Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
What does it mean to be a disciple? Sometimes I think we want to reduce discipleship to an overly simplified, and dare I say, ‘appealing’ definition. I think we want discipleship to mean that we become really nice people. Or some would like to boil discipleship down to living a moral life. Maybe we want to reduce it to being a daily Mass goer. Or we think that if we spend enough hours in a soup kitchen we are a disciple.
Now all of these things can be a part of discipleship, but all of these can be a part of my life and I can appear to be a pretty normal person. There are plenty of normal people who are nice, moral, have daily rituals, and volunteer to aide their community. So if all of that can be normal, what sets a disciple apart? I’m not asking so we can wear some elitist title of ‘disciple.’ I’m asking because I think it is important for us to know what difference Jesus makes in our lives.
Given today’s Gospel passage and that it is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, I think I’ve narrowed down one of the essential ingredients of discipleship. To the outsider, discipleship looks a little crazy. Today’s Gospel ends with these words, “When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’.” I mean, here is Jesus, the sanest human being who has ever lived because as the author of reality He perfectly sees the world as it truly is. And yet he is called crazy. Now if I’m His disciple, to some extent, I’m going to look a little crazy.
This is true of St. Francis de Sales. St. Francis felt called to reintroduce approximately 70,000 people to the Catholicism they left in favor of Calvinism. No one but his relative agreed to go with him, but he still went. After at least a year of fruitless labor, his relative left him, but he stayed. Why? Because as a disciple he followed where His Lord called. So whether he had to be in a barn loft or tie himself to a tree branch to sleep in safety from wild animals, he was willing to do it. And he did do it. The population that he set out to reach all returned to Catholicism. I would have called him ‘out of his mind,’ but then again, so did Jesus’ relatives.
So I think the question I’m left pondering today is “If our life makes complete and perfect sense to a secular and unbelieving observer, are we living as a disciple?” Someone else posed this idea before I did. Msgr. Peter Vaghi wrote in his book, Encountering Jesus in Word, Sacraments, and Works of Charity, “The Christian life means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist” (12). I have to wonder, if I met someone who had never heard of God, would my life make sense to them?
I think this becomes an essential part of discipleship; that my life can’t be explained without also explaining who Christ is.
- Spencer Hargadon