Do Catholics have a sense of saving souls nowadays? Do you have this sense of saving souls? A friend posed me these questions recently. She had been reading the writings of Mother Teresa in Come Be My Light, and was struck by her keen sense to save souls. Her questions invited me to pen the following response.
I believe Catholics still do have a sense of saving souls, and we do reach out to do so. We may not, however, express this act in the language Mother Teresa used in her book.
If you and I, and so many Catholics, are indeed saving souls, how do we do so? I'd like to think that “saving souls” can take many forms. There are those called to literally preach repentance. Others go out and through their acts of mercy touch the hearts of those suffering and in need.
Perhaps, we can also find an answer to these questions in that everyday act we do, telling another the story of God in our daily living, the Good News alive. To tell God's story can help another experience the comfort of a God she seeks in pain. This act can also lead others in confusion to realize God's certain existence and goodness. And our storytelling can point another who seeks God in his disbelief or disappointment with religion to find the answer in the extraordinary truth that God has always been present and caring for him, never absent and callous as he had thought.
Indeed, aren’t all these acts of “saving” another from ignorance of God? Don’t they illuminate another’s darkness with the wondrous story of God's love? And don't you and I, and everyone else, who tells stories of God do what Jesus calls Christians to do—go forth, proclaim the Good News and invite all peoples to repent for the Reign of God is near?
There is one miraculous gift in these acts: hope. We offer boundless, life-giving hope of friendship with God when we help our sisters and brothers turn away from despair, that most dreadful sin in which humankind falls into the abyss of meaningless life without God. And when we gift them this kind of hope, they can move from darkness and sin to light and life. To do this is to seek out the lost sheep like Jesus does. And isn’t this nothing less than “saving souls”?
Indeed, to whom should you tell a story of God's love today, and so save her soul?
artwork: lost and found by olsen
If you and I, and so many Catholics, are indeed saving souls, how do we do so? I'd like to think that “saving souls” can take many forms. There are those called to literally preach repentance. Others go out and through their acts of mercy touch the hearts of those suffering and in need.
Perhaps, we can also find an answer to these questions in that everyday act we do, telling another the story of God in our daily living, the Good News alive. To tell God's story can help another experience the comfort of a God she seeks in pain. This act can also lead others in confusion to realize God's certain existence and goodness. And our storytelling can point another who seeks God in his disbelief or disappointment with religion to find the answer in the extraordinary truth that God has always been present and caring for him, never absent and callous as he had thought.
Indeed, aren’t all these acts of “saving” another from ignorance of God? Don’t they illuminate another’s darkness with the wondrous story of God's love? And don't you and I, and everyone else, who tells stories of God do what Jesus calls Christians to do—go forth, proclaim the Good News and invite all peoples to repent for the Reign of God is near?
There is one miraculous gift in these acts: hope. We offer boundless, life-giving hope of friendship with God when we help our sisters and brothers turn away from despair, that most dreadful sin in which humankind falls into the abyss of meaningless life without God. And when we gift them this kind of hope, they can move from darkness and sin to light and life. To do this is to seek out the lost sheep like Jesus does. And isn’t this nothing less than “saving souls”?
Indeed, to whom should you tell a story of God's love today, and so save her soul?
artwork: lost and found by olsen
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