I’ve Hated Our Dog All Her Life. And Now She’s About To Die

When my now-wife and I first met ten years ago, we both had our “lists” in hand of what we were looking for in a potential spouse. She was looking for someone who loved God, was resourceful, generous, and, forgiving. I was looking for someone I could be myself with, who was kind, who would make a good mother, and who didn’t have a dog. I was adamant about that last point. She got everything she wanted. I got three out of four.

Now granted, my wife wasn’t an over-the-top animal lover. She just figured she was going to be single for the rest of her life--a doting aunt to her nieces and nephews, and a dedicated nurse, but that meeting someone who was Catholic and single seemed like such a far out prospect, she figured it was as good a time as any to adopt a pet and settle in to being single. We met a few years later, got engaged after five months, and married a year later. The dog was in one of our wedding pictures outside the church. My wife had requested the neighbor walk her over to pose with us. I moved into her small town house and the three of us started our lives together.

We spent our Saturday mornings getting breakfast in town and going to the dog park so she could run around. She was a puppy at four years old, with a lot of energy to burn. She would sprint from one end of the enclosed pasture to the other, and had a long tongue that would hang out when it was hot and she was panting. She was standoffish from the other dogs and wasn’t interested in being social. For my wife’s birthday I painted a picture of the dog, laying in the grass, her paws crossed one over the other like the lady she was.

The dog was a wiley opportunist, with no manners whatsoever. I learned early on that one could never turn their back on her while there was food out on the table, because as soon as you did she would rise up on her hind legs, place her two front paws on the table, and quickly lap up every last morsel from your plate.

We had one child, then two, and life in our little house starting getting fuller. We moved to a bigger house with a yard, and had another baby. Because I loved my wife, I made every effort to love her dog. I dutifully walked her in the freezing cold. The terrier in her made her sniff everything. My wife is so patient, when she would walk her she would let her sniff to her heart’s content. I would impatiently tug on her collar to hurry our walk along so I could get back to my life.

There was the twice-a-day humiliation that every dog owner is accustomed to and takes as matter of course, but which I absolutely hated, and that was picking up the poop. Every morning and every evening, I would get the plastic bag and stuff it in my pocket. She would pace around back and forth looking for the perfect spot, sniff to confirm, and commence in making the deposit on the grass. I would lower myself to her level, put the bag over my hand, and pick up the soft pile of waste trying not to gag. I would then quickly tie tight the bag and carry my little swinging souvenir for the remainder of the walk to eventually deposit in our trash can. In the later years I would do the math in my head of how many poops I had picked up (2 poops a day times 365 days a year times 10 years equals something I don’t want to think about).

As the years went on, my resentment slowly grew. I tolerated her for my wife’s sake, but was cold and indifferent, and referred to her jokingly as my step-dog. I didn’t grow up with pets besides the occasional goldfish or gerbil. My parents had a dog aptly named Mona when they were first married and I was a baby. All I remember was she went to the bathroom in the house pretty regularly, and didn’t do much else. I was indifferent and didn’t understand the affinity for animals that many people who had grown up with them had. I resented having to make arrangements for the dog when we would go away, or having to load her up in the car when we would go to my parent’s. She shed everywhere. So much hair.

Every month I would buy a 40 pound sack of food, “Lamb and Rice,” at my wife’s request. I would schlep it over my shoulder and haul it into the house from the car. It was her favorite. One time I got the wrong kind of food and the dog didn’t eat it. I hated serving the dog and her needs, the money we spent on her, the arrangements that had to be made, the hair, every time she messed the house, threw up socks, ruined the hardwood floor, walking her, picking up the poop. My list of grievances goes on. I started calling her the Toyota Corolla of dogs--she just keeps going and going, racking up the miles.

When she especially tried my patience--whether it was the incessant barking, coming downstairs to puddles of urine, or losing my dinner to her opportunism--I was mean to her. I yelled at her, called her names, ignored her, was rough to her, and regarded her with contempt. I looked forward to “retirement,” the day I wouldn’t have to deal with these things anymore, as horrible as that sounds. My confessions oftentimes involved my mistreatment of and animosity towards her. I was no Saint Francis, that was for sure.

But my wife; she loved the dog, had genuine love and affection for her. Not in an inordinate way, treating the dog like a child or anything like that, but just as a reflection of my wife’s character--patient and kind, caring and loving. When I would see her softly petting the dog under her neck, just like she liked, or brushing her hair, I had twinges of remorse for how I treated our pet in contrast over the past ten years.

Lately, she has been having trouble getting up the stairs, and has been falling as she has gone down them. It seems as if her joints have gone bad. Like i said, I don’t know much about pets, but I think that is a bad sign. She is twelve years old, which I guess is old for dogs. I know this because I have asked my wife and googled on more than one occasion “How long do dogs live for?”

The morning of Thanksgiving, she couldn’t get up the stairs. We have started taking her out the side door for walks. It was an especially cold morning, and when my wife came back in from walking her she was crying. “Suzy can hardly walk.” My son knew something was wrong. He had asked me last week when she had fallen, “Is Suzy going to die?” I didn’t want to lie to him and tried to be tactful, but blundered when I got existential and said, “Everyone dies at some point,” which made him understandably upset. He had lived with the dog all eight years of his life since birth, and couldn’t imagine life without her. She was a part of our family.

She splayed out on the kitchen floor and rested her head on her hands as we gathered at the kitchen table. She looked weary, her eyes droopy, and had lost weight over the past couple years. When we realized that these might be the last days for the dog, my wife cried and my son cried and my daughter got sad and the baby laughed and we all hugged as a family. I was feeding the baby oatmeal and looking at the dog at my feet. My eyes started to well up, against my will. I was so mean to her, so cold, for years. I saw her as a burden and nuisance. I thought of myself as a generally okay person, but when it came to the dog I was like an abusive stepfather. And now she was going to die, probably any week now. She would be gone, and I would “get my wish.” No more walks in the bitter dawn. No more stooping down to pick up poops. No more buying gigantic bags of food every month. I would have my retirement.

But it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good to have hate in your heart, whether it’s towards a dog or a human being, a stranger or a family member. It’s a mirror being held up to see one’s reflection, how you treat the least of these. And regret is a bitter final pill. It says in scripture that you should settle matters with your adversary while you are still on the road to court. While they are still living, though, there’s always that opportunity to reconcile and make amends. I don’t know how to do that for our dog, but I’m going to try in these her final days. For my wife who lovingly adopted her and gave her a home, to my kids who have only known life with a dog, for myself who can use a challenge to love when it is hard. And for Suzy, so that when her time comes, she at least knows she is loved by every member of her family. Every last one.

When You Start To Slip

Last week I submitted an article to my editor for my monthly deadline, and he didn't want to run it. He had good reason. The salacious and jarring title, "I've Hated Our Dog All Her Life. And Now She's About To Die" should have been a tip off, as it was out of character and not fitting for a Catholic publication. It was a reflection on regret, how burdensome a life lived of not forgiving and treating others poorly can catch up to you, and a warning not to live that way. In my case, it was not being nice to our dog all her life but merely tolerating her, seeing that ugliness in myself, and being filled with sorrow that is in her last days. I knew what I wanted to express, but it came out all wrong. I am no St. Francis. I am no saint, period.

I totally understood, and submitted another article in it's place. What was weird was I didn't see anything wrong with what I sent him initially. Why would anyone want to read such a thing? Why did I write it? He used the word "depressing" at one point to describe the article, and it jiggled a little synapse and tipped me off to the fact that I was probably, once again, going through a depression myself.

I had taken a break from Facebook from the past week, which has always been a good time of refreshment and refocusing. It's also been a busy month, so I could use the time for better purposes. This week, however, rather than refreshment, I have felt an incredible loneliness and isolation. Life goes on, the film continues to roll, whether we're in the movie or not. We leave a job to retire or move on, and someone steps in to fill our roll, typically seamlessly. We lose someone we love, and we still have to wash the dishes and clean the gutters.

The startling thoughts--like second-cousins who smell an inheritance, or long lost relatives coming for a visit on their drive cross county--tasted blood in the water, and started to circle. "Who are your friends? Who can you really turn to? No one, that's who. You have no one. You are alone. If you died tomorrow, who would notice? Matter of fact, why don't you think about that. Your family would take it hard, but they'd get over it. They'd forget about you to. Nothing stays constant. Love is not forever. People move on." Et cetera.

Having worked with an competent Cognitive Behavioral Therapist years ago, who was treating me pro bono at a local clinic when I wasn't working, I recognized the thoughts and was able to rely on that training some to detach and objectify them. My thoughts are not me. I am not my thoughts. Present the evidence. Disprove their assertions. Thank them, and decline their invitation to consummate.

Have you ever been in a relationship or marriage in which you didn't trust the other person? Didn't know whether they were cheating on you, or lying to you, or putting on a smile but secretly inside you they don't like you very much? You can't quite put your finger on what it is that's off, but it's not comfortable, like living with an impersonal stranger in a co-dependent arrangement. You can't trust your mind and you can't live without it either.

That's what your mind becomes during depression: an uncomfortable stranger, someone you live with but don't trust. You need it to function, but it doesn't have your best interest at heart. Your thoughts become fuzzy, skewed, like driving while wearing someone else's glasses. Somewhere along the way, the inner-narrative has changed, become more negative, more condescending.

Grief is triggered by loss, typically, and it is a natural response. Depression, on the other hand, can be triggered by a myriad of events, both external and internal. It is not natural but foreign, not the natural state of being, but a substitute teacher. It could be a betrayal, a feign slight, a misspoken word, an overblown reading in-to canceled plans. And yet, in the throws of it, you are quite convinced that the veil has been drawn back and you are seeing things as they really are; reality has been inverted. Rather than life being a generally pleasant, worthwhile state with occasional downturns, the gray pall is actually what life is, throwing you a bone with a few scraps of ephemeral pleasure just to keep you from throwing in the towel completely.

I'm not a tough guy, but I have worked up some grit over the years. The cycles of depression in college would have been enough to warrant dropping out of school today, but I refused to. Even in grad school in my mid-twenties, when it hit and I was virtually immobilized as a result, barely able to eat or speak or move, my mom would drive to my apartment and pick me up, take me to my summer seminar class, and wait outside for me to finish to take me home. I did end up taking a leave of absence for one semester, but graduated with a 3.8 GPA after five years of part time study. At one point, in a state of mania, I sent the entire theology faculty a rambling grandiose email loosely related to my thesis. The chair of my department was kind--he recognized I was sick. But I made it though, and I prided myself on the fact that my illness did not get the best of me in school or in taking my life either.

But it wears you down. Now with a family, responsibilities, and work, it's like trying to wade through molasses. I just want to lie down and close the door. But I can't. I can't talk to anyone at work about it--whatever people tell you about the "stigma" going away is not always true--and so to take sick days and try to explain what's wrong is not always prudent. In up cycles, I take on a lot, and can sustain it normally, but in down cycles it becomes burdensome and exhausting.

The hardest is when it comes to friends. I don't feel like I have people who I can rely on. I hate needing people in my life, and yet I am so dependent on them for my well-being; I'm more social than I give myself credit for.

And yet, I too have not been a good friend. I know from dealing with depression that people who are depressed can be exhausting to try to help. No amount of convincing that are loved or that things will get better will change their mind in the thick of it. All you can do is love them and sit with them in the dark. But loving takes work, and I don't have it in me always in my selfishness and bravado. Until you are the one that needs a friend. But who has time for that? And who knows what to say? So, it's a Catch-22 of isolation. And so you go in your room and close the door and lay down and just...stare.

But you have no choice but to keep going on, fighting the force working against you. Once during one of the most difficult times, when I had had to resign from a job because I was a liability in my illness (I was working as a counselor at a juvenile detention center), I was driving home after informing my supervisor, feeling like a failure. As I drove, a line of Sycamore trees emerged lining the road, and I could feel a weight on the accelerator and having to put all my energy into not veering right, into the trees. It was if I was wrestling the steering wheel with someone else. I arrived home exhausted from the struggle and collapsed on the couch.

My dad knows. He has been through it, and walked with me through it. At my parent's house ten years ago, during an especially dark and heavy bout of it, He would take me out for walks. It would take me 2 hours to walk half a mile. I shuffled like an old man, the hood of my canvas Carhartt jacket pulled around my face, my beard long, my hair long, my boots scraping the sidewalk like a derelict. He was patient, and waited for me ahead. Little things like that were good to do. They gave some purpose to an otherwise existence devoid, in my mind, of purpose.

When you need it most, prayer can sometimes be the least comfort. It is not a Dark Night of the Soul. I hate when people refer to depression in that way. Dark nights are for saints who put God above all else and can't live without Him. At my most depressed, I am good for nothing, totally helpless. If I am abandoned, it only confirmed my suspicions that nothing lasts. But that does not draw me closer to God in such desolation, or if it does, I will only see it in the rear view mirror, one day. In the moment, all I can do is stare, grit my teeth, tell my thoughts to go to hell, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. But at least it helps to know that I am in it, and trust the evidence that chances are, it will pass in due time. Like everything else that doesn't last.

Like An Ox

My mother in law was a very loving and very stubborn woman. She could have passed for Italian. I called her the ox, though I guess the expression is "stubborn as a mule." But she was strong too, and mule didn't seem a good animal to use to reference your mother in law, so ox stuck.

It always drove me crazy to see her dig in when she was convinced she was right and refuse to budge. That's generally the opposite of how I approach things. I tend to concede rather easily, and not always in an admirable way. I'm not fond of conflict. I don't push back when maybe I should. Maybe it drove me crazy because I secretly admired the trait.

Stubbornness is a double edged sword. We see the term 'stubborn' and 'obstinate' appear throughout scripture, typically in the negative. The "stubborn and rebellious son" in Deuteronomy 21. The "stiff necked" people in Exodus 32. The "obstinate heart" in Ecclesiasticus 3.

But we also see in Mark 10:48 the blind man Bartimaeus "shouting all the louder" to Jesus when told to be quiet by the crowd. We see in Luke 5:19 a paralyzed man lowered through a hole in the roof his friends made when they could not get to Jesus on the ground. And of course Jesus relates the parable in Luke 18:1-8 of the persistent widow who will not relent in her going after a judge to give her what she wants. Jesus relates the parable as a admonition to pray and never give up.

The more I try to live for the Lord and try to surround myself with people who desire the same, the more I have come to see that trait of stubbornness less as a liability and more as an asset, when mobilized in a virtuous manner. In the coming days, the days of martyrdom, the would-be saint would do well to cultivate a kind of bull-headedness in regard to refusing to sin, refusing to relent in holiness, even under pressure and persecution. You have to be!

One inspiring saint in this regard is St. Eulalia, who was born in the 3rd century in Spain. At twelve years old, stubborn and bull-headed, she would sneak out of her parent's house in the middle of the night in search of pagans to defy. She would spit at their idols and defy their threats of torture in order to gain the red crown. Or St. Crispina, who refused to sacrifice to idols, was called stubborn and insolent by the proconsul, and was martyred?

But how do we persevere to the end, so that we may be saved? (Mt 24:13). Beyond a human stubbornness, we also need the grace of final perseverance.

It is of the utmost importance to pray for this grace. St. Alphonsus wrote that

“All those who are in heaven are there for this one reason: They prayed, they asked for perseverance. All those who are in hell are there for this one reason: They did not pray and they did not ask the Lord for the grace of final perseverance.” 

And it is a grace, not something earned or achieved on one's own. St. Thomas writes,

"Now many have meritorious works, who do not obtain perseverance; nor can it be urged that this takes place because of the impediment of sin, since sin itself is opposed to perseverance; and thus if anyone were to merit perseverance, God would not permit him to fall into sin. Hence perseverance does not come under merit.” (ST I-II, q.114, a.9, sed contra)

So if you are a stubborn person, don't be obstinate and stiff-necked in your sin like the people of Israel, but lower your shoulders and dig in your heels when you are faced with your fate in the final days. Only those who persevere to the end will be saved. And you may just need that bull headed spirit to suffer to the end and receive your crown.

"What I Hate, I Do"

I am the king of bad habits. I think of them like a Whack-a-Mole game at Dave & Busters--you bop one down into one hole, and another just pops up to take its place from another. It may be eating, drinking, gambling, or a myriad of others depending on your proclivities.

Something I see as a bad habit right now that I've gotten into is having my phone by my bed. I don't have a watch or an alarm clock, so I justify this because I need it to check the time and help me get up in the morning. I seem to be especially prone to addictive tendencies, though, so this can create some problems.

I tend to be on my phone a lot. I realize it and I don't even make any attempts to curb it. Part of it is pragmatic (texting my wife, coordinating pickups on FB Marketplace, looking up a recipe, checking my calendar, etc), but the majority of it is not. It's simply habit, and an addictive one as well. I did turn 'ding' notifications on Facebook off, which helped a good bit. But the onus is on me to curb my use, and I simply don't.

All that would be okay, I guess, though we do know the people that invented these things don't even let their own kids use them.  So there's definitely something addictive about these devices, or at least habit forming. But I've quit smoking, which is no easy feat, so I know this I'm able to at least cut down on this as well. But there is one aspect of this bad habit that bothers me the most, and that is this:

The first thing--the very first thing, without pause or exception, I do when I come to consciousness in the morning, when I open my eyes to the day, before I do anything else is...I check my phone.

I'm giving it honor and homage. It has taken the #1 seed at this point. And that is not a good thing.

We are commanded to have God first in our lives, having no strange gods before Him (Ex 20:3). Well, this powerful little device surely is a strange master. Like many idols, it sneaks in and makes a home without you really realizing the place of honor and dependence you're giving it.

My 'first thing'--what I honor the day with--should be indicative of where my priorities are. As Christians, we know what they should be. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" (Lk 10:27). Which makes me a two-faced liar. I don't even confess it in the confessional--that I have failed to put God first, failed to love Him will all my heart, soul, strength, and mind. I should be confessing this every month I go, by matter of course, since it is the a priori failing in my life: to put God first.

What I should be doing, is putting my phone in another room after a certain hour, buy an alarm clock to put by my bed, and when I wake up in the morning, give the honor and glory to God in a "first-things-first" prayer, the honor and glory I have been giving to my phone instead. This too would set the tone for the day, for when we put God first in our lives, everything else falls into it's rightful place. It's easy to say I do that, but my actions say otherwise.

So, pray for me. Bad habits can be reversed, but it takes work and intentionality, and I have had so many balls in the air recently I have not been focused enough to attend to it. But maybe that's part of the reason why I am scattered--because I do not have First things first. Idols can be smashed, but it takes replacing fear and desire for control with trust, and that can be hard too.

Lord,  I want to put you first, even in my so-called "busy" life. From the moment I rise and open my eyes, to the moment I lay down and close them, please make Your home in my consciousness. Be my First Thing. Be the light to my eyes. I do not want idols in my life. I want to put You first, even when my actions betray that desire. Conform my will to Yours, so that I am only doing what is pleasing to You. Help keep my priorities in line, and heal me of my faults and addictions. Please...take the seat of honor in this house. I want you first in line.

Suffering And The Divine Will

I have full confidence in the healing power of our Lord and the intercession of the saints to obtain miracles on our behalf. I believe our Lord longs to heal us of our wounds. His public ministry attests to this, as he went out to all the towns and villages, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness while he was alive (Mt 9:35). Not only that, though: he also gave the twelve apostles authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness (Mt 10:1). Even when others were healing in the name of Jesus who were not part of their circle, Jesus did not prevent them from doing so, saying “whoever is not against you is for you” (Lk 9:49-50).

I have seen it happen with my own eyes, this healing in the name of Jesus. While in Detroit at the Saint Paul Evangelization Institute conference last year, a priest who is involved in healing ministry said to the crowd, "I am getting a word...does anyone have a hand with pain?" Sounds very Pentecostal, doesn't it? I probably wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it: a man approached him later, and I caught the healing out of the corner of my eye. I saw his hand shaking, and he was healed. Steve, a layman who had been trained in healing by this particular priest, also received a word that there was someone in the crowd with pain in the foot, and hand. A woman with a cyst in her left hand came forward, and was healed--it simply disappeared. The woman with the pain in her left foot was also healed. Nothing is impossible with God.

And yet in the spiritual life it is easy to assume things, assigning our minds to the mind of God, forgetting the word of the Lord who proclaims, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). God does not think as we think. He sees everything in its context, in scale, and in its rightful time and place in the divine economy.

The early disciples must have felt that the death of Jesus on the cross was an abject failure, a waste of a holy man and prophet who taught good things and healed many, a lost opportunity to restore Israel and overthrow the Romans once and for all. Through natural eyes, all this is true. And yet it was not the whole story. The suffering of Christ on the cross was necessary for our salvation. There was no workaround, and even if there was, to avoid his fate was in fact a temptation for Jesus in his agony. His prayer is a spirituality unto itself: "Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done." (Lk 22:42).

When it comes to suffering, we as Catholic Christians have a deep theology. Suffering is not an empty currency, and yet no one can escape it. Those who try to insulate themselves from it typically bring more misery upon themselves in the long run. We are all destined for the grave. We think to ourselves, “Because I don’t want to suffer, God must not want me to suffer as well.” It means, in our minds, that something is wrong. And so we avoid suffering and tend towards things that please our senses. This is completely natural. But it may not be the will of God.

When our Lord was explaining to the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer at the hands of the chief priests and elders, and that he must be killed, his closest confident, Peter, rebuked him, crying “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” It was a natural and human response. And yet Jesus turns to Peter and rebukes him strongly, saying "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's" (Mt 16:21-23).

At the Transfiguration, when Jesus appears conversing with Moses and Elijah, Peter (again) seems to miss the bigger picture. He confidently states that it is good for them to be there, and that he will erect three tabernacles: one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. But a cloud covered them and a voice booms, "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!" He and the disciples fall flat, terrified and humbled (Mt 17:1-5).

Our sole goal in life should be to do God’s holy will--in sickness or health, in riches or poverty, in good times and bad. St. Alphonsus de Liguori, in his thin treatise “Uniformity With God’s Will,” recounts two stories of miraculous healings, but with a twist.

In the first, a client of St. Thomas Becket went to the saint’s tomb to pray for a cure for his sickness, and he was indeed cured. But upon returning home he thought to himself, "Suppose it would be better for my soul's salvation if I remained sick, what point then is there in being well?" So he returned to the saint’s tomb and asked for St. Thomas’ intercession again but with a different request: that God would grant him what would be best for his eternal salvation. His illness returned, and it was reported that the client was perfectly content, convinced that God had disposed of him for his own good.

The second story is similar. A blind man prayed to St. Bedasto, bishop, to be cured of his blindness, and he regained his sight. But he too thought the matter over and reconsidered his prayer. This time, he prayed that if the possession of his sight were not expedient for his soul, that his blindness should return. And that is what happened--his blindness returned.

St. Alphonsus states, “Therefore, in sickness it is better that we seek neither sickness nor health, but that we abandon ourselves to the will of God so that he may dispose of us as he wishes. However, if we decide to ask for health, let us do so at least always resigned and with the provision that our bodily health may be conducive to the health of our soul. Otherwise our prayer will be defective and will remain unheard because our Lord does not answer prayers made without resignation to his holy will.”

We don’t need to go looking for suffering, because as long as we live, suffering will eventually find us. But how we respond to it is the make-or-break, what determines our fate. To transcend and be transformed by whatever it is that God sends our way has the potential to give us a deep and abiding peace. When we have mastered being resigned to the Divine will in all circumstances, we can say with St. Paul, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” (Philippians 4:12)

Nothing is greater than to do the will of God, to be obedient to His will. He can use everything, and nothing is wasted in the Divine economy, when we dispose ourselves to His will. We pray for healing in our sickness and sufferings and trust with everything we have that God can do it. And yet how much more perfect our prayer when it is qualified by that trusting anguish of Jesus in Gethsemane, when we unite our will with his and lift up our suffering as an oblation--”yet not be will, but Yours be done.”

Subsidiarity and Evangelization

In my line of work, we use something called a CRM system for recruitment and marketing, which is corporate acronymic jargon for Customer Relationship Management. It’s a system meant to automate emails, create customizable templates, and manage prospective customers. The ironic things is, whenever I get what I determine to be a CRM-generated email in my inbox, I immediately delete it without opening it.

Why? Well, for one thing, in my late thirties, I would still make the cut-off for being considered a Millennials, and Millenials are notoriously suspicious of mass-marketing, eschewing logos, slogans, and bright packaging. In fact, they are actively disengaging from direct marketing altogether.

They do, however, respond to user generated content (UGC), one of the few marketing techniques that have succeeded in engaging a millennial base. In essence, it is a shift in focus from marketing to to marketing with--something important to this age demographic. Millennials trust consumer opinions. Authenticity is important as well. Customer reviews unedited by the company (even for grammar or spelling mistakes) are by far the most trustworthy.

I have supported companies in the past that I believed in or that matched my values, companies that I felt valued my business and spoke to me with their message, delivered a quality product that met a particular need, whose customer service department was responsive and personal. The decision to buy a particular product or support a particular business was also made in large part based on reviews and word-of-mouth sharing of people’s real-life experience with the product.

What does any of this have to do with evangelization and the Church?

There are some of the opinion that as Catholics, we should not have to do any “marketing” to attract a new believer base at all. “Let them come on their own,” they reason, “if they want the Truth, they know where to find it. We’re not Protestants, after all.” This nonplussed attitude toward the demographic crisis facing the Church is, quite frankly, a little startling to me. While it is true I believe we are witnessing to a time in which “the Church will become small,” as then Father Joseph Ratzinger predicted, it is also true that “the future of the Church...will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality.”

I don’t want to give the impression that the Church is a business, or that we should take a kind of top-down corporate approach in evangelization. Quite the opposite. In my experience, the most effective kind of evangelization is grassroots, personal, and authentic. It doesn’t rely on programming or expensive advertising or top heavy initiatives, but responds to the lived experience of joy, fulfillment, and hope, a visible light shining in the midst of a gray and macabre postmodern environment, among ordinary Catholics simply living the faith with joy and conviction. In the light of such witness, mass-marketing and corporate advertising rings hollow and proves superfluous. But we need people to be such witnesses, to be saints, and that takes a degree of of investment in becoming an intentional disciple of Jesus Christ.

What does this look like in real life? What do “young people” want? They want the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth. They can see through the jargon, and they don’t want to be marketed to by people who think they know what they need or want. They want a more traditional liturgy, the liturgical equivalent of “anti-marketing.” They want to hear testimonies of young people who have woken up to the lies of a secular, postmodern culture. They need to encounter people living the Faith and being public, joyful witnesses.

Although the principle of subsidiarity is typically applied to political and economic systems, the overarching concepts can be applied to the work of evangelization as well. In the Catechism we read that according to this principal “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good” (CCC 1883).

So what is this “community of a lower order?” In the social context of a subsidariast witness, it is, quite simply, the family. The family is a kind of domestic church (CCC 2204) and the essential building block of society. In the language of subsidiarity, “Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society” (2207). The family, therefore, as an “institution is prior to any recognition by public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it” (2202)

St Teresa of Calcutta’s wisdom as it relates to evangelization was simple: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” The family “is called to partake of the prayer and sacrifice of Christ,” and it “has an evangelizing and missionary task” (2205). In today’s day and age, in which half of children are not living with married parents and the nuclear family has become an anomaly rather than the norm, the family as evangelistic witness in opposition to the world cannot be overstated.

Evangelism starts at home. It can be the opening of one’s home to others, to invite them for dinner, to talk or bear their struggles over tea, to share the faith in an authentic and personal way. It doesn’t have to be formal and it doesn’t have to be scheduled. These are things we do as a family to instill an evangelistic spirit in our children and to teach them about charity and love of neighbor.

When I evangelize in the public sphere, I try to employ some basic practices.

I smile, because as St. Teresa of Calcutta said, “A smile is the beginning of love, and joy a net of love by which you can catch souls.” A smile is disarming, and makes approaching or interacting with someone a non-threatening prospect.

I share from a place of authentic experience of encountering Christ, and how he has changed my life. I try to do this in a place in which I meet the person where they are in their spiritual walk, and not make assumptions about them.

I speak to each person not with a one-size-fits-all message, but adapted to their particular experiences and circumstances. After all, St. Paul did not mass-produce a singular epistle and send it to the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, and Philippians. He knew to whom he was speaking--their unique struggles and experiences, their culture, their background--and tailored his letter accordingly.

I make every effort to be trustworthy, to not put forth falsehoods or empty promises about what a life of faith entails. If someone does not feel they can trust you, they will not listen to anything you say, no matter how well you pitch it. Many people have lost trust and been betrayed by those in the Church. I must not be one of those people.

I try to follow up periodically with those I’ve encountered, which is simply good business practice. It may be an invitation to attend Mass, sending a book to read or a sacramental, or simply a check in email. It should not feel pushy or threatening, but it should be regarded as an open invitation.

Finally, I pray regularly of course, because any kind of evangelization effort without prayer precludes the work of the Holy Spirit and is doomed to fail. If one is not committed to holiness and leading a life of prayer and integrity, you don’t have your “money where your mouth is,” so to speak. You have to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. “Do as I say, but not as I do” is a sure fire way to turn someone off from the faith. Millennials can smell a hypocrite from a mile away.

Catholicism is not a product that needs to be sold. But the pearl of great price, the teachings and saving power of our Lord, should also not be stuffed into a closet or left to gather dust. The world, especially the young, need Christ, and it is YOU that needs to bring it to them. You don’t need to wait until your parish develops a “program” to address this need, nor do you need permission from the Vatican to evangelize. You don’t need marketing material or a big budget, because you have everything you need in Scripture and the Catechism to proclaim the Good News. You don’t need a CRM or a mass-marketing campaign, you just need to be yourself.

The time is ripe for authenticity and witness. By nature of your baptism, you are called to be a worker in Christ’s vineyard, a light to the world, and, yes, a saint!