As you are well aware, our Masses were packed last weekend for Easter Sunday. Entire families coming together before heading to brunch. Visitors from out-of-town. An opportunity for the “my pew” regulars to welcome the stranger.
As a priest, I love the opportunity to engage with those who rarely, if ever, come to Mass. Each encounter is a chance for God’s grace to touch hearts and maybe – just maybe – invite a deeper relationship with Him and His Church.
One such after-Mass Easter Sunday meet-and-greet did not go quite as I expected it to, however. To be honest, I am still pondering the exchange that occurred. A young man in his early 30s was with his grandparents, visiting from a new up-and-coming city down South. He was pleasant and certainly respectful; he even seemed happy to be at Church and reconnect with his Catholic upbringing. As he was getting ready to depart, I said in all sincerity: “I hope you’ll come back and worship with us again the next time you’re in Elkton.”
Now usually, I get the polite response that most people give when they have no real intention of doing so: “Sure, Father. It was good to be here.” On some level, they mean it, even though organized religion and liturgical worship don’t necessarily speak to their lives. It makes us sad to know that, I suppose – especially for us who have found great comfort in our faith and the Catholic traditions we hold dear.
However, this visitor did not sugarcoat his response as he shook my hand in departing: “I respect what y’all are about, Father, but I really am only here for them” – he points to his grandparents now heading to the car. “None of this matters to me.” It wasn’t said in anger. There was no bitterness or mocking in his tone. “None of this matters.”
How do feel hearing that statement? Sad for him? Was there a momentary flash of anger or disappointment that his response was such? Would you have said anything to him in return?
I have played that moment over-and-over in my head since last Sunday, wondering if I should have said something or done something to engage further. Should I have said: “Someday you’ll need Jesus?” Would another priest have run after him to try to convince him otherwise? I don’t honestly know. Instead I just let him walk away, back to the car that would eventually take him to an Easter breakfast and then to the interstate where his home and work-life awaited him.
In a modern-day way, it was a Thomas-moment, as I like to call it – a moment when someone you care about walks away from the Truth and the Love of Christ with whom you long for them to have a genuine experience. Just as Thomas had left his closest companions following the death of their rabbi-leader and supposed-messiah (notice how the Gospel story begins – he already abandoned the Upper Room), so many loved ones in our own lives have walked away from just such a relationship. We all have our Thomases.
The question remains: what do we do with the ones who walk away? The ones who refuse to stay? The loved ones, friends, and neighbors who find other ways to God, fulfilment and peace?
If I may, some prayerful thoughts: To begin, I might suggest we stop trying to strong-arm someone into believing that they must practice the faith or else. Arguing or proving we are right never softens a heart or opens it to mercy. When the other disciples found Thomas, they never said to him: “You’ve abandoned us, how could you?” They never shamed him or made him feel less-than. They simply let his heart and mind hear the words: “We have seen the (risen) Lord,” and then trusted his journey would eventually lead him back to communion with Christ.
Secondly, the ten didn’t abandon their friend. Even though Thomas questioned and doubted – “Unless I see the nail marks” – the others stayed with him for as long as it took. For you who have sons and daughters and grandchildren and best friends who no longer “need Church,” be the hidden and humble lifeline to God on their behalf, especially when they don’t know you are that constant rock for them. Pray for them. Offer your sufferings and little daily sacrifices that God’s grace will lead them to where HE needs them to be.
That’s an important distinction, too: just because the Church pew is where we want our lost sheep to be found, it does not mean that our Lord needs them there at this point on their journey. Perhaps He is doing some other work in the life and heart of the one who says he or she doesn’t find the Lord through Mass. Maybe the journey that needs to happen outside the Church walls has to happen first before an authentic relationship can blossom here around the Banquet Table.
Before I really came to understand the gift and power of the Eucharist and all that the Church holds, the Father first had to do some work in my life. He allowed me to be prodigal – and never abandoned me in those spaces, by the way – so that I could find healing and make my way back to Him, seeking Divine Mercy not out of routine obligation (which is fine at a base level) but out of a genuine desire to be whole, holy, and genuinely sorrowful for my sins.
Most often, the Thomases we know and worry about are on a journey in which the Father is still at work, loving them and guiding them to seek “the faith that conquers the world,” as St. John tells us in our second reading.
Lastly, here is the key – I believe – to walking with the Thomases who long in their innermost depths to place their hand in His; their heart in His: we have to show them what true Church looks like.
So many of our family and neighbors, our friends and strangers, hold onto the stereotypes they imagine us to be as Catholic disciples: close-minded; judgmental; hateful; unforgiving; hypocritical … the list is endless. And we must own-up to the fact that sometimes we have been. We have failed to welcome and have not always listened with hearts attuned to Christ-like mercy and compassion. We have thrown the commandments at our Thomases and yet not been willing to walk beside them as they try to figure it all out. We have weaponized faith and religion instead of presenting it as something so lovely and worth living that you can’t imagine your life without His Light, His Love, His Presence.
What if we again recommitted ourselves to the vision of Acts 4 (our first reading): that we lived as a community united in true Eucharistic Communion? What if we lived in such a way – as humble sinners who know we need His Mercy – so that the lost and lonely, suffering and poor, come to us and find a true home here? What if we recommitted ourselves not to just an hour on a Sunday but to let what happens in and through the Mass to shape our hearts and lives in order to go and feed others in every place where we find hunger – physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally?
What if our lives are so rooted in Christ that others are drawn by the Spirit to stay with us -- that they know we will help them place their hands in the wounds of the Risen Christ, no matter where they find themselves on the journey?
What if our Easter Sunday visitor remembers what he encountered here last Sunday and seeks us out again?