Order a Martyr’s Crown

For every parent of an adult child who has rejected the faith, the story of a local man named Bill ought to infuse hope and a renewed determination to pray and fast for their children.
“I was away from the Church for 32 years,” Bill told The Soulful Catholic one hot afternoon during a discussion about faith and the Bible. Bill had signed up to participate in Christ in Our Neighborhood, a small-group program focused on the Sunday Mass readings.
While away from the Catholic Church, Bill belonged to a denomination that proclaimed Catholics are not actually Christians and will not be saved.
There was a long and rocky road back to the Church established by Christ, but eventually, Bill was home.

“We offer you no salary, no recompense, no holiday or pension. But much hard work, a poor dwelling, few consolations, many disappointments, frequent sickness, a violent or lonely death and unknown grave.”
Well. If Bishop Auguste Martin was trying to sell priests on serving as missionaries in Louisiana in 1873, those hardly seem motivational words. And yet, they came: five French priests eager to serve the Lord in spite of gargantuan difficulty and guaranteed danger. The U.S. Bishops’ Conference voted to advance the beatification cause of the five young men at their plenary assembly last week.
And it makes me wonder: What keeps us from having the kind of zeal and love?

The bumper sticker on the car ahead of me caught my attention: “My religion is kindness,” it proclaimed to weary commuters stalled at a red light.
I looked closer and saw it the quote was attributed to the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader to Tibetan Buddhists.
Well, I’m for kindness; aren’t you?
It’s the underlying message that kindness is the apex of religion that makes me balk. At a time in our nation’s history when fewer and fewer people identify as followers of Christ, this kind of declaration shouldn’t surprise us though.