Missionaries at the door

Occasionally, when I happen to be home on a Saturday morning, there is a knock at the front door. Young men, white shirts. You know the scenario. At other times, there are friendly young Jehovah’s Witnesses bringing copies of the Watchtower. I have always given these committed young people hospitality, and I have enjoyed the company of the Morman missionaries who have travelled far from their homes to preach their message. These doorknockers are ordinary human beings, doing an extraordinary job, a job that arises as a response to their faith.

Now, as you can imagine, I don’t agree with the conclusions they have reached, though we share in the great stories of Christianity, but these men and women do something that I cannot do. They proclaim their faith to their neighbours, face to face, at their front doors.

The Acts of the Apostles (9:26 – 31) recalls Paul’s story as he preaches the Good News in Jersualem. He preached ‘fearlessly in name of the Lord’. The consequence of which the Hellenists were determined to kill him and the disciples had to send him to Caesarea and thence to Tarsus.

In another time, regular external displays of our faith were shared in public. Catholic men would remove their hats passing a Catholic church, we had regular processions on Marian feast days and on the feasts of Christ the King or Corpus Christi, we wore scapulas under our shirts, carried rosary beads in our pockets and had our patron saint’s medals pinned into our jackets, and no less than a St Christopher’s medallion hanging from the car mirror. Now such displays seem to be anathema. A gold cross hanging from the neck has become a mere decoration.

Our internal displays of faith have also disappeared, sometimes without a trace. Our local church is bereft of children though we have 150 enrolled in our local Catholic school. There are key teachings of our church concerning marriage, the value of human life, the dignity of the individual, the centrality of the Eucharist, even the divinity of Christ that are treated with disdain by those who claim a place under the umbrella of the Church.

Yes, these missionaries who clamber at our doors are latter day St Paul’s. They want to make public their lives of faith, and do so with vigour and commitment. There is no call for you to knock on your neighbour’s door, but as a minimum you are called to nurture and grow your faith and you have a serious and unalienable obligation to do so for your children’s sake.