Made for... Mediocrity?

I didn’t wake up one morning in my youth and think, “I want to grow up to be a mediocre husband and father, and to fritter away my life on selfish pursuits and unfulfilling drivel.”

But there came a point in which I recognized, as a young man, that was where I was headed. I realized and acknowledged that my life was mediocre and even bad. There was an absence of goodness in my heart, and so in my life. It touched everything around me.

My journey toward badness entailed choices made step by step. The path of mediocrity and moral degeneration is a wide and spacious one, and easy to tread. My own journey will have to be chronicled elsewhere, but to sum it up, basically I bought into the culture's "gospel": "Live for yourself and you will be happy." That is, of course, the sure road to hell. 

We human beings are not made for mediocrity and badness, and we certainly weren’t made for hell. If evil is the absence of goodness, much like a cavity is the absence of tooth health, and if hell is the state of utter and final isolation, the self turned inward in a sort of self-obsession that allows for no communion, evil and hell are antithetical to everything we human beings were created for.

We were made for greatness.

We were made for heaven, the fulfillment of all desire, the realization of all human aspirations and hope. We were made for communion with God.

I think one of the reasons many young people are drawn to the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of Catholicism, even in the midst of the moral relativism and secularism of the prevailing culture, is because they recognize that human beings were made to be heroes. Children dream of being heroes, waving their plastic swords of victory over their heads, using their superpowers to defeat villains. Little boys desire to be admired and respected by the masses, knights on stallions; little girls long to be beautiful princesses, treasured by someone great and benevolent.

When I asked one passionately Catholic and sincere young adult why he and his peers are drawn to a living of the fullness of faith in the Church, and reject the sort of cafeteria-style Catholicism popular with their parents’ generation, he replied, matter-of-factly, “We are tired of the ambiguity and mush that the culture offers. We want truth, and we want it all.”

The Witness of Authentic Discipleship 

What captivated me, in the beginning of my own young adult journey into Catholicism, was the collision between my unhappiness and the witness of Christians who lived their faith authentically. They weren’t perfect disciples, but they were disciples, serious disciples, seriously joyful disciples. Their joy and charity stood in brilliant contrast to my joyless and selfish existence.  

Disciples are meeting points with the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Gospel.

The problem in the modern Church is that there simply aren’t many disciples around. If a disciple is one who follows Jesus Christ, a "saint-in-training," I would venture that based on the disengagement level we see in the Church (based on weekly Mass attendance, obedience to moral teachings, active membership in the Church, etc.), a vast percentage of Catholics do not even know they are supposed to be in deep friendship with Jesus Christ, or that God is personal and an intimate reality who invites them to relationship (see Sherry Weddell’s Forming Intentional Disciples for an excellent treatment of this).

There are many reasons, I suppose, why so many of our brothers and sisters not only don’t consider themselves to be in relationship with the Lord, but don’t even realize He calls them to be. Again, Ms. Weddell does a thorough job examining these reasons in her book.

Encounters with the Living Jesus Christ

Many Catholics seem to walk in the former shoes of a close friend of mine. He claims that until he had an encounter with Jesus Christ while on his Cursillo at age forty, going to Mass, which he did regularly, had been simply a duty; Mass attendance was getting his “holy card” punched. He believed in God, but didn’t know Him. I see this as a sort of fire insurance piety. Now this friend is one of the most committed, on-fire Catholic men I know.

There are many disengaged Catholics who were led to active discipleship through an encounter with the Lord in adoration, sacraments, Liturgy, a retreat experience, a holy Catholic's presence during a personal tragedy, or even in a simple friendship with a beautiful, joyful Catholic. There seem to be many tipping points to the point of conversion.

Saints--- and disciple-saints-in-training, like some of the people I encountered as a young seeker--- inspire the disengaged to give discipleship a shot. Saints and saints in training are powerful signs of Christ's presence, and they can be irresistible forces in the world. 

Saints cry out, with their very lives, “This can be done! Life in Christ can be lived to the fullest!”

Saints demand our attention. Even when we try to not notice because we don’t want to confront the contrast of our lives with theirs, we just can’t seem to help it. Look at the effect of Pope Francis on the secular world. Even nonbelievers can't seem to help but take notice. In the midst of our banal conversations about jeans and the best brand of ice cream, the state of the economy, and the latest celebrity scandal, saints turn our heads and pause the conversation. We can’t seem to stop ourselves from taking notice of the “little Christs” caught in our peripheral vision.

When I came into the Church in the mid-nineties, I didn't hear a lot of talk about the saints. 

Thankfully one hears about the saints much more today. This is important, because the saints vividly remind us that God calls us to life in abundance. We need to be talking about them, learning from them, watching them in action. 

What are We Afraid of?

Mediocrity, the poison to sanctity, is born of fear. To live heroically takes courage. It takes resolve. It takes conviction. One may not, in the journey of sanctity, keep pulling out the map to second-guess one’s path. One must move forward, in friendship with the Lord, with confidence and courage. 

My greatest regrets since entering the Church are over the times I have failed to act heroically in matters of love and life. I regret saying “no” to God out of fear, in my failure to exercise the virtues of faith, hope, and love. Mediocrity is a sure sign of a lack of trust in the Lord. 

We were made for greatness and we will never find fulfillment in anything less. It is a process; it won’t happen over night. But if we are not even on the road, we will never get there.

What is the road?

Jesus said… “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

Jesus, when all is said and done, is the saint-maker. He is the mediocrity-smasher. There is no way to abundant life except through Him.