I Am Responsible

A friend of mine is a recovering alcoholic. He tells me that on the wall of many AA meeting rooms hangs a statement. It reads:

I am Responsible.

When anyone, anywhere

Reaches out for help,

I want the hand of AA to be there.

And for that: I am responsible.

Like many aspects of the 12-step program, this simple statement holds profound truth and power. It recognizes that I am my brother’s keeper. It proclaims that God, in the face of the skeptic’s scoffing, did do something about the world’s suffering. God created you and me. Put simply, it accepts responsibility.

There’s a lot of analysis out there about the current state of affairs of the Church. Pew Research Center, the Gallup Poll, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), have all placed empirical numbers behind the commonplace hunch that in the desacralizing face of postmodernism the Church’s efforts to evangelize (it’s fundamental raison d’etre) aren’t going very well.

Let me state as an emphatic caveat that I am both indebted to and grateful for the rise of religious research and the contributions this body of literature makes to the proclamation of the gospel. I am both a researcher and a student of research. I love the stuff. I’m fully onboard. Yet I fear that for many, and I can say this of myself even, this bourgeoning corpus of statistics isn’t bringing us any closer to addressing the problem. We can slice and dice the data but it doesn’t mean we’re doing anything about it. The overabundance of analysis brings more paralysis than apostolic action.

Pope Francis warns against an unhealthy Church “clinging to its security” and getting “caught up in a web of procedures.”[1] I wonder if he might say that same thing about all our impressive statistics. While we’re “in here” crunching all our numbers and arguing about interpretations, there are millions “out there” dying on the streets and losing hope in the dignity of life. “If something should rightly disturb and trouble our consciences,” Pope Francis exhorts, “it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life.”[2]

Perhaps an AA meeting might do us all good. What if every Christian, everywhere would accept responsibility for his brothers and sisters, those people in their daily sphere of influence who are quietly drifting, who are silently suffering, who need someone to talk to? What if on the wall of every Christian home hung a sign that said:

I am responsible.

When anyone, anywhere

Reaches out for help

I want the hand of Chris’s body to be there.

And for that: I am responsible.

It is much easier to pontificate over numbers than it is to pick up the phone, hop in the car, physically GO to where real people are, and engage “the other” in the name of Jesus. Yet we must call. We must go. We must embrace and love and forgive and comfort and challenge. We must, in the final analysis, take responsibility.

I believe God is calling every one of us. No one is exempt. No one is forgotten. And I can do no better than Bohemian-Austrian novelist Rainer Maria Rilke who wrote this haunting poem entitled “Go to the Limits of your Longing”:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

Then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall

Go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

And make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going.

No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

 If you're ready to be responsible, so am I. Give me your hand. We'll do this together.

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[1] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 49.

[2] Ibid.