The season of Easter is the time of the Church year when those who want to be “WOKE” (or perhaps “WOKER”) Catholics “rise to a new life in Christ” by learning about and leaving behind what Pope Francis calls their “tomb psychology.” This means exiting the dank, darkness of the tomb of daily life and walking out into the pure light of truth to perceive where the Holy Spirit is leading us. This requires patterning our decisions according to and living that truth each day.
Leaving that “tomb psychology” behind is what a twenty-something-year-old named Kylie Stigar-Burke narrated online. However, although Stigar-Burke perceived and was being drawn to the pure light of truth, she failed to pattern her decisions by and thus failed to live the truth. Consequently, Stigar-Burke returned to the dank, dark tomb where self-centeredness once again enveloped her, leaving Stigar-Burke only a little better off than had she not ventured forth into the pure light of truth.
Stigar-Burke narrates how she was attracted to the pure light of truth when she realized that she had “grown too complacent, too comfortable with my life.” It wasn’t the good kind of complacency, either,” she noted, describing her routine as “a lot like ‘Groundhog Day’ with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Work, dinner, sleep, repeat.”
Stigar-Burke added that she “felt stuck and unmotivated in a situation where I should have felt excited and inspired. Suddenly, I felt like I needed a new life.” Even though Stigar-Burke reports being constantly surrounded by people, she felt lonely, drowned out by everyone else’s creative energy, complacent, and getting lost in the void, she observed, “forgetting my own goals and ambitions in the riptide.”
“Leaving was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” noting:
Stigar-Burke added that she “felt stuck and unmotivated in a situation where I should have felt excited and inspired. Suddenly, I felt like I needed a new life.” Even though Stigar-Burke reports being constantly surrounded by people, she felt lonely, drowned out by everyone else’s creative energy, complacent, and getting lost in the void, she observed, “forgetting my own goals and ambitions in the riptide.”
“Leaving was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” noting:
I left everything. My boyfriend, my friends, my sheets, my life. Sadly, even my electric wine opener. Everything. And no, it didn’t really make a whole bunch of sense at the time as I was stuffing clothes and useless **** into bags and steamrolling out of there.
“I spent weeks crying my eyes out at my new apartment, b****ing to everyone and anyone who would listen,” Stigar-Burke wrote, adding:
At first, none of it made sense. I didn’t even fully understand why I did it, why I left. I had this general feeling that I needed something more. Something better. Something that is actually good for me….As weird as it sounds, I feel more awake, more alive, after leaving it all behind. I haven’t felt lonely in a really long time, at least not since starting this new life.
All of that self-awareness was the pure light of truth piercing into the dank, dark of the tomb that was Stigar-Burke’s life. While she was making progress spiritually, coming to terms with the unhappiness generating all of that discomfort, unfortunately Stigar-Burke decided to return to that dank, dark tomb.
Why?
All that Stigar-Burke was looking for and found, she noted, was in herself: her house, making her own routine, and creating a life that belonged to her, she noted, “no one else but me.”
The term “dank, cold tomb” is a metaphor, of course, conveying what Monsignor Frederick Hochwalt called “wanderers in the wasteland” in 1959.
Hochwalt was speaking about the young adult Catholics of his era, those wanderers in the wasteland who were “cradle Catholics”—baptized and confirmed as well as having graduated from Catholic elementary and high schools and Catholic universities as well. Unfortunately, none of what they learned about the Catholic faith seems to have “taken hold” of their hearts, as this was evident in the fact their faith wasn’t “concrete” in terms of its daily and weekly practice. For these young adult Catholics, the Catholic faith was an idea that was disjointed from how they lived each day, meaning, “my life” and, as Stigar-Burke described it, “living in my house, making my routine, and creating a life that belongs to no one else but me.”
In short: For these Catholics, “life was all about me.”
Let’s be frank: This kind of life isn’t spiritually or morally healthy. In fact, it’s also not mentally healthy, with psychologists describing people living this kind of life as “narcissists.”
Today’s young Catholics should consider this fact: Many of those young adult Catholics Monsignor Hochwalt was describing were their grandparents who had pushed God and their Catholic faith to the peripheries of their lives. Transmitting this way of life to their children—the parents of today’s young Catholics—this second generation of “sleepy” Catholics became what St. John Paul II called a “lost generation.” In turn, most of that lost generation transmitted their “sleepy Catholic faith” to their children who today, if they “choose” to have children, are this generation’s Catholic parents.
That constitutes a third generation of “sleepy” Catholics and quite sadly, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. While many of these parents self-identify as “Catholic,” 80% don’t practice their Catholic faith, meaning they’re “Catholic In Name Only.” Yet another generation of “wanderers in the wasteland,” the equivalent of the Gentiles in the estimation of the Jewish-Christians who comprised the first of the Christian communities. In their judgment, the Gentiles weren’t deserving or worthy of attention—of evangelization—because they were judged unfit to be Christian. They were pagans or, worse yet, heathens.
Church history teaches it wasn’t long before the Jewish disciples of Jesus and the later Jewish-Christian community of Jerusalem didn’t want their faith and practice “watered down” or, worse yet, “sullied” by those non-Jews, leading them to require that Gentile converts first become Jews and subsequently be baptized Christian if they were to belong to the Christian community. That’s the equivalent of “WOKE” Catholics saying today, “Don’t waste your time on those adult ‘sleepy’ Catholics who are wandering around in the wasteland…they aren’t worth the effort because and won't do what’s required.”
In a strange twist of Fate, however, some Church historians maintain that Saints Paul and Barnabas actually “saved” Christianity by leaving the Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem and evangelizing the Gentiles. How so? Within a few short decades, specifically around 67 a.d., the Romans decimated Jerusalem and, along with it, the first Christian community.
The challenge confronting those of us who seek to live as “WOKE” or to become “WOKER” Catholics this Eastertime isn’t to view “sleepy” Catholics as unworthy of being Catholic—thinking of them as “lesser Catholics” undeserving of our care and attention. Instead, our challenge is to view “sleepy” Catholics as Monsignor Hochwalt did—“wanderers in the wasteland”—fellow travelers on the Catholic pathway who, for a variety of reasons we may or may not understand, spend their days on the peripheries of the Catholic faith and its practice. That requires us, in particular, to figure out how we’re going to draw them back from the periphery—the dank, dark tomb in which they spend their days—and into the center—the pure light of truth that’s found in the Church—by evangelizing them. Just as Saints Paul and Barnabas did with the Gentiles, our challenge is to evangelize those “sleepy” Catholics about how being “WOKE” Catholics provides the way, the truth, and the life for which they—and, for that matter, all people, including Kylie Stigar-Burke—long in their hearts.
Superadd to that challenge what we heard this in today’s first reading, namely, how Saints Paul and . Barnabas left everything behind and were now “teaching in that name” in the Greek-speaking areas of today’s Turkey and Greece. Like the Jews in Jerusalem who had rejected the Word of God and condemned themselves “as unworthy of eternal life,” the Risen Lord commands us today to leave behind what makes us comfortable “to be a light to the [wanderers in the wasteland] and an instrument of salvation.”
Evangelizing others doesn’t direct our attention to how people feel uncomfortable with themselves and their lives especially in the heart where—just like Stigar-Burke did—people experience a general feeling that they’re empty and need something more, something better, and something that’s actually good for them. Instead, evangelizing others points them in the direction of the light that’s to be discovered beyond their dank, dark tomb in which they spend their days and, desiring the light breaking into their hearts rather than remain in the darkness, to leave it all behind and rise to new life in the light of truth.
For this reason, evangelizing the wanderers in the wasteland isn’t about promulgating Church doctrine and getting them to conform themselves rigidly to and clutch onto it with all their might but to develop a radical openness to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who “will teach you and remind you of all that I have taught.” Evangelizing in this way seizes not upon a person’s profound dissatisfaction with life and the status quo, what St. Augustine called “restlessness.” Instead, it involve a change: Seeking to be “born from above” by responding to Holy Spirit’s inspiration leaving behind the dank, darkness of the tomb and entering into the light where the Way, the Truth, and the Life is discovered.
How many of us, perhaps each and every day hear people freely and willingly grumbling and complaining about how dissatisfied they are with life?
“WOKE” Catholics and those who wish to be “WOKER” Catholics, for that matter, recognize in all this one of what Pope Francis calls “God’s surprises,” and in the context of today’s scripture readings, the opportunity to evangelize a wanderer in the wasteland. This is how this is how “WOKE” Catholics make their faith concrete: The “Word [is] made flesh and dwells among us”—that is, “Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.” Then comes speaking what gives life to the truth of the Catholic faith openly, with courage and without compromise, as that’s identified by the Nicene Creed, and exploring with those wanderers in the wasteland why “I believe in God the Father, Who made heaven and earth,” why “I believe in Jesus Christ Who was born, Who died…,” and why “I believe in the Holy Spirit....” Absent this kind of evangelization, those people are destined to return to the dank, dark tomb of the unhappiness and dissatisfaction characterizing “sleepy” Catholics who live out the “dead faith of the living” rather than the “living faith of the dead.”
It was for that reason both Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said:
It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, but since you reject it and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, I have made you a light to the Gentiles, that you may be an instrument of salvation to the ends of the earth.
That represents our challenge from scripture for this fourth week of Easter: To listen with humility to the gripes and complaints we are sure to hear this coming week but, rather than think “There she (or he) goes again,” to recall this is one of God’s “surprises”—an opportunity to evangelize.
That will require conducting a memento mori upon awaking each day by asking ourselves: When God surprises me today, what will I say?
Think the answer through but don’t fret or be anxious because “at that time the Holy Spirit will teach you what you should say” (Matthew 10:19). That is, in the moment of surprise remember to invite the Holy Spirit to be the protagonist of your life so that you will possess the patience and courage to enter into another person’s restlessness—the dank, dark tomb of their lives—and, imitating Saints Paul and Barnabas, be docile to walk the path where the Holy Spirit will direct you to lead them out from their tomb.
Of this approach to evangelization, Pope Francis has observed:
The wind blows where it will and you hear the voice, but you don’t know where it is coming from or where it is going. So it is for anyone who is born of the Spirit: He hears the voice, he follows the voice, he follows the voice of the Spirit without knowing where it will end because he has made an option for the concreteness of the faith and the rebirth of the Spirit. May the Lord grant to all of us this paschal Spirit, of going forward along the path of the Spirit without compromises, without rigidity, with the liberty of proclaiming Jesus Christ as He Who has come: in the flesh.
The lesson for us who want to become “WOKE” or more “WOKER” Catholics?
To recognize that our authentic self-worth comes as we struggle to pattern each day by the light of God’s truth, come what may. Then, as we evangelize others to God’s truth this week, to “do this in memory of me” as Jesus taught by becoming one of those across the millennia—countless in number—who have evangelized the wanderers in the wasteland by being for them “an instrument of salvation to the ends of the earth.”
Living as “WOKE” or “WOKER” Catholics each day this week, we will evangelize today’s wanderers in the wasteland so they will also experience the fulfillment of the promise all of us heard on Christmas Eve:
He shall be named “Emmanuel”—which means “God is with us.”
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