Below is Part 1 of my Theology on Tap talk, Encounter, Witness, Pilgrimage: One Person's Way of Trying to Carry Faith in Everyday Life. Thank you to the young adults of suburban parishes in and around Tinley Park in the Archdiocese of Chicago for inviting me to share this.
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I’ve worked with high schoolers in campus ministry for seven years. Among the many fun and interesting things I’ve shared with them over the years is a catechetical exercise called “Stump the Minister.” For a certain period of time, colleagues who have studied theology team up with me to take questions from the students, which the students contribute either by raising their hand or dropping slips anonymously and letting us screen them. It’s meant to be an open-ended way to invite students to express their curiosities, doubts, and confusion as they learn the faith. We get all sorts of interesting questions, from the typical ones that want reexplanations on sexual teachings and other moral challenges to some more unusual ones, some that are clearly silly attempts to troll us. One of the best questions we ever chose to answer was “Why are you Catholic?”
Each of us took a swing at answering it, as it’s one of the questions that’s simultaneously difficult and easy to answer. I told them that I believe religions are all trying to explain what the purpose of everything is. I explained that I believe Jesus Christ and Christianity are founded on love and its centrality to everything we do and everything we are. Christians -- in a way straight out of the Jewish Scriptures -- are called to love God and one another with all our hearts, all our being, and with all our strength, and thus to give and receive love with open and humble hearts. I told them that I believe Catholicism, with its centuries of lived faith responding to this call of Christ by building a worldwide community of faith, explains and lives out this call to love best, in my estimation. And that’s why I am Catholic and choose to continue being Catholic.
I felt decent about my answer; the students were disappointed. I think some of them were waiting for me or another teacher to trash some other religions and get on a supremacist Catholic soapbox. But maybe the other thing that left them wanting a little bit was that I didn’t really reference my own life of faith any further. What about my daily life as a Catholic was good and attractive and sustaining?
The anchor points for my life of faith are encounter, witness, and pilgrimage. #EncounterWitnessPilgrimage pic.twitter.com/02BY0ZFlNs— Dan Masterton (@ThisLadDan) July 26, 2019
Well, in my 30 years of life, I've had enough religion/theology class, Mass attendance, and Catholic experience to fill a lifetime. As much as I love it all, it can sometimes be difficult to try to keep a clean connection between the immense beautiful Truth of the faith and the realities of a daily life of family, work, logistics, relationships, and more. The best way I can try to keep it all straight is to focus on central ideals of my life and my faith: encountering others through attentive, grounded presence -- ENCOUNTER; striving, whether explicitly or implicitly, to be a positive example of discipleship with Christ in the witness of my life -- WITNESS; and embracing the discernment, calls, and graces of life as earnest pilgrimage -- PILGRIMAGE. These ideals might be a good way for you to reframe your life of faith more intentionally or a means to engage your own life and identify the pillars that hold it up for you.
So, first, let’s talk about encounter, starting with conversation, especially small-talk. I am terrible at small-talk. As an introvert, I’m just not comfortable making those social connections and asking those little questions that forge a connection and help you get to know someone in the moment. I should have one of those shirts that says “introverted but willing to talk about my faith.” On a night like this, I’m a different person because I know by virtue of your coming here that you’re just looking for a chill evening when you can grab a beer, do a little listening, and chat with a few folks.
Encounter means to engage others through attentive, grounded presence. This gives us the opportunity to love others well and open our hearts to humbly receiving love. #EncounterWitnessPilgrimage pic.twitter.com/pZciHL8Oaa— Dan Masterton (@ThisLadDan) July 26, 2019
As such, when I do find myself in small-talk, or even when I’m talking more comfortably with people I know better and love dearly, I try to be attentive and focus on listening. Do you ever converse with someone and realize that, as they talk or tell a story, you’re maybe listening a bit, but mentally you’re focused on something their sharing set off in your mind? Then, rather than primarily listening, you’re formulating what you’ll share and waiting for them to finish so you can jump in. And then as you wait, you’re hardly listening at all anymore. And then you think your moment has come and you start to talk, but then you realize they weren’t done, and they keep talking. And then you realize you’ve been a pretty terrible listener.
This is a dangerous dynamic. Maybe it’s one that describes many of your conversations; maybe it’s one that only bites you once in a while. I know, for me, this is something I’ve seen in others’ conversations and in the face of people I talk to, and so it has become something more integral for me, as I try hard not to do those things that others do to bother me. This tendency is troublesome because it creates a dynamic in which you’re just using conversation as an outlet for stuff you want to say rather than embracing it as an opportunity to encounter another person and hear them out. The whole thing is a fine line. On the one hand, conversation needs to be about attentive presence to another person, yet on the other hand, conversation is meant to be reciprocal and mutual, an opportunity for each person to both listen and share. And since part of that is sharing experiences and thoughts that resonate with what your friend is sharing with you, it necessitates jumping in with your thoughts in response to your friend.
So the path to loving, humble, mutual encounter is in more intentional presence, one that checks your potential tendency to overshare or dominate a conversation. One way I try to rein myself in is through active listening. Even as thoughts arise of stories or experiences I may want to share, I set those aside initially to make sure I’m fully hearing out the other person first. I try to look for moments when I can help identify a word or phrase to more precisely describe what the person is talking about; I try to ask follow-up questions about details or elements about which I’m uncertain; I try to offer little summaries of what I’ve heard to see if I’m correctly understanding what the person is saying to me. And then, overall, I try to make sure I’ve at least done one of these things to listen and be present before I open my mouth with my own thoughts or stories. My hope is that I won’t take “my turn” until the person I’m conversing with has had a full opportunity for a turn of their own.
Building out from there, a mindset of encounter is built on the Catholic Social Teaching of solidarity. By the dictionary, solidarity is a feeling of unity, support, or mutual agreement; it is the way you stand with another person. In our social tradition, solidarity calls us to be mindful of all people as if they are our brother or sister. It means that while you should love your family and chosen friends deeply, you should also feel deep affection and concern for all people. When a group of people go hungry or persecuted or devastated by natural disaster, you should hurt for them and respond to them with the same affection as you would your family and friends. Solidarity is the call to honor all people in all places as equal and beloved children of God.
Solidarity is well practiced when it comes to service and justice, and it’s something that should animate how we try to serve. Yet, when done right, it’s a mindset that informs all your encounters in all areas of life, not just those times when you are “doing a service project” or “serving at a service site.” Initially, service usually conjures some basic feelings of goodness in the heart of a servant -- Helping someone else makes me feel good… Seeing that poverty and hunger really opened my eyes to the realities in our world… Knowing how some people are struggling made me appreciate what I have.
These are all worthwhile realizations, but a mindset of encounter calls you to look more deeply than just yourself. Encounter is about manifesting the fullness of your solidarity with others, and this entails mutuality and reciprocity. Rather than thinking you’re serving in order to do something for someone -- or conversing while thinking you’re doing something for someone by listening to them -- solidarity means acknowledging that the other person is teaching, forming, and loving you. It’s in this attitude of mutuality and reciprocity that encounter then becomes about both giving and receiving love, about your perhaps doing something for another person but definitely about someone else doing something for you. Rather than a top-down interaction, this enfleshment of solidarity happens side by side. In lieu of any sort of power dynamic, you instead gain the capacity to accompany one another. It becomes less about “what’s in it for me?” and instead becomes an intentional acknowledgement that a moment of encounter is a two-way street on which love ought to travel both ways.
This should carry into prayer. If we’re to really encounter God, we have to acknowledge the mutuality in our prayer. We may often come to prayer trying to change God or convince God of something we want or need; instead, we need to come to prayer with an openness to God’s changing us. While we may enter into prayer with guns blazing, ready to deluge God with our intentions, a catalogue of our worries or anxieties, a cascade of rosary-bead-fueled Hail Mary’s, we have to also include space for God to deluge us. God may not speak to us in the same fashion that we speak to Him, but that’s probably a good thing. It invites us to create quiet and attentiveness in our manner of conversation and in our prayerful attitude of encounter that allows God to impact us. Then in that way, we can encounter God in a better way that involves letting God encounter us.
Read Part 2 here.
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