what it would be like to have a concrete set of beliefs instead of the fragile mosaic I’d created from the sand of secular culture, I considered the lives of people I’d known. How did other people live? What had I learned from that subconscious registry I’d compiled?
There was Jack, with his Catholic upbringing. He’d taken a dramatic detour from his faith in his twenties, but eventually returned to the Catholic Church. From the moment we became friends, Jack was there for me, no matter how removed I was from the faith and morality he embraced. I thought of Jack’s mother, Loretta, her gathering-in of the lost, the family’s acceptance of strange, heathen me. There was Jon, solid, unwavering. Stephen and Kim. I remembered Caroline, calling a cab from a hotel room as I slept off too many Bloody Marys. And Martha. Oh, the thought of Martha made my heart hurt. Having her baby no matter the cost in time, dollars, or peer ridicule. Martha touched me at a level so deep, I didn’t know I could feel that way anymore.
Other pictures sprang to mind, too: the mockery of classmates when I realized I was “nothing.” The manipulation of someone I’d trusted, attempts to trick me into salvation by pizza. Catholics who slept around on Friday nights and slipped into pews on Sunday morning, as if life was a box of tidy compartments that didn’t touch one another.
In the trial for religion, I’d filed away all sorts of testimony. I’d known genuine practitioners and transparent posers. At various times, I’d been hurt, angered, repelled, indifferent, and attracted.
I knew now what I wanted.
I had been watching people, consciously or subconsciously, all my life. I had tallied points without knowing that’s what I was doing. In the final analysis, the witness of people whose faith was honest, sturdy, and real swayed me. They had faith that they openly lived, faith real enough to change lives, as it was changing mine. These witnesses had faith that challenged and sometimes scared them, made them blush, put them in positions of ridicule. They stood tall and held fast, and their faith in God was so radiant it couldn’t be dimmed, contained, or compartmentalized.
That was the faith that shone on me, made me squint and blink, and initially look away as it blinded me with its oddity, until one day when I realized something about these people. Theirs was a light I wanted to soak up. I wanted that kind of brilliant conviction to burn away my pain and transform my soul into something dazzling and new.
Until I saw how some people lived, I hadn’t believed in God. But thanks to a faithful, resplendent cloud of witnesses who modeled real Christianity for me, a new light was dawning.
These people were the evidence that God believed in me.
Chapter 2
Do Fall in Love with Jesus
“YOU MEAN YOU LITERALLY PUT YOUR lips on it and kissed it? A piece of wood?”
Jack nodded and munched on a French fry.
“This isn’t some weird metaphor for what you were thinking,” I asked, “or for what you wanted to do?”
He shook his head.
“You actually walked up to this cross and you kissed it?”
He nodded again. “Yup,” he said. He ate another fry.
I took a sip of coffee and absorbed the story and the image. This was weird. Catholics were weird.
“Why?”
“Well,” he said, “it’s like this. On Good Friday, Catholics always do this. They have a service—I mean, we have this service. I guess I’m one of them again. It’s not a Mass, ’cuz it’s the only day of the year when we don’t have Mass—but it’s this service where we have veneration of the cross. Do you want me to explain veneration?”
“Please.”
“Okay,” he said. “Veneration means showing respect … honor. We’re honoring Jesus’ sacrifice for us by showing honor to the cross, because it was on the cross that he died for us, right? So kissing the cross is kissing the symbol of his sacrifice.”
“Do you have to kiss it? What if you feel weird about kissing a piece of wood?”
Jack smiled. “You don’t have to kiss it. There are other ways to show respect. You can genuflect, or you can bow, or you can just touch it if you want to. But I wanted to kiss it. I couldn’t wait to kiss the cross.”
I shook my head, not fully able to grasp this idea. Kissing an inanimate object. In public. It was too far out of the realm of my experience; it smacked of “cult.” Jack was going through a program at his church to learn, or relearn, about his faith as he made his way back to the Catholic Church he had left behind. Although I found most of what he told me incredibly odd, I was simultaneously intrigued.
In the glowing fluorescent light of a Perkins restaurant, Jack’s story about feeling the power of God by kneeling down and placing his lips on a wooden cross unsettled me. This wasn’t merely a pleasant little ceremony or a way to be politely respectful. He felt something. Deeply. Every time he talked about God these days—every time he talked about Jesus—it was like he was head over heels in love.
Better Than a Top Ten List
Whenever I see people immersed in things they’re passionate about, I’m struck by the joy they radiate. Whether their passion is for art, sports, music, theater, hobbies, job, or family, it’s irresistible and draws me in. Passion is magnetic. And when we encounter a soul who has genuinely fallen in love with Jesus, we encounter the most powerful kind of attraction. We don’t even label what these people do as evangelization—they may not even be conscious of what they’re doing. They’re simply emanating love for God.
It makes sense. Compare deep, true love for Jesus with marriage: If we want the world to know how marvelous the sacrament of marriage is, we hope to show them happy Catholic marriages. If we want the world to know how great Jesus is, we want them to see our love for him. If we want to transmit the idea that faith is life-changing, the world needs to see Jesus changing our lives. That kind of passion and relationship with the Lord is a far better witness than a top ten list about “Why Faith is a Good Thing.”
Feelings, of course, can’t be dictated. “Fall in love with Jesus” is not a prescription that we can run out and fill. But we can open ourselves to him and his love for us. If we’ve never felt that way before, we can start in a simple place. Take a look at people who radiate love for God. What are they doing that we’re not? What’s different about their prayer lives, their reading habits, their relationships? What can we, using their habits and practices as a starting point, begin doing that will ignite the flame?
Smitten by His Love
Pope Francis has said: “When one finds themselves with Jesus, they live the wondrous awe of that encounter and feel the need to look for him in prayer, in the reading of the Gospels. They feel the need to adore him, to know him and feel the need to announce him.”4
The Holy Father also reminds us that Jesus poured out everything for us, that true love is complete self-donation: “The cross of Christ invites us also to allow ourselves to be smitten by his love, teaching us always to look upon others with mercy and tenderness.”5
There was a time in my life when I couldn’t
