What I am asking you, each one
individually, each one personally, is this: are you ready to be a fool for
Christ? And I mean it: a fool! It is not a question of joining
revolutionaries somewhere in Timbuktu. No. But it may be a question of renewing
your parish. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the foolishness of Christ is
to remain right there in your parish and rebuild it?
That, my friend, is foolishness for
Christ’s sake. Don’t kid yourself. Nothing from without will change the world.
Only what comes out of your heart, your very entrails, so to speak, can change
it. The world needs to be changed, now! Today! Immediately! At once! And who
but Christians can lead the way? We have the luminous words of Christ that tell
us how to change the world.
Catherine
de Hueck Doherty, Urodivoi
Reflection – For Catherine, the image of being a fool for Christ meant being
passionately in love with God, loving beyond the limits of reason and prudent
moderation, pouring oneself out in a total gift of love no matter what the
personal cost.
She was very clear throughout her
life that this was the only way to be of any use whatsoever in the world, the
only way Christ could be proclaimed in a convincing way and his Kingdom be
advanced. This whole business she writes of here—that it is what comes out of
one’s heart and entrails that alone can change the world—this is the heart of
the matter.
In North America anyhow, we are
in love with programs. If we just get the right program in our parish or
diocese, all shall be well. Just show people a Christopher West dvd, or Fr.
Barron, or the Alpha course or… something. Just get the right curriculum in the
school, the right marriage prep method… something.
I’m not dissing any of these fine
men or the fine work done by people who devise curricula or this or that
program. But the world is not evangelized by programs. The world is
evangelized, and always has been evangelized, by Christians who have fallen in
love with God and who carry that love within them, and out of that love reach
out in love to everyone they meet.
A ‘program’ run without love is a
body without a soul, a lifeless and useless thing, even if it has the very best
material in it. But love—the kind of love that Christ calls us to, the love
that alone proclaims and makes visible God’s love and saving power—exacts a
terrible cost from us, is no easy thing at all.
And this is why foolishness is so
necessary in this world. Love hurts, love costs; it is ‘unwise’ to love to the extent
that Christ would have us love, the extent to which He loved us. It was foolish
for Him to love us that way, involving scourges and nails and blood. But it’s
only love at that foolish extreme that wins the soul of our brother or sister,
that can melt hardened hearts, mend broken hearts, steady wavering hearts,
encourage fearful hearts.
And while it is on the one hand a
very overwhelming thing to be called to that kind of foolish Christian love,
the love of Christ, at the same time it is such an immediate thing. We are not Jesus
(thank God!), not charged with the salvation of the world. We are asked to love
the person who is before us right now, to be kind and generous, compassionate
and listening, engaged and active for the good of the other who is before us at
this instant, and then the next instant, and then the next. It is a lot, and
asks a lot of us, if we really take it on and give our lives to it, this work
of constantly and totally loving whoever God puts in front of us at any given
moment. But it’s not ‘too much’, not with His help and grace.
And it is the one thing, the only
thing, the real thing that makes a difference in the world, that changes the
world, that makes the world a place of peace and joy instead of confusion and
sorrow. It is the most foolish, and the wisest, way to spend one’s day and one’s
life. So, let’s get on with it for another day.
Foolishness.
ReplyDeleteI guess that is what love looks like in tbis somewhat cynical century.
Your writing made me pause a moment and consider the people in my life who "holy fools". The ones foolish enough to love... I have to say they do not look very much like fools at all....not blissfully aloof. The real fools know just what lies in the human heart- they know pettiness, pride, sloth, jealousy. They have wrestled with the same demons , that I still struggling with. They seem to accept their own share of the human fallibility...maybe wisdom is like humility in this way.
Then I think of something a dorothy Day said when she was writing about love and confessing "to being a fool". She, too, said it would not be easy. Everyone will try and kill that love in you even your nearest and dearest. "They will try to prune it...if you do not want to hear it-they will tell you must hear it. It is for your own good to hear it. It is my duty to tell you...you must stop your loving, modify your loving, show your disapproval. ...you are contributing to the delinquency of that person by your sent entail blindness"
Real wisdom seems like foolishness sometimes. The holy fools seem to know their own demons, own them and ask Jesus for his help to keep them tamed. This Jesus who knows all of our resistances and limits and lives us even more.
This amazing Jesus who took a bunch of men and women- fisherman and fools into his heart....then made lovers out of them.