You, Alright?! I Learned It By Watching You!

For about as long as I've been a Christian I've been more than a little flummoxed by how to be one. I never could quite get a handle on it. While I was a Protestant Evangelical, being "a Christian" was kind of the standard equivalent to being an itinerant preacher, tither, program joiner and regular attender all rolled in to one. We were expected to know the Bible backwards and forwards in order to be able to quote it to anyone who needed quoting at and it was assumed that we would eventually go on at least one mission trip to sing songs and build a structure and pass out Bibles. We cared about people's souls and lives in an idealistic and almost Utopian way. If we could just raise them up to where we were, they would understand the Truth and be free.

And we respected our leaders. More often than not because of what they said or espoused as truth. And they said a lot. Often. (Though we generally wished they would say more with fewer words.) We understood which Commandments were the "greatest two" and all. But something never quite... lined up in practice. There was a missing element. I could never quite put my finger on it. It was always darting away in my peripheral vision; a thing I almost knew but couldn't see.

And then we started our journey towards the Catholic Church. The first person we met was our Deacon. He was like fresh water to a parched traveller; alive, funny, tender, tough, supportive, encouraging, uncompromising in his proclamation of the Gospel, self-deprecating, and real. He had (and has) an quiet intensity that didn't just talk about concern for someone else's welfare, it lived it every second of every day. In the first five minutes of our conversation, we knew and understood that this man, though he did not know us, loved us.

Over the course of our RCIA term, we shared stories and conversations with our two priests. And we learned what it's like to be a priest. How much they have to give of themselves. How much they have to bear and carry. How they are always rushing to the hospital at three AM to baptize stillborn babies, anoint car-crash survivors and victims of gunshot wounds, and to pray with the terminally ill. How many burdens of the church they carry in our confessions and how often they are deprived of sleep, privacy, and rest (one assumes money also, though it never entered conversation). Both our fathers draw from the same Well as our Deacon: so alive they almost cannot be daunted; so willing to help and care at all times; so able to put others first and themselves last, yet in the most blessed and quietly dignified way. They are seemingly so far above, but make themselves so much less that in so doing they raise themselves up, not for themselves, but for their Lord. And they lose not one shred of dignity in the process -- to the contrary, they gain. It's the oddest process. Almost dizzying.

And then there's our Bishop. Our priests were no doubt cut from his cloth -- the governor of 500-square miles who walked to Easter Vigil Mass carrying his own luggage then offered me his coat. He nearly blushes when we kiss his ring. He'll stand all day and talk to us as if we are the only people in the room. He came and visited our RCIA class, and even though there were less than a dozen people in the room, he gave a talk as if there were 300, then patiently answered questions for a half-hour. He issued a staunch and uncompromising encyclical defending the unborn and the Holy Eucharist, even as his own parishioners scoffed and sent him hate mail. He still does his own grocery shopping. And he goes out of his way to be available and present for his flock. He is seemingly so far above, but makes himself so much less...

And we've learned, watching these men, how this whole thing works. What it means to be a Christian. How it is to be done. There is not just one way to love, there are a myriad endless -- like sands on the shore.

But there is something else. The most important thing. Although we'd spent over a year in their company, I'd never connected all the dots and truly put this mandate of Love into action until something happened.

My first Eucharist.

It's God. It's Him inside us that makes it work. And you can't understand that until you've been through it. You can know it as an intellectual ideal, you can even believe it. But you can't have joy unspeakable that overflows into genuine, active and appreciative true Love until you've eaten at the Master's table. That's what all these men have in common. They seek Love, are willing to obey and make themselves subservient to Love, are nourished by their eating and drinking of Love, enabling them to live Love.

For almost nine years I've thought that the Christian life was essentially a myth. I thought Jesus, when He walked on Earth, was so far above me that I could never be where He was. This is still true in His Incarnation and Perfectness. But I misunderstood my Savior. I thought He would never want to reach down to where I was. That the distance was too great for the troubling. And that if He would, I thought it would only be to correct me and raise me up to where He was so I could understand the Truth and be free. Not for any other reason than my correction.

But that wasn't it at all.

He came down to where I was, clothed as a Servant, and washed my dirty feet -- not so I would love Him, but because He already loved me. He made Himself so much less than we so far below Him because He genuinely and really loved us. That is the kind of Love that does not demand its own way but gets it -- for what it pours out. That kind of Love draws lovers to it. And that is what we eat and drink at Eucharist.

That's how it works.