February 10, 2014
Being on the constant road of conversion has its fair set of challenges, and the way our relationships change with those who knew us on the early part of our Christian pilgrimage is a challenge worthy of our attention and reflection. I’ve found this issue to be a particularly pressing in my young adulthood, and I know other young adults who express the same concern in different ways.
I sometimes wonder whether some of the people I grew up with look at my life now and ask: “Was he brainwashed or something?” The main reason I wonder this isn’t because these old friends are hostile to my choice to enter the seminary, but because I was a bit of a “class-clown” back then. Probably not priest material in the eyes of many.
I’d felt a call to the priesthood from (at least) the eighth grade – though none of my friends knew it. As soon as I figured out that priesthood entailed celibacy – and as soon as I figured out what celibacy was – I even started actively avoiding the junior high/high school dating scene. That lasted … for a while. In any case, I was actually quite serious about it. The only trouble I had was negotiating a way to let others know how serious I was about my faith without making it seem like that would take away from who I was, and the joy that I found in life.
This may be disappointing, but I don’t know that there is any set solution to the “my old friends think I’m brainwashed” problem. Aside from demonstrating the reasonableness of the Catholic faith (which it is), I think the next important step is just to wrestle with and resolve how we’ll live our lives going forward.
St. Paul said “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11) We might apply some of that here. If we think of the early stages of conversion as a kind of “childhood” – I think it’s true that compartmentalizing our faith can be part of it – there might be a fear of not being accepted or a feeling of apartness from non-believing friends and family.
“Putting aside childish things” then might mean reaching that point in conversion where we just say “alright, enough already, I’m tired of being “regular Stuart” at work and parties and “Christian Stuart” at church. From now on, it’s just “Stuart.” This would mean (not saying that I am at this point) walking into just about every context of our lives and letting every word from our mouth, action of our body and intention of our heart speak to the people around us: “I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. You hear the one about the priest and the rabbi?”
No need to fix the class-clown part.