Dear Friend:
SEVERAL YEARS AGO a movement was begun in France called “worker priests”. The movement was started buy a Roman Catholic Cardinal named Suhard, in Paris. The Priest went to work each day, but not in churches, rather into factories, mills, shops, offices - - wherever men and women were working, to be there as workers also, doing the same kinds of work everyone else did. They went as co-workers but also as believers.
When Cardinal Suhard began the movement to he introduced it with this statement:
“To be a believer is not to make propaganda, not to correct or change people, it is not to be telling people what to think or even what the church thinks; it is to create a mystery. It is to live in such a way that life is inexplicable if God does not exist.”
That is a useful description of what it is to be a Christian, and to be a church. We are called to live in such a way that those who live and work right alongside us, who watch us, and hear from us and have to deal with us, that living of ours is inexplicable if God does not exist. Not because we do things so perfectly, not certainly because we have all the answers, or even necessarily in every situation the best answer, but because of evidence we hold ourselves accountable to the Most High, and when we relate to people we know and behave that we are standing on holy ground.
Two things more Cardinal Suhard encouraged: a humility before all of life’s mysteries, and a gratitude before all God’s gifts. There is a balance in all this; some times we DO tell others about our church and our beliefs and invite them to “come and see”. If we have found some light in this dark world it makes sense to share it. But other times, and probably largely, religion is better caught than taught. It isn’t the person who tells you, “You better do this or God won’t be pleased with you”; it is the one whose decency and liveliness cause you to say, “I’d love to experience something of what they seem to have found.”
It was the way of our Lord; not, “shape up or else”, but “seek and you shall find, ask and you shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
Sincerely, Pastor Condon
