If I say I believe in God what does that mean for my life?
If I say I am a follower of Christ, how must I act?
All year, these essential questions have been written on the whiteboard in my classroom. They’ve framed our conversations on social justice and vocation. We’ve wrestled with them together, in some moments finding their answers more palatable than in others. Oftentimes the answers to these questions result in discomfort - emotional, mental, or, perhaps most frighteningly, physical.
Since the election of our 45th president in November of 2016, I’ve found myself thinking in very real ways about my personal answers to these questions. At what point, I’ve often thought, will I have to put aside my own comfort and put myself on the line for what my faith expects of me? At what point, will I be asked to be criticized in defense of my students and others who live on the margins? At what point will I be asked to place myself in the pathway of potential physical harm?
This past week, I’ve once again found myself face to face with these questions. Surrounded by images of migrant children separated from their parents, photographs of individuals in detention facilities, and stories of workers who live and work near me arrested while at work, leaving children and families questioning why they never came home, I can’t help but ask how my faith calls me to respond.
In times like these I try to remind myself to return to the examen, 1 looking for the places where God has been at work in my life and using these moments to figure out how to respond now.
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| Dolores Mission Parish in East LA, decorated for Christmas |
The first of these encounters happened the first time I stepped into Dolores Mission Church in East Los Angeles.2 I had read enough stories about Father Greg Boyle at this point to be overwhelmed by the importance of that small space even before my arrival. I imagined the countless homilies, funerals, quinceaneras, and conversations that took place in this space. The hearts that had been transformed, the love of God shared, all of it was staggering. But it is one thing to stand in awe of a place. What I felt at Dolores Mission was different. I believe and trust that what I felt there was nothing other than the presence of the Holy Spirit that marked this sacred ground.
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| The altar at the Chapel of the Divine Providence where Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated. |
The third encounter also took place in El Salvador, on the same trip and in the same day. We visited the University of Central America, the UCA, where six Jesuit priests were dragged from their rooms and martyred during the Salvadoran Civil War for speaking out against the government and seeking to empower the people. The place where I most encountered God was not in the rose garden where the Jesuits were murdered, however, but in the small room down the corridor where Elva and Salina Ramos were killed. The Jesuit’s housekeeper and her daughter stayed at the UCA that night because they believed they would be safer there than in their own village. They were killed simply because the army did not want to leave witnesses behind. As I stood in that tiny room, I couldn’t shake the image of mother and daughter clinging to one another, knowing these were their last moments together, yet praying that they might have more. The weight of prayer in the room was oppressive.
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| The rose garden at the University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador. |
I think what’s important about all three of these locations, the reason that God showed up so uniquely in these moments, is that each space reminds me of what the cost of Christianity can be. Each can be connected to the questions we began with: If I say I believe in God, what does that mean for my life? If I say I am a follower of Christ, how must I act?
A Christian life, a moral life, requires sacrifice of us. It requires that we remove ourselves from what is comfortable, that we step beyond our safe spaces of power and align ourselves with the outcast and the downtrodden. This is what Jesus did and as his followers, we are called to do the same. For those like Father Greg Boyle, this means devoting our lives to educate, employ, and empower those our society chooses to leave out. For some of us, like Blessed Oscar Romero or the Jesuit martyrs of the UCA, this means quite literally laying down our lives to protect and empower a people who are not being treated justly.
So what does this mean for me and you? I think this is a question that deserves our constant discernment. Are we called to simply love Jesus as we encounter him in our neighbors? Are we called to challenge our government when we encounter an unjust laws? Are we called to peaceful protest or civil disobedience? Are we called to physically align ourselves with those our society wishes to harm? Are we called to lay down our lives in the name of our faith? I believe each of us is called to our own unique response to God’s presence. And although I’m not convinced that God calls all of us to be martyrs, there is a reason, I like to remind my students, that the symbol of our faith is Christ crucified. Our faith requires much of us. It may not end in our literal crucifixion but it will likely lead us to make physical, mental, or emotional sacrifices in an effort to create the world God has in mind. God calls each of us to a unique response, but if we aren’t asking what that response might be, are we truly living a Christian life?
1 For a more detailed explanation of the examen, see the start of this piece.↩
2 For those who are unfamiliar with Dolores Mission, it was the parish where Father Greg Boyle, SJ began his ministry working with gang members, a work that eventually morphed into Homeboy Industries.↩
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