Forming Intentional Disciples by Sherry Weddell is a book the Church desperately needs today. It is a description of the Church (and of Christianity in general) as it is. Sherry has all of the statistics in hand. It is a vision of what the Church can be, is meant to be, with glimpses of the parishes where the vision has already taken root. And it is a deeply pragmatic book with practical steps for achieving that vision given the situation we currently find ourselves in.

The core of the vision centers on Christ our Lord, and on what Sherry calls “intentional disciples,” people who make it their business to be disciples of Christ, who devote themselves to the love of Jesus before everything else, and to their fellow men and women because he loves them. She makes the point over and over again that a strong, living relationship with Jesus is crucial—and that if we want our parishes to be bursting with life and service to God and our neighbor, we must first foster that strong, living relationship.

My evangelical readers are nodding and saying, “Well, duh—of course that’s where you have to start.” I need to say a few words to them; the rest of you, feel free to follow along if you like.

I was a member of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship when I was in college. I was a member of a rather evangelical Episcopalian (later, Anglican) parish for many, many years before I returned to the Catholic Church. I’ve known about the importance of a strong friendship with Jesus since I was in my teens. It’s only since I rejoined the Catholic Church that I’ve begun to get the hang of it.

What’s this! you ask? That’s not the usual way. And it isn’t; and yet, at the same time, it is. For almost two thousand years, the Catholic Church has had members who have stepped apart from the world and devoted their lives to building their relationships with Jesus. We call them monks, and friars, and sisters, and nuns, and canons, and hermits. We call them Dominicans and Franciscans and Benedictines and Carmelites and a whole host of other names. There have always been those in the Church who not only know the way but have mapped it out in detail; and not only mapped it out in detail, but have mapped out a number of routes, suited to every variety of temperament. Dominican spirituality is not the same as Benedictine spirituality. But all of them are about coming to Jesus, knowing him, loving him, and accepting his discipline.

As a Protestant, I felt like I had a do-it-yourself kit and no hardware store in sight. The books I read were some help, but they only went so far. As a Catholic I’ve got the experience of the ages available to me, and I’ve done my best, with God’s help, to take advantage of it. I look back on my days as an Anglican, and I feel like I was trying to get the job done with one hand tied behind my back and a blindfold.*

The Catholic Church as a body understands how to know and love and follow Jesus. But many of us in the pews do not; and that’s what this book is about: encouraging Catholics like me to spread the word, as well as sage advice on how to go about it. Here’s a hint: it doesn’t look like a sales call. And mostly it involves listening, not speaking.

This is not properly a review; I don’t feel qualified to review the material in this book, especially after only one reading. But I’ll be reading it again; and I’ll be passing it around.

_____________
* I’m not criticizing my non-Catholic brothers and sisters here; I’m talking about my own personal experience trying to put my faith into practice.

Continuing my jaunt through G.K. Chesterton’s books, I’ve just finished re-reading Heretics, an odd and not entirely satisfactory little book in which Chesterton examines the beliefs of many of the prominent people of his day. Toward the end of the book, he has a few words about progress, about the notion that we are, mentally, ethically, socially, every day in every way getting better and better:

The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut.

What would we say to a physicist who told us that the goal of physics is to know gradually less and less about the physical world? The goal of physics is to know more and more, with more and more certainty, about the physical world. And the same is true in all fields of knowledge, philosophy and religion not least. But if you’d rather not know, well…Chesterton has a word just for you.

Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has a new little book out; it’s what you might call an “e-pamphlet” ($0.99 at Amazon) called A Heart on Fire. It’s about the fault line running through American society these days on the subject of religion and its role in the public square, and about what we can do about it.

Actually, it’s mostly about diagnosing the fault line, because the prescription is really pretty simple. If you want to catch others on fire, you have to be on fire yourself. It’s not enough to complain about others, or about how we Christians are being attacked; in fact, complaints are mostly useless. Rather, we need to live active, dynamic, vibrant Christian lives.

And the key to living an active, dynamic, vibrant Christian life is spending time with Christ himself…which is to say, we have to make time for prayer and the sacraments.

It’s Holy Thursday–a great time to get started.

(Thanks to Richard, who brought the book to my attention.)