"When we asked hundreds of diocesan and parish leaders from sixty dioceses throughout the English-speaking world, 'What percent of your parishioners, would you estimate, are intentional disciples?' the consistent answer was "Five percent." (185)
What is an 'intentional disciple?'
"Intentional discipleship is not accidental or merely cultural. It is not just a matter of "following the rules." A disciple's primary motivation comes from within, out of a Holy Spirit-given 'hunger and thirst for righteousness.' All things serve and flow from the central thing: the worship and love of the Blessed Trinity with one's whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and therefore the love of one's neighbor as oneself." (66)
So, discipleship is intentional. It is a matter of dropping our nets and following Jesus. It is a belief in a personal God with whom we can be in relationship.
And only 5% of practicing Catholics today can be considered to be doing this. Only 5% of Catholics are actively following Jesus. 95% are just going through the motions. 1/3rd do not even believe a personal relationship with God is possible. No wonder Evangelical Protestants see Catholics as prime mission territory.
Sadly, much evangelization today is actually 're-evangelization' and re-catechization'--that is, correcting erroneous beliefs among Catholics themselves and renewing people with the power of the Holy Spirit. I have heard on many occasions: "I am a good person. I love my kids, I go to church, I volunteer, I do good things," as if such things are an assurance of heaven. This is absolutely erroneous reasoning, the kind that should be rebuked the way Jesus rebuked Peter ("Get behind me Satan!").
Our starting point needs to be our complete inadequacy, our utter sinfulness, and our inability to save ourselves by our own merit. There is no room for this 'I'm ok, you're ok' mediocrity. We are not ok. We are products of the Fall. The incarnation, the cross, the resurrection...none of it makes sense when we don't lay down the foundation of the absolute necessity of Christ's redemption--that is, saving us from sin and where sin takes us.
And yet this is not enough. The Christian life fully lived is not marked by constant fear and scrupulous trembling, but a convicted desire of resting in the fact that we are loved by God. The Christian life fully lived is marked by joy, confidence, and gratefulness--bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. As St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, "Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls."It sees evidence of God's handiwork--in nature, in our interactions with other people, in the poor, in seemingly random circumstances--through eyes of of faith and rejoices that as small and inadequate as we are, we can cast our cares on Him, because He cares for us. The Christian life is a pearl of great price, one often overlooked in the marketplace among so many other things to buy.
Do you live as if you have found it? And if you have found it, have you sold all you have in order to be able to buy it?
The evangelist's lives by the words from 1 Peter 3:15: "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have." But in order to do this, he must first be a disciple, otherwise he has no credibility. Disciples are not perfect. But they know they have found something worth dropping their nets for; someone worthy of being followed.
I know many people who have left the Church in order to have a "personal relationship with Jesus." The implication is that a personal relationship with Jesus is not possible within the Catholic Church. Although I know this is not true, I wonder why the perception. Maybe these seekers encountered Catholics who have grown cold and ritualistic; who didn't make them feel welcomed; who couldn't explain the reason for their hope, or who themselves maybe did not in fact have a personal relationship with Jesus themselves.
This makes me sad. But rather than get dejected about it, I see great potential for renewal. After a year of being wishy washy with what God was gently putting on my heart, one day as I was driving to work, I felt the Lord say to me, "Rob, there is much work to be done. The harvest is great, but the workers are few." I replied, "Make me a worker in your vineyard, Lord." And it is not just non-Catholics or non-Christians who have not heard the gospel with the eyes of their hearts, but baptized Catholics themselves in a kind of spiritual suspended animation. The flame is there among embers, just waiting to be fanned and brought back to life.
What does this look like, to go out into the vineyard to work? I don't know! But that's not our concern. The important thing is a willingness to subject ourselves to the will of God, humbly, and with great sincerity. He will let us know what needs to be done, give us our assignments on a need-to-know basis. He will make us fishers of men, marked by joy, armed with reason for our hope, for it is His will the none be lost, but that all might come to repentance and be saved.
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