Encounter

by Dan Masterton

Your view of something or someone changes when you encounter it or them personally.

You can imagine how vast and majestic the Grand Canyon looks. You can see pictures of the plazas and churches of Rome. You can hear about how ghastly and stark the abandoned concentration camps in Poland feel. But when walking those grounds and personally seeing and feeling those places, their visceral profundity emerge and sink in more fully.

You can imagine how it might feel to hold your child. You can see pictures of friends and family meeting their kids. You can hear about the emotions and surreality of that moment. But when that moment unfolds (if your call and God’s grace lead there), the ontological reality of parenthood activates potently.

So, too, you can imagine the struggles of homelessness and hunger. You can see and share pictures of those who struggle. You can hear about the discrimination and neglect that people face. But when meeting them face-to-face, learning their names, and spending time with them, their realities become all the more real to you, and in solidarity, encounter invites, instigates, and fuels metanoia as your human heart moves and changes.

Encounter.

Much like any profession or career or discipline, the realm of Catholicism has its vocabulary. Whether theologian or minister or clergy or everyday believer, religion comes with its special words. I love to read and write and use language creatively and effectively; I love to engage in conversation that moves forward and gains depth, using my words to comment and ask questions of another person that identify those thoughts, emotions, and ideas that can be difficult to articulate. So, naturally, I love the vocabulary of faith.

Often, the words of our beliefs become buzzwords and/or get super-charged with polarizing meanings. Take transubstantiation for example -- it’s a beautiful word to describe the change in inner content that occurs when the bread and wine of the Eucharist are validly consecrated in our anamnesis (like, memoralizing) of Christ’s Last Supper and the celebration of Mass. Yet, it can become a wedge word, used to differentiate and divide some Christians from others.

I like to lean on Catholic Social Teaching, not just because it is prophetic and countercultural but because its words articulate truths that match broader justice desires of all people of good will, in a way that can fuel the craving for justice that transcends religious boundaries. Solidarity describes the desire of so many to acknowledge all people of all races, ethnicities, religions, orientations, and more as brothers and sisters of the same humanity; marginalization and preferential option explain how we ignore, belittle, or silence certain people and need to explicitly consider them to restore the unity of society; and encounter elegantly and simply describes the ideal we should pursue and practice for engaging one another openly with humility and compassion.

This is the legacy of Francis (so far) to me, my spirituality, and my ministry. I always think back to Francis’ metaphor about the Church as a field hospital. In battles, armies have to set up these medical areas, where wounded soldiers would be carried for triage. When a soldier arrived with critical wounds and deteriorating health, the response from a good medic wouldn’t be to criticize and question the person; it would be to treat the wounds and stabilize the soldier. Once the soldier was stable, then the army leaders could question him to figure out what happened.

Likewise, our Church ought to be a place of welcome, a sort of spiritual triage. Rather than interrogating people on how they got so sinful, we should invite them to engage with the Church -- plug into the community, join in prayer and worship, avail themselves of the Sacraments, likely by starting with an earnest and humble Reconciliation to repair one’s relationships with self, others, and God. Francis’ desire for a Church that is bruised, hurting, and dirty happens when our lived faith is built on encounter, grounded in engaging with others and receiving humbly and compassionately.

I sometimes imagine how, as a high school campus minister, I have to be a bit of a catch-all, struggling to integrate what can be so many disparate things into one ministry. I’m sometimes preoccupied by the desire for affirmation and prestige. I’m sometimes flustered by the constraints of my reality preventing me from doing what I think is best or necessary. But through the lens of encounter, everything of my ministry -- and in a sense, everything of who I am made to be and called to be -- comes into better focus.

I need to facilitate encounter with God through worship, prayer, and Sacraments. I need to facilitate encounter for my students with one another through discussion and socializing in holistic communal context. I need to facilitate encounter for us with the ignored and marginalized by reimagining service as interpersonal, as accompaniment, as relationship-building, and work hard to plan outings that emphasize those ideals.

Encountering God changes the way we view religion, faith, and ourselves. Encountering others softens our hearts, breeds compassion, and magnifies God’s love in our world. Encountering people who have marginalized forces us beyond stereotypes and preconceptions, proliferates solidarity, and evaporates some of the buffering distance we have inserted between ourselves to gradually build God’s Kingdom. Authentic encounter grounds and orients our perspective and transforms our hearts.