Catholicism: A Great Adventure and Love Affair, UN Catholic Club, March 4, 2021

March 4, 20217 min read

Fr. Roger J. Landry
UN Catholic Club
Virtual Meeting
“Catholicism, A Great Adventure and Love Affair”
March 4, 2021

To watch a video of the presentation, please click below:

To listen to an audio recording of this talk, please click below:

The outline for the talk was:

Introduction
- I was asked to speak about Catholicism as a Great Adventure and Love Affair.
- It’s a provocative title, because most non-Catholics would not look at Catholicism that way. If they did, they would be busting down the doors to get in.
- Many Catholics don’t look at it that way either. Rather than a great adventure, many regard it as boring. Rather than a love affair, many look at it as a thing of obligation and duty.
- And yet, why is the title appropriate? Why is it essential for our spiritual growth to relate to the faith as a great adventure and love affair? How can we better convey that sense of adventure and love to others, both fellow Catholics who may be fallen away, or lukewarm, or lifelessly obedient, as well as to non-Catholics who don’t perceive the excitement and passion?
Let’s first look at the faith as an adventure
- Most people are stimulated by a sense of adventure. There’s something thrilling about the discovery of things that are new, challenging, daring, whether it’s hiking up a mountain, traveling cross country, exploring woods.
- Adventure comes from the same Latin word for Advent, which means future coming, or expected arrival. Sometimes, of course, we can look to the future with dread. We can think whatever surprises will come will be the thing of nightmares, not dreams. But that’s not the way we look at adventures. Adventures still contain the element of surprise, of things we don’t know, but we’re filled with enthusiasm not anxiety, because we have a sense of expectation and hope.
- We can call the faith an adventure because ultimately when God is leading us, we trust that all things, whether seemingly propitious or adverse, will work out for the good.
- In the Bible we see the sense of adventure a lot:
  - Abraham leaving Ur of the Chaldees to set off for a far away land, trusting in God.
  - Moses and the Israelites leaving Egypt behind
  - The lengthy journey of the Magi following the star of Bethlehem
  - Christ calling the apostles to follow him, not telling them where, but trusting in him.
- Why do some Christians not sense that adventure today? Why don’t they treat it as dynamic?
- Often because they’re not surrounded by people who do.
- An adventure can only happen when we’re ready to move.
- Our faith is missionary. Jesus is constantly using action verbs: come, go, follow me. When we meet missionaries, we clearly capture that sense of adventure that got them to leave home, travel thousands of miles away, to places often without running water, without electricity, with mosquito nets. Their faith comes alive because they are living an adventure.
- But many don’t journey. They’re static. They’ve often stopped searching. They’re satiated by the fulfillment of lesser hopes that they’re no longer drawn toward the horizon. When we’re surrounded by these, we can often take on their inertia.
- God is always calling us to adventure. But are we ready to leave things behind to follow him?
Faith as a love affair.
- It’s a love affair because it begins with God’s love. He’s passionately in love with us. A sign of that love is creation. An even greater one is redemption. What a journey it is to enter the world and die for the beloved, but that’s precisely what God did.
- That’s a love we’re supposed to receive and reciprocate.
- Many don’t sense this love of God. And many are dry when it comes to loving God back.
  - They don’t think they’re lovable.
  - Or they’re turned off by the overly saccharine emotional side of love: they think love is soft and they can’t stand expressions like the love of neighbor or love of enemies because they think loving involves liking, rather than means unconquerable benevolence and a capacity for sacrifice.
- Nietzsche once said that he might have been able to believe in a redeemer had he ever met someone redeemed. Some might say that they might be able to believe in the faith as a love affair if they can witness people who are in love.
- That’s why priests and religious vocations are so important. They show that Christ is the pearl of great price worth selling everything they have to obtain. That’s why the fidelity of martyrs and confessors is so important because it shows that Christ is worth living for and dying for. That’s why things like adoration, and daily Mass, and retreats, and heroic service of the poor and needy are important because it’s an opportunity to express this love.
- In the Catechism we focus on four main pillars in the faith. Each is supposed to be a love affair:
  - Creed — a love affair for the truth.
  - Liturgy — a love affair for beauty
  - Morals — a love affair for goodness
  - Prayer — a love affair for God himself, to spend time with him.
- New Evangelization
  - Part of the renewal of the Church is to live our faith as an adventure of love.
  - It’s important for each of us to focus with gratitude on how God has revealed this reality to us so that we can better communicate it to others.
    - Adventures of faith in my own life
      - Going to the holy hours as a child, the incense, kissing relics, entering into the mystery
      - Exploring beautiful Churches, with all their history, with all the faith and meaning
      - Reading St. John of the Cross and the geography of the interior life.
      - Reading the Bible much more and discovering so much I didn’t know
      - Pilgrimages to various Christian sites, the Holy Land, Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe.
      - The adventure of a priestly call. Danger. Suffering.
      - The adventure of coming to work for the Holy See.
      - A sense that much more is in the future. That there’s still so much to learn, to do.
      - The great adventure of eternal life. Excite to be led past the veil.
    - Love affair
      - Discovery of God’s love for me. Personally. That I’ve lovable.
      - Discovery of real Christian love for others. Friendship. Capacity to lay down one’s life. Sacrifices required.
      - This is a love affair lived daily. Prayer. Mass. Rosary. Charity. Making everything relational, loving. Receptive of God’s love, then self-giving.
  - Lent is meant to help us to do experience this adventure of love.
    - Adventure of going out into the desert.
    - Adventure of pushing ourselves into the depth of God in prayer.
    - Adventure of testing our limits with bold fasting.
    - Adventure of driving us outward to those in need with the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
    - Adventure of a new life, repenting of whatever keeps us from God and believing with a faith that can move mountain ranges.
  - And so this Lent is designed to remind us and insert us into the reality of our faith as a great adventure and love affair. This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. How proud we are to profess it, in Christ Jesus our Lord.