Seekers

When a high school classmate of mine knew he was dying, he asked me to speak at his funeral, but he cautioned me, “Don’t you dare say anything religious.” It was an unusual thing to tell a deacon, but Bill was not comfortable with formal religion and lived somewhere on the spectrum between agnostic and atheist. I knew about that because Bill often brought up religion in our conversations. He did not adhere to any faith, but he was a seeker.

Bill would profess to dismiss Christianity, for example, but then he would spend a long walk on the beach with me discussing Jesus’ remark in Matthew’s Gospel, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

 I often think of Bill when I’m scanning a Q-and-A website in which many of the questions regard religion. Frequently, writers who profess to be atheists ask how Christians can justify believing what they do; that could refer to any aspect of our faith, but veneration of saints, the Resurrection, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist are regular targets. Mind you, the writer doesn’t ask what we believe but, rather, how we can justify believing what we do.

 Christians are not blameless in this environment. On the same site, Christians often make demeaning remarks about atheists and warn them of the super-heated destiny that awaits them.

This is the liturgical year in which the gospel passages read at Mass are largely taken from the Gospel of Mark. A theme that runs through that gospel is that the apostles were slow to understand what sort of messiah Jesus was, and particularly slow to accept that the Messiah must suffer and die. Jesus was occasionally frustrated by this, but he didn’t give up on those men. In fact, it was only in the aftermath of the Resurrection that his patient cultivation of those followers bore lasting fruit.

 We are all called to continue the mission that Jesus gave his first disciples—namely, to spread the gospel, to evangelize. And, as Pope Francis has pointed out, Jesus came to save everyone—“even the atheists.” We won’t get far with our part in that mission if we disdain those who don’t share our faith. To evangelize anyone, we must first share good will with them, and that means respecting their inherent dignity as children of God and recognizing that, even if they don’t profess the gospel, their lives may reflect it.

That’s how it was with Bill. He just naturally lived according to a principle that is at the heart of all the major religions in their pure form. That principle is that each person should live, not as though he were the center of the universe, but rather understanding that he is a part of something larger than himself. It’s the principle that makes the difference between selfishness and dedication to the common good.

In his relationships with his children and grandchildren and with his friends he was generous and kind and always a source of good humor. In his work as a prosecutor, he treated the people he encountered with equity—making no distinctions based on their place on the social scale.

I don’t know where my conversations with Bill would have led had he not died, but I’m sure they did more to broaden his understanding of our faith than they would have if I had told him he was going to hell.

 ✝️

Vatican Media Division photo.

Charles Paolino is managing editor at RENEW International. This post first appeared in The Catholic Spirit, the newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, where the writer is a permanent deacon.