Gulf Pine Catholic

Gulf Pine Catholic • January 7, 2022 9 The Path of Discipleship An interview with author Sherry Weddell about becoming intentional followers of Christ and building up his Church Sherry Weddell was attending a national Catholic conference a number of years ago when a gentleman walked up to her and made a surprising confession. “Until I read your book last month,” he said, “I didn’t know it was possible to have a personal relationship with God.” Weddell, a Catholic author who has written exten- sively about evangelization, was floored. “I just sat there with my mouth wide open, trying to figure out what I was going to say next,” she recalled. After all, the man had grown up in a faithful, practicing family, was highly committed to the Church, and even worked in full-time ministry. Nonetheless, he told Weddell, “Nobody ever talked about relationship with God. I literally didn’t know.” It turns out that the man was not alone, as Weddell would have many similar conversations in the years that followed. In fact, the 2007 Pew Religious Landscape Survey reported that fewer than half of American adults who identify as Catholic were cer- tain you could have a personal relationship with God. Helping people to discover and form this personal faith, Weddell explains, is essential to evangelization, espe- cially in a world where religious belief is increasingly countercultural. In 1997, Weddell cofounded the Catherine of Siena Institute , which focuses on helping laypeople use their gifts to serve God and the Church; she currently serves as its executive director. She has also written several books, including Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus ( Our Sunday Visitor , 2012) and Fruitful Discipleship: Living the Mission of Jesus in the Church and the World ( OSV , 2017). She recently spoke with Columbia about what Knights of Columbus can do to become faithful disci- ples and effectively evangelize in their families, par- ishes and communities. Columbia: One of the things you discuss in your books is the idea that “God has no grandchildren.” Can you explain what that means? Sherry Weddell: Basically, it means we don’t live in Christendom anymore. We used to live in a world where Christian thought, values, beliefs and practice dominated the culture, dominated most people’s hearts and minds. And so, to be a believing Christian, all you had to do was go with the tide. But that changed many decades ago, and we don’t live there anymore. Now you have to go against the cultural tide, which in most places is either indifferent or hostile. We’re in a world where people increasingly don’t just inherit faith. They don’t inherit religious belief from their parents or from being part of a particular ethnic group. Young adults assume that when they come of age, they will piece together their identities themselves. If they were born into faith, they will either walk away or stay because they choose to. So, today we’re in the land of intentional Catholics, not cultural Catholics. There’s no reason we cannot be a generation of saints now, in the 21st century. We have the same Jesus Christ, the same grace of the Holy Spirit, the same Gospel, the same tradition. The question is, will we respond? Will we say yes? Columbia: Can you further explain the term “intentional,” especially in relation to Christian dis- cipleship? Sherry Weddell: Pope John Paul II said something in one of his very first apostolic exhortations that really struck me when I first read it years ago. Most Catholics, he said, do not yet have a “personal attachment to Jesus Christ” -- “They have only the capacity to believe placed within them by baptism and the presence of the Holy Spirit” [ Catechesi Tradendae , 1979]. He had spent most of his life at that point in Poland, which is one of the most Catholic cultures on Earth. And yet he was still aware of this tension, in reality, between being a member of the Church and having a relationship with Christ. You can be validly baptized, a member of the body of Christ, and yet not have a personal faith. I’ve had hundreds of conversations where people say, “I grew up in the Church, I went to Mass, I was confirmed, the whole nine yards. And yet, honestly, I thought of God as this nasty, distant figure who didn’t care about me and only showed up to punish you when you broke the rules.” So, when I talk about intentional discipleship, what I mean is somebody who has spent enough time with Jesus to consciously decide to follow him as a disciple in his Church. You can’t sleepwalk your way through this, especially in our culture, where the tide is against us. You won’t go against the tide for a life- time unless this means something to you. That’s what I mean by intentional. An intentional disciple is not a saint -- I’m not saying that. But he or she has embarked on the larger journey that leads to sanctity. And that is to follow Jesus Christ in the midst of His Church for the rest of one’s life. It’s what the Catechism of the Catholic Church [1428] calls the second, ongoing, lifelong con- version. Columbia: What advice would you have for Knights of Columbus who want to lead and evange- lize as intentional disciples -- and particularly Knights whose children or grandchildren have left the Church? Sherry Weddell: The first thing I’d do is pray: I’d say, “OK, Lord, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t feel like I know enough. I’m not holy enough. I don’t know what to say. But I want to be used somehow to help my children and my grandchildren. Lord, I’m open to whatever it takes. “Whatever I need to repent of, whatever I need to grow in, Lord, I’m open, just show me.” I have never known God not to respond powerfully to someone who just declares themselves open and says, “Boy, do I need help.” In Forming Intentional Disciples , I talk about the five stages of spiritual journey that 21st-century unbe- lievers typically make. For many of them, the first issue is trust -- do I trust anything about Christianity or the Church or Jesus Christ or God? For a lot of young people, the bridge of trust has been broken, if it ever existed. For a variety of reasons -- peer pressure, scan- dals in the news, personal experience -- it’s greatly damaged. But there has to be a bridge. Maybe that bridge of trust is a friend or a parent: They think your religious ideas are crazy, but they trust you, they like you any- way. So, you’re their bridge. And the first thing we’ve got to do is build that bridge, so eventually it can hold the weight of truth. SEE SHERRY WEDDELL, PAGE 12 Members of Fray Marcos Council 1783 in Gallup, N.M., accompany Bishop James Wall as he processes with the Eucharist outside Sacred Heart Cathedral. The procession was the culmination of a three-day parish festival in September. Photo by Windswept Media