Fr. Roger J. Landry
Interview with Randy Hain
For the Book, “Joyful Witness: How To Be An Extraordinary Catholic”
February 26, 2014
Father Landry, I know you were raised Catholic. Did you know from your early years that you felt called to the priesthood? When did you feel that calling?
My priestly call happened basically in two stages, the first when I was very young and the second when I was in college.
My first awakening to a priestly vocation happened when I was four. At daily Mass with my mother and my twin brother, I carefully watched our pastor, Fr. Jon Cantwell, devoutly pronounce the words of consecration. With a four-year-old’s sense of wonder, and a solid five-year-old’s catechesis about the Real Presence that I had received at home, I was fascinated that God had come down from heaven to earth and was in our Church. I remember wishing that I was tall enough to be able to climb up on top of the altar to peer into the chalice, because I wanted to see what Jesus’ blood looked like. Then I beheld Fr. Cantwell, who was 70 but frail, gingerly maneuver his way down the marble steps of the sanctuary to give Jesus to those who were old enough and lucky enough to be able to receive him. I remember saying to myself, “The priest must be the luckiest man in the whole world — capable of holding God in his fingertips and giving him to others.”
I then watched Fr. Cantwell bring the ciborium to the tabernacle, located on the side altar in front of the pew where we were kneeling. He put the ciborium behind the veil, struggled to genuflect, shut the bronze tabernacle door and returned to the altar. My eyes, however, remained transfixed on Jesus behind the door. I prayed silently and simply, “Jesus, make me a priest so that I can give you to others like Fr. Cantwell!” I did not realize at the time that desiring to be priest does not a priestly vocation make, but, as St. Therese once said, if God wants to give us something, he normally implants within us a desire to ask for it, and that’s certainly what happened that early morning at daily Mass.
Over the course of the next 25 years until I was ordained a priest — a time that I’ve always viewed as an extended course in priestly preparation — that desire to become a priest in order to bring Christ to others never left me. Growing up, I also naturally developed many other aspirations: to become a husband and father, a catcher for the Red Sox, a professional tennis player, a medical doctor, a pro-life political kingmaker, a college professor and more. In my more mature moments when I began seriously pondering the future, however, I would confess to myself and others that I believed God had already given me a strong priestly identity, a love for God and the Church, and a desire to serve, all of which I took as signs of a vocation.
The second major stage in my vocational discernment happened during my college years at Harvard. I remember a Jesuit priest friend’s joking that my twin Scot and I were going to Harvard “to lose the faith.” The first time I encountered blatant anti-Catholicism was a few weeks into my freshmen year when my roommate had some friends over who were upperclassmen. They hated what they mistakenly believed the Church to be: an oppressor of women because it opposed abortion and a persecutor of gays because it taught that same-sex activity is wrong. I had many late night debates with these bright students. I learned from those tete-a-teteshow great the need was for the Church to be able to refute such errors and how much I personally needed to grow in faith and in my knowledge of apologetics and Church history in order to be a part of the solution.
A great help in this regard was my finding and frequenting an off-campus Catholic study center called Elmbrook, run by priests and laymen in Opus Dei. There I began to receive formation in a daily plan of life geared not only to intellectual nourishment but to sanctifying my studies and whole young existence. The priests there, Fr. Dave Cavanagh and Fr. Sal Ferigle, became my spiritual directors, inspired me and greatly helped my discernment.
A very important moment happened during a conversation with Fr. Cavanagh early in my freshman year. He was a hockey player during his own time at Harvard and still very much an athlete and so it was very easy to connect with him. He asked me whether I had given any thought to what I might do after Harvard. Normally when priests had asked that question before, I would generally say, “I’m thinking about becoming one of you guys,” conscious that most priests were thrilled that God might be calling a young man to be able to continue their selfless work. Most priests would smile, or make a joke, or say a very encouraging word. Fr. Cavanagh responded with a poker face.
Without missing a beat, he asked, “Well, what do you think Godmight be asking of you when you finish Harvard?”
I didn’t like his line of thought, suggesting that someone God might not want me to be a priest. “Why wouldn’t God want me as a priest?,” I replied. “There’s a vocations crisis! God needs priests and I have a desire to be one and serve him. I’ve lived a moral life. Why wouldn’t he be calling me?”
Still with his poker face, Fr. Cavanagh asked, “Well, isn’t there a vocations crisis for good Catholic husbands and dads? Don’t you think God needs good, moral Catholic lawyers, and doctors, and teachers?” He went on with a few questions of this sort before I simply admitted that he had he had treated my argument the way the ancient archers treated St. Sebastian’s body.
So with all the flourish of a great litigator — he was himself a lawyer before he was a priest — he said, “Well, what do you think Godmight be asking of you when you finish Harvard?” And I replied, “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask him.”
Fr. Cavanagh said that he would help me in that discernment.
The process took two-and-half-agonizing years of prayer as God was purifying my motivations and strengthening me in patience. Even though I was praying every day for a couple of hours, my prayer to some degree atrophied as it basically became egocentric, something to which at the time I was oblivious. I didn’t grasp that constantly asking God, “What you do you want meto do?,” can turn the whole focus in prayer away from God and toward oneself.
It was only during the first semester of my senior year that I got clarity.
By that point I had recognized that my principal vocation was the fundamental calling of every disciple, to be a saint, to allow God’s love to become the defining reality of my life, and allow that love to overflow back to God and toward others. The question of what God was asking of me in terms of a state of life in the Church was secondary to this call to holiness. And so I decided totally to entrust myself to God and just ask him for the graces to take this primary vocation seriously as I was feeling the pressure to prepare for what would happen after college, whether medical school, or political work advancing the pro-life cause, or something else.
I prayed a novena to the Blessed Virgin to whom I had consecrated my vocation and said this prayer each day after receiving Holy Communion, “Lord, whether you want me to be a priest, a garbage collector, or anything else, please give me the vocation to do it with the spirit and the fervor of the saints.”
I meant those words and I could feel the grace of a real detachment from the outcome starting to form, that my real desire was now to do what God desired, whatever it be. A certain Ignatian indifference was developing within me. On the ninth day, in an unexpected way in a quiet chapel during first Friday devotions, God gave me the answer within, that he was indeed calling me to the priesthood. I was filled with a sense of peace and conviction that I’ve never lost, even though there were some Crosses and tests along the way.
You are well-known as one who ‘lives in the truth of our Catholic faith” through your writing, speaking and priestly ministry at St. Bernadette Parish in Fall River, MA. In what ways do you encourage your parishioners and other audiences to also live in the truth? What practical advice can you offer?
I long for the day when every Catholic priest — and every Catholic disciple — will be well-known as one who “lives in the truth of our Catholic faith!” I think it’s a minimal expectation and the path of true happiness, not a dry martyrdom!
But I realize that at present we’re living at a time when the reputation of priests have suffered so badly that in the popular imagination they’re associated more with scandals than with sanctity and when the majority of Catholic lay people are associated more with their failure rather than their fidelity in living according to the commandments.
Even among practicing Catholics today, it can seem that God is asking something heroic of us when he commands us to put Him first by praying each day, to watch their language, to worship Him on the Lord’s day, to reverence gratefully those who gave them life, to do no harm to their neighbor, to love rather than use others sexually, to respect others’ property, to tell the truth, and to be happy rather than envious at other’s good fortune.
But that’s the culture in which the Church is now seeking to proclaim the Gospel with freshness, where what was once the minimum has become the maximum and what was once routine has become radical.
In a sense, however, that’s a great place to be starting the new evangelization, because we can’t presume the building blocks any longer. We need to lay those foundations. And if we can get people excited about the pillars and to lay them correctly, then it’s much easier later to build.
In teaching the faith today, I try to do several things.
First, I always try to preach the Gospel as “Good News” rather than “bad news.” I believe what Jesus said that the “truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32) and so I try to teach the truth that God has revealed is not only splendid but a genuinely liberating force. So often people can look at Jesus’ more challenging truths as moral and existential straightjackets, but they’re exactly the opposite.
I’ve always been struck by the many Psalms (like Ps 4, 86 and especially 119) in which the Jews beg God to teach them his ways and his statutes so that they may walk in his ways. Likewise, I regularly ponder the joyful acclamations of the Jews to Moses’ words as they were about to cross the Jordan, “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him? Or what great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?” (Deut 4:7).
That should be our attitude toward the fullness of revelation that God has given us in Jesus Christ. He’s giving us a map to find the greatest treasure ever, the answer key to the greatest questions any human being has asked.
So I begin with that fundamental attitude that the good news really is good news.
In many places, the teachings of Jesus and the Church he founded, especially the more culturally controversial ones, are treated and presented as bad news, as burdens rather than blessings. Many times they’re not mentioned at all because priests or catechists think that in response to them they’ll receive not an “Amen!” but a “Crucify Him!” When they are mentioned, they’re often given with the tone, “I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but I have a duty to tell you anyway… Thou shalt not…”
I try always to show why what Jesus asks us is truly good, positive, liberating, wise and conducive to happiness.
Second, I try to present the real Jesus, rather than the domesticated one who is boring, lifeless and unchallenging. The real Jesus was radically countercultural and unbelievably attractive. He had crowds following up and down the shore of the Sea of Galilee to listen to him speak, sometimes for several days. They would carry their loved ones on stretchers for miles just to be in his presence. At his word, “Come, follow me!,” men would leave their livelihoods, their families and all they knew to accompany him not having any clue where he was heading.
The real Jesus never pandered to the multitudes like a demagogue, watering things down to gain cheap earthly popularity. Rather he challenged them to be great and holy, in short to be God-like. He called them to forgive limitlessly even their enemies. He called them to pick up their Cross — an instrument of torture and death — everyday and follow-him down the path of sacrificial love. He taught them that the path to happiness was not to be found in riches, but in spiritual poverty; not in comfort but in mourning; not in power and teaching others lessons but in peacemaking and meekness; not in fulfilling all your sexual fantasies, but in purity of heart; and not in popularity but in persecution for his name.
This real Jesus wasn’t saying these words to the Blessed Virgin and a bunch of ancient Green Berets. He was saying it to ordinary people. And they were amazed and astonished at what he said, about God, about them, and about the real, real world.
The real Jesus never guilt-tripped or manipulated or sought to play fundamentally to people’s fears. Rather he proposed the beauty of God’s plan to their freedom and invited them to enter the kingdom. Many did. Many refused. It’s easy to think about the rigid scribes and Pharisees who resisted Jesus and with mendacity triumphed in getting him slaughtered by the Romans they hated. But we can also think about the disciples who abandoned the Lord over the teaching of the Eucharist (Jn 6). The real Jesus challenged them to do something they considered gross and sick and they said, “This teaching is hard. Who can endure it?,” and walked away.
Well, many of Jesus’ teachings are difficult, especially at a moral level. But he proposes them to our freedom and our faith, hoping that we will respond like St. Peter did, saying, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Once the idea that Jesus is a warm cuddly bear who basically loves us so much that he indulges all our vices with a benign shrug of the shoulders is replaced by a Jesus who loves us so much that he was crucified to save us from those vices, who overturns tables when we’re being abused by money-changers and who tells us to pluck out eyes and cut off hands if they lead us to sin, then it’s easier for us to understand how Jesus would be challenging us with love to live in the truth today.
Third, I always try to feature the primacy of God’s grace. Everything begins with God’s help. He doesn’t call us to anything that he’s not prepared to give us all the assistance he knows we’ll need to achieve it. He doesn’t leave us orphans on our own. Rather, he stays with us and seeks to have us freely yoke ourselves to him so that we can reach those standards together. He gives us this help in prayer. He gives us this help — he gives us himself! — in the Sacraments. He gives us this help in the Word of God. He gives us this help in the Crosses by which we die to the world and allow him truly to come alive within us. He gives us this help in the example and intercession of the saints, especially the help of his mother.
Even if we may begin to think that what Jesus calls us to is impossible, I try to convey that with Jesus nothing is impossible and he provides whatever is needed to make the impossible possible. It is possible with his assistance for each of us to become saints, to live up to everything he teaches, just like so many ordinary men and women, boys and girls before us. He can work the same moral miracle in us that he worked in the apostles, in the holy women, in countless men and women of every race, educational level, social class, and physical condition. We just need freely to respond to his help to desire it and will the means.
Fourth, I try to help everyone to understand the whybehind the whatof what Jesus or the Church he founded is asking of us. Many times people reject Jesus’ teaching or the teaching of the Church because they can’t figure out how it’s part of God’s love for us, how it is an essential part of his plans for our happiness, how it’s essential for our full flourishing. For example, if people think that “turning the other cheek” means allowing ourselves to be physically abused rather than sticking up for our dignity and putting an end to the violence without vengeance or retaliation, it’s totally understandable why people would reject not only the particular teaching but question Jesus’ goodness and teaching authority in general. If people think the call to chastity for those with same-sex attractions means subjection to lifetime without love, it’s understandable why people would reject it. When it’s explained, however, as the means by which we’re able to have Christ-like love (agape) purify relationships so that sexual attractions (eros) don’t destroy the love of friendship (philia), then people begin to see how, though countercultural, it points to the path of wisdom.
These types of explanations cannot always be done in homilies. Sometimes the most effective way to communicate these clarifications is actually not in homilies, because in a crowd people may be initially more resistant than if they were able to hear the arguments privately in at atmosphere of prayer. I give out free books a couple of times a year in which many of controversial areas can be discussed well in context. I have racks with brochures giving overviews of Church teaching in these areas. I write or print various articles in the parish bulletin. I’ll host adult education classes on controversial and often misunderstood issues in Catholicism and have a box for anonymous questions to be asked. But once people have a chance to understand the why behind the what of Christ’s and the Church’s teaching — a urgent concern today when the secular media regularly distorts Church teaching — they’re far more open to follow Christ together with the Church on the path of wisdom.
Lastly, I try to set an example of the Christian struggle toward holiness. Jesus never said in the Gospel merely “Do what I say!” He always said, “Follow me!” I think a priest needs to do the same. Sometimes people can think that sanctity is somehow easy for a priest, but I try to help them to see why priests would be among the devil’s preferred targets. So I talk about my own struggles to align my life with the truth Jesus gives us, that, like St. Paul and every saint except the Blessed Mother, the good I want to do I often fail to do, and the evil I want to avoid I often don’t avoid (Rom 7:19). I remind them that I, too, mean the words, “I have sinned … through my own … most grievous fault,” and go to confession every week. That gives me a chance to proclaim how God helps me in my own weakness to bridle my tongue, to judge others favorably if I’m going to judge them at all, to forgive readily those who say nasty things about me because they think I preach too long, or many other struggles.
I also try to lead by example in other ways. At a practical level, if I’m encouraging them to come to sign up for perpetual adoration, I’ll take the graveyard shift so that they’ll know that I’m willing to take a very inconvenient time while I encourage them to take the time that’s most convenient for them. I’m asking them to sacrifice for a project in the parish, I’ll be straightforward about how much I’ve sacrificed financially for it. If they hear that I’m sacrificing fifty percent of my annual salary for something, it’s easier for them to consider sacrifice one to two percent. When I discuss the Church’s practices of fasting, prayer and almsgiving, I’ll discuss what I’ve learned from my own doing so. All of this, I hope, makes it easier for them to see that a life of faithfully entrusting ourselves to God and to teaching is life giving and joyous.
I’ve always loved two images of the priesthood, taken from my own experience. The first is as a coach. I was a basketball coach for about a decade and a tennis coach for longer and I always sought to help those I was coaching aim for a championship and work on the little things needed. But the way I tried to help them believe that they were capable of winning it all was through putting on my own gym clothes and getting onto to the court with them. That’s what I try to do with regard to living the truth.
The second image is a guide. I had the great joy for five years to be a guide to St. Peter’s Tomb and the excavations underneath St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and used to lead pilgrimage visits to many of the Churches in Rome. A guide not only needs to know how to present his material and know how not to get lost in an ancient necropolis but also how to make it an adventure. As a priest I try to do the same thing with the noble adventure of faith. The pilgrimage of life is a search for the truth, a discovery of the truth, and a realization that the Truth has a name. I try to convey some of the excitement of that itinerary into the love of God.
The pressures on your time as a priest, as a writer, retreat speaker, and forthcoming book can be overwhelming. How do you fit it all in and still maintain the joy of our faith which is obvious to those you encounter?
Leon Bloy once famously said that joy is the infallible sign of God’s presence. We learn from the annunciation the two reasons why the Archangel Gabriel called Mary to rejoice: because she was full of God and the Lord was with her. To be full of grace means, essentially, to be filled with God. The Lord was indeed with her! When we experience the same presence of the Lord with and within us, we can’t help but be joyful.
In my own priestly life, the fruit of joy comes from a clear awareness that God is with me, that he loving makes himself available to me 24/7 in prayer, gives himself to me and through me to others in the Sacraments, seeks to speak through me when I preach, and desires to love others through my own human hearts and hands.
My time of prayer not only fills me with joy through having the privilege to be with God but it also helps me to work so much more efficiently and effectively yoked to God. Leaving the chapel, I have a much clearer focus and sense of purpose no matter what work I have to do, whether at my desk, around the parish plant, caring for parishioners, giving interviews or any of the other daily variety of priestly work. Prayer helps me to wave distractions by and look at things in the present with more supernatural lenses. It helps me to turn my desk into an altar and my heart into a holocaust.
During my freshman year in college, I was taught by friends in Opus Dei about the importance of the plan of life, which is a regular series of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly commitments to maintain a sense of God’s presence, divine filiation, and joy. That practical wisdom immediately took root and, thanks be to God, has never left me. When you have order in your prayer life over the course of the day, it helps you to keep order at the rest of the time.
No priest can do everything and so he has to set priorities, and this is something that I regularly seek to do in prayer, discerning what is objectively more important and making sure those things get done. 25 years ago I read Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and I never forgot his wisdom of prioritizing the “urgent and important” and “non-urgent but important” things over the “urgent but not important” tasks. And I give God thanks that I’ve really never been tempted too much toward wasting time on the “non-urgent, not important” things.
That’s led me to set some priorities that may be a little different than many of my priest brothers. I spend more time giving spiritual direction and forming those preparing for marriage or for their child’s baptism than I do on the parish books. I dedicate more time teaching religious education to adults and to young people than I do on some of the parochial temporalities. I know that for ninety five percent of my parishioners, the most influential things I do over the course of the week, besides my praying for them, is my preparation for the weekend Masses and my parish bulletin, and so I block out time to try to do both as well as I can on a given week, even if it means that my secretary is holding all non-emergency phone calls for a few hours for me to be able to do them. I also recognize that my weekly column in the Diocesan newspaper reaches 25,000 readers and so is an opportunity that ought to merit a greater use of time than working the tables at Bingo.
When I first became a pastor, I candidly admit that I worked myself to exhaustion. I was a new pastor of a majestic Church with only six years priestly experience and lots of challenges. I had a parish school on life support. And I had a diocesan newspaper to run with a whole series of weekly deadlines. I worked myself to exhaustion, sleeping only about two to three hours a night for almost two years, not because of any type of insomnia but simply because I felt pressured to do everything as a single priest in a parish everything that the five priests in that parish used to do while holding another diocesan position that was basically full-time.
I’m so lucky that I was able to participate in what was then a brand new program called Good Leaders, Good Shepherds of the Catholic Leadership Institute, which changed my life. The executive coach gurus who were applying their wisdom to priestly life and work said that at most anyone could have 5-6 key responsibility areas. When I mapped out my responsibilities I had 28. At first the gurus thought I was blending tasks into key responsibility areas, but when they saw what I had written, they became convinced that I really was — and very much felt — responsible for all of it. They gave me great advice, telling me, first, that I needed to prioritize four or five of those areas, and second, that I needed not to feel guilty about not being able to do everything else adequately or at all. Looking back, it sounds like such a simple thing, but it really changed my life, especially about not feeling guilty about not getting to everything. I ceased playing whack-a-mole, responding personally to whatever task popped its head and started to do some planning to form volunteers to whom I would eventually be able to delegate tasks. That lesson about my own limitations and not feeling culpable about not being Fr. Superman helps me to this day.
In terms of other work, I’ve been blessed to have been asked to preach many retreats to priests, deacons, religious and lay people, to do various clergy workshops, Theology of the Body trainings, give speeches, write articles and books, and the like. There’s a lot that I can’t do, because the requests would make it more than a full-time job, but I say yes to as many as I can do during the week for a few reasons.
First, I believe it makes me a better pastor, filling me with experiences that can translate effectively to my primary priestly work.
Second, it gives me a little bit of a break from the daily grind and allows me, on most occasions, to come back refreshed.
Third, I’m also not ashamed to say I do them for the money. The two parishes I’ve been assigned as a pastor both had severe financial struggles because of the economic reality of the parishes. At first it really caused me a great deal of stress wondering where we’d come up with the money. And so I did what any Christian always ought to do: I prayed. And God started raining down these opportunities. They’ve allowed me to give more than my salary back each year to my parish, which has allowed us to afford a lot of the things that strictly speaking our parish doesn’t need but that are high on my list of pastoral “wants,” from new sound systems, to adult education materials, to Church and rectory repairs, to helping some poor families with Catholic school tuition and more. A lot of this “extra work” is basically a second job so that I can raise money to pay for things that the parish would not otherwise be able to afford. I’m grateful to God that I don’t have to work flipping burgers to make some extra money to support my spiritual family but that I can get paid for doing something specifically priestly that I enjoy. God always provides. I’m grateful I have a couple of priests in residence who can help out with the daily Masses when I have to be away.
Priestly time management basically comes down to living intentionally. Each day is a gift from God and I really try to make the most out of each one, being accountable to God each night in my general examination of conscience as to how I’ve sought to spend that day with sleeves rolled up in his vineyard. The fact that I never work alone, but am always seeking literally to collaborate with God, normally converts even the more onerous tasks in priestly life into joyful opportunities because, after all, the Lord is with me seeking to fill me with himself!
When you encounter a fellow Catholic who may be lukewarm or attend Mass only on Sundays, yet desires to grow spiritually and go deeper in his/her faith, what is your counsel?
I believe that it’s very important to discover the causes of lukewarmness in someone we meet, because the remedy will vary depending upon the genesis.
Many Catholics today are lukewarm as a result of never having been surrounded by people on fire. They go through the motions giving twenty percent of effort because they’ve never been enveloped, at home, in their religious education programs and in their parishes at large, by Catholics to whom they could relate who have given it their all.
In response to Catholics who are lukewarm in this way, I think it’s important, as Pope Francis said in Brazil, to draw close to them to try to warm their hearts with the warmth of our own. Just like people who hate the opera can discover a much deeper appreciation attending one with someone who not only loves it but loves to share his love of it, so those who are lukewarm because they’ve always been surrounded by tepidity can often be warmed up through the lively joy and enthusiasm of someone who combines both fire and normalness. When they feel they, their life, their desires and aspirations are taken seriously, when they’re made to feel passionately loved by God rather than judged as someone who doesn’t play by all the rules, they can open themselves up to the possibility that the faith offers far more than their limited experience taught them. The cure for this type of lukewarmness is falling in love with Jesus and often that temperature increase can be catalyzed by a real friendship with someone already very much in love.
I think another cause of lukewarmness is when the hungers implanted by God to draw us are seemingly satiated by other things. We diffuse our passions for too many things of this world. We become fanatic for sports team, artists’ music or Hollywood gossip, for high tech video games, particular political candidates, or work, for our car, our clothing and jewelry, our golf handicap, or worldly pursuits, and these more immediate passions can make us apathetic to the things that matter most. These are all a type of spiritual worldliness that can’t help but leave us lukewarm if not ice-cold about the things of God. Jesus said, after all, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be as well,” and in the Book of Revelation named materialism as the cause of the tepidity of the Laodiceans.
Those who are lukewarm for this reason likewise can be helped when the meet someone whose treasure is clearly God, when someone they know at school or work who seems totally normal all of a sudden breaks the news that he’s entering the seminary, or she’s entering the convent, or they’ve decided to live chastely until they get married.
But I think that, often enough, what works even more effectively is something that shatters their vanity of vanities. It can be the diagnosis of an illness in them or in a loved one. It can be a sudden death. It can be the loss of a job or a breakup in a relationship. Anyone of these things or similar occurrences can help them to see that what they formerly sought was insufficient and there’s a need for something more.
Another cause of lukewarmness is simply sin. If someone is caught up in a dissipated lifestyle — dishonesty, drug use, unchastity and so on — he’s never going to be fervent. The only path forward for this person is to be set free from the entanglements that prevent spiritual growth. For most people, that’s going to require more than just self-restraining will-power. It’s going to require the grace of the Sacrament of Penance.
Regardless of the cause, if we’re going to help someone who is lukewarm grow fervent it can’t be as a result of a momentary temperature spike, but something longer lasting. It’s by helping them to have an experience of the faith that causes them to reevaluate their former conclusions that the faith was basically uninspiring and undeserving of their whole heart.
So we need to help them to have this experience. I’ve seen it happen so many times with tepid high schoolers who go on a Steubenville Retreat surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic young people their own age — including some attractive members of the opposite sex — kneeling in front of Jesus in the Eucharistic Adoration. I’ve seen it happen with many adults who have gone on a Cursillo. I’m witnessed it occur with pilgrims I’ve taken to St. Peter’s tomb or some of the great Shrines of Christian Europe. But it’s this experience that gets them to reevaluate the false impression of Catholicism they maintain in their heads and hearts.
With regard specifically to trying to attract those who are lukewarm back to the Mass, I generally first ask them when was the last time someone invited them to Mass. That often leads to a conversation in which the stress is not on their “obligation” to come but on the “invitation” to come.
I’m convinced that the reason why most Catholics don’t come to Mass is because they don’t really know or believe what Catholics believe about the Mass. I’ve never met someone who believed that the Eucharist really is Jesus in his body, blood, soul and divinity, who at the same time didn’t think it was worth his time to come to receive God inside. They may have passed a catechism test on the Real Presence, but I believe in most cases it really hasn’t sink beyond the conceptualizations.
To open things up, I generally ask them that if the Pope were coming to St. Bernadette’s on Sunday, would they come to meet him. Most Catholics respond that they definitely would. And then I ask them whether they’d come for the Pope’s Boss? Or sometimes I’ll ask whether if Bill Gates or Warren Buffett were coming to St. Bernadette’s and were promising to give one million dollars to everyone who showed up, would they be there? Everyone takes the bait. Then I ask whether they’ll come to receive an even greater treasure, God himself?
Both of those questions basically beg the question of whether the Eucharist is really Jesus, but it already in a sense gets them committed to saying that if it really were Jesus how could they not come. And so then I’ll talk to them about Jesus’ Eucharistic discourse in John 6, how many of the disciples abandoned Jesus because they thought he was a cannibalistic psycho whose teaching was hard to endure, but how St. Peter confessed his faith in what Jesus was saying because of his faith in Jesus. I’ll connect it to what Jesus did the next Passover when he took bread and wine and changed it totally into his body and blood and gave it to us to eat and drink.
If it’s useful, I’ll mention the incredible story of the martyrs of Abitene (Tunisia) in 304, who were martyred for coming to celebrate Sunday Mass even after they had been warned that they would be arrested, tried and killed if they came. They still assembled, saying, “Without God we cannot survive.”
If they need help in believing the Real Presence, I’ll generally mention the powerful Eucharistic miracles of Bolsena-Orvieto and Lanciano and delving into the scientific tests.
But throughout these conversations, I’ll enthusiastically try to explain my love for the Mass, from well before entering the Seminary, and invite them to give Jesus another chance.
In your role as priest, how do you block out the “noise” of the world and stay focused on your vocation and ministry? How can lay people accomplish this as well?
The world is clearly getting “noisier.” With satellite radios, cable televisions with thousands of channels, computers with billions of available websites, tablets and smartphones keeping us connected with all the latest in social media, we’re dealing no longer with background noise but foreground noise. I’m really grateful for these improvements and inventions, but at the same time, like with any good thing, we have to make sure that we control them rather than having them control us.
One of the most important ways I block out this cacophony is by starting the day with prayer. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, whom I had the privilege to meet and befriend during my time in Seminary, once gave me a very valuable piece of advice he learned over the course of his life and put into practice. It was to pray before you read the daily newspaper. Not only ought God to come first, he said, but if one is really going to be able to discern God’s voice throughout the day, one needs to begin quietly with God in the morning. If someone tries to pray after turning on the radio, or the television or scanning the newspaper — in short, if someone tries to pray after entering into the noise of the world — it’s so much harder to come back to God.
That’s a piece of advice that, thanks be to God, for the most part I’ve been able to keep. But I’ve violated it enough over the course of 15 years as a priest that I have discovered Fr. Neuhaus’ wisdom in the breach. If I don’t pray first thing in the morning, but rather check my email or FaceBook accounts or the main news websites, often I get sucked in and it’s much harder to leave, even after I’ve turned off the device and headed to the chapel.
That’s the first thing I’d say.
The second way to block out the noise is to try to keep the presence of God throughout the day. I try to do this with aspirations, small little prayers, throughout the day, like “Stay with me, Lord!” or “Help me, Jesus!” I’ll also try to pray my work by offering it up, hour by hour, or task by task, for particular parishioners or others who have requested my prayers. This helps me not to lose my hearing for God’s voice even while I happen to be in the midst of the noise on the computer or my iPad or iPhone. The Liturgy of the Hours that a priest prays five times a day is also a great help to stay focused on who I am and what God is asking.
Third, I try to have a sense of discipline with regard to many of the possible distractions. When I’m working, I’ll close the email program so that I’m not hearing the beep of new messages. I’ll ignore texts or send many phone calls to voice mail. Then, when it’s time for a break, I’ll spend 15 minutes or so responding quickly to emails, or to texts, or returning a phone call. In general, I’ll go on to news sites to check the news only in given blocks of time to prevent me from dissipating hours reading articles that aren’t really useful but just satisfying one curiosity or another. But I’ll work within some fixed limits to prevent myself from being lost in the almost limitless expanse of cyberspace.
I think that these principles and habits translate pretty well for lay people. The one thing I’d add is that in order for lay people to block out the noise of the world, they have to have to cultivate a sense of silence so that they recognize noise for what it is. Sometimes people are so immersed in the noise of the world that they can’t abide a few minutes of silence or waiting without checking their email, their Facebook and Twitter Accounts, surfing the web on their smart phones, or listening to mp3s. When that happens and people are surrounded by noise as the normal state of their life, then their spiritual eardrums can be shattered to perceiving God’s gentle whisper. So I think as the noise increases, the need for silence likewise increases and lay men and women, boys and girls who want to avoid becoming totally dominated by the noise, must truly prioritize times not only of quiet prayer but also of regular escapes from their devices.