inspired the good Archbishop Leonard of Brussels to found the Fraternity of the Holy Apostles after Fr. Zanotti-Sorkine's example.  The Fraternity has begun with three priests and seven seminarians, and has recently found a home in the once-closed old St Catherines'.  Like Father Zanotti-Sorkine, they walk highly-secularized Brussels in cassocks, and they bring the Gospel and sacraments to those who wouldn't otherwise seek them.

Fr. Zanotti-Sorkine has given us a model for how to re-evangelize the West.  He offers something old and something new to bring his people to the wedding feast of our Lord.  With his traditional dress, devotion to the confessional, and reverent mass he has reached deep into the time-honored treasures of the Church, and has been called another Cure of Ars.  His commitment to walking the neighborhoods is reminiscent of the early Franciscans and Dominicans, and represents the perennial missionary spirit of the Church.  He has also been adept at using modern technology to reach people through various forms of media: books, interviews, online sermons and even music.  God seems to have given him more hours in the day than the rest of us, and his success has earned him more than his fair share of critics.  Some critics find him too traditional, other critics object to the fact that he gives our eucharistic Lord to prostitutes (I would be ecstatic if some of the prostitutes I see every week would join me in confession and mass!), or that he has an attractive website and following.  He has taken some pastoral risks, but has also shown great faith in laboring for the Lord.  Who knows how long he walked the streets in his cassock before people finally relaxed and welcomed him?  And who knows how long he sat in the confessional--night after night--before people finally began to trickle in?  In his ten years at the parish of St. Vincent de Paul, the good father has shown us that Catholicism still works.  What worked for Sts. Francis and Dominic will still work for today, and what revitalized the village of Ars under St. Vianney can still happen in parishes today.

Fr. Sorkine and the Fraternity

Fr. Zanotti-Sorkine has recently taken a new assignment at the Shrine of Our Lady of Laus.  We wish him all of God's blessings, and also for the good priests and seminarians of the Fraternity of the Holy Apostles.

How Blessed Charles was Converted

The other day while doing the ministry I was reading the old Bazin biography of Blessed Charles de Foucauld.  It's my book of choice while walking the streets, while waiting "for something to happen".   I came upon the part of the book where Blessed Charles first met the priest who was to play a decisive role in bringing him back to the Church.  He met Father Huvelin at a fashionable salon or evening party when he was fresh off his great success as an explorer and geographical writer.  Charles was a sought-after personage at the time, yet his soul was restless.  Unbeknownst to himself, his soul was ripe for conversion as his objects of desire had faded in disillusion.  First he had tasted of life as a young viscount, as a man of exquisite luxury and as a man with an amiable mistress.  Then he had excelled in perilous situations as few men do: first as a cavalry officer in combat and then as an undercover explorer in the hard, hostile land of North Africa.  While he had finally come into his manhood and sense of himself, there was still an unease that dogged him.  He was aware that he lacked the peace and ease of spirit that marked his devout relations, and their Christian example was not lost on him.

But what Charles needed was a catalyst, to meet just the right person or more accurately, just the right friend.  He found that in Father Huvelin.  It seemed like  a "chance" encounter at the salon, though we know that with God there is no element of chance.  Father Huvelin had gone to the best of schools, though he was not at ease with the luxury and the privilege of high society.  The Bazin biography tells us that he "did not try to be smart" in Charles's presence, but was just himself: an unassuming blend of simplicity, profundity and earnestness.  Somehow, perhaps by an instinct in the soul, the two men recognized in each other a common bond and joined destiny.  Bazin beautifully tells us that "“they recognized and waited for one another in their hearts", and later considered their meeting "a great event”.

I was amazed at reading these passages because they capture the central purpose of the apostolate.  Blessed Charles's own conversion is a model of how the apostolate approaches the spiritually famished in order to forge a genuine connection.  While life-changing friendships are rare, we walk the streets in the hope that God will put us in just the right place to meet just the right person.  A conversion to Christ usually comes through human relationships, and this makes sense when you consider that the committed faithful are members of Christ's own mystical body.  Thus, if we share in Christ's divine life, then in meeting us they are meeting Christ in us.  God has given all of us a great privilege and responsibility to go out and bring Christ to others, and the surest way of bearing Christ is through the Eucharist.

How the Apostolate Began, Part IV

I continued to sketch the ministry in writing for that day and the next.  Just as the apostolate unfolded on paper, so did the purpose of my life begin to unfold in my mind.  I became certain that the apostolate was as central to my life's calling as my vocation to be a husband and father, as well as my vocation to share the truths of the faith through writing.  From the beginning of time we are all fashioned to play our specific part in God's perfect plan of salvation.  In a sense, we are supernaturally "stamped" with qualities, traits and desires that lead us--amidst the freedom of our choices--to the purpose God has for us.  Thus, if a woman has been given the gift of motherhood, there's a mystical sense in which she has carried that calling with her throughout her life.  Even as a little girl she has been "stamped" in the image of motherhood, just as an acorn carries with it the "plan" to be an oak tree.

I began to understand that my past experiences in prison and academia had laid the groundwork--were the preparatory crucible--for my future work as a street evangelist.  My own past was being unlocked before me, and treasures were brought forward amidst my past sufferings and sins.  I began to finally see all the pieces of my life as a coherent whole: the long walks in every kind of weather, the abiding care for at-risk youth, ex-cons and prostitutes, the intellectual desire to understand human history and defend the truth, the love for the fading treasures of the Catholic tradition, and lastly, the need for Christian brotherhood that is a nobler friendship than the solidarity I found amongst the "solid cons" in prison.

Where's the brotherhood among Catholic men?

The concerns and pre-occupations that gripped me also seemed to be some of the weakest parts of the Church in the "developed" West.  The apostolate seemed to effortlessly provide a remedy for many of the needs of the Church: the need to re-claim and model a deeper sense of prayer and worship, the revival of a spirit of reparation, the need to reestablish a public prophetic witness, the need to go out and find poor sinners where they languish amidst spiritual starvation, and the recovery of Catholic masculinity and friendship.

In the initial burst of thinking and writing on the ministry, I envisioned a small army of like-minded laymen tromping through the cities, with some men even serving as full-time missionaries, and some of the single men living together in run-down urban Jesus Caritas houses.  I thought the ministry might help test young men who were discerning a call to the priesthood.  They could spend a year walking the streets, and recent college graduates could also spend a year or two before they met their spouse and got on with "real" life.  I knew it would take a miracle for the apostolate to become what I envisioned, but I half-expected a miracle since I had been haunted by the supernatural since my conversion.  But if I had paid closer attention to the life of Blessed Charles and his lonesome ministry, then  I would have known that these were only daydreams.  I confess them now so that you might know my foolishness.

What is clear is that the ministry will always be a part of my life until I am overcome by old age.  It's become a part of who I am, just as it sprung from my own hopes and pre-occupations.  I may only write about the ministry in fits and starts, but I'll always walk the streets in the hope that God will put me in just the right place at the right time.

How the Apostolate Began, Part III

I still wasn't wholly convinced that Blessed Charles de Foucauld was the right patron for the ministry until I understood that there was an analogy between the modern cities of the West and the Muslim tribes of Blessed Charles' beloved desert.   Just as the tribes practiced a crude form of syncretist Islam that was adapted to their tribal society, so do many Christians in the West adapt the faith to the contemporary impulses of materialism, new age, and false notions of autonomy and sexual liberation. Both peoples move amidst the comforting signs and symbols of religion or spiritual yearnings but without the transforming power of an encounter with the living God.  And so both peoples travel through a spiritual desert with an apparent disinterest in the leaven of Christ's love--a leaven that can permeate a society and raise our hearts up the kingdom of God.

Then I remembered the three groups of people that God had shown me outside the gallery, and reflected on how Blessed Charles might minister to them.  It was clear that the three groups of people represented three different states of soul, or three fundamental dispositions we may have toward God.   We can live in the friendship of Christ, we can be driven on by a zest for sin and live squarely against Christ, or we can live apart from Christ amidst sorrow and dis-illusion over our fallen idols.  The last state is really just the state of the prodigal son, and is a fertile ground for a deep, lasting conversion.

I thought that if Blessed Charles met the family who lived in the friendship of Christ, that he would offer Christian hospitality and fellowship--recognizing the divine life of Christ that is in all Christ's friends.  Blessed Charles's life of radical Christian discipleship would also provide a salutary example, just as street ministry suggests a more radical expression of the Christian life.  The apostolate could offer a gentle impetus for Christians to go deeper in the faith, and it would also reassure those evangelicals and pentecostals who equate Catholicism with a luke-warm faith.

If Blessed Charles met the poor man who had turned his back on Christ, Blessed Charles would show him the love of Christ and the "peace that surpasseth all understanding".  He would offer prayer and sacrifice for the poor man, and humbly bear his scorn.  He would only show him love, and if that love were humble and true, then the man may recognize it and a slow movement may begin in his soul.

If Blessed Charles met the woman who was ripe for conversion he would set aside everything else, and begin the walk of faith with her.  He would offer prayer, catechesis, books and a ready ear for questions and concerns.  He would patiently remain with her through the ups and downs as conversion can be a rocky process since that person's soul becomes the center of a great spiritual tug o' war.  He would be mindful that the woman may have rejected the faith in the past because she had never met a person transformed by Christ.  The goal of the apostolate must be to become a "little Christ" so that others may see Christ in us.  In witnessing our humility, patience and supernatural charity they will begin to believe that there really is something to the ancient faith, and that it's a bracing alternative to the little dry gods of modern culture.

After reflecting on these things it became clear that Blessed Charles was certainly the right patron for the ministry.  As I considered his life and example, the heart and mind of the apostolate gently unfolded before me.

To be continued...