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.
