Loyola of Chicago,
a Jesuit school, just lost in the Final Four to Michigan. Then Villanova, an
Augustinian school, beat Michigan. Two of the Final Four were Catholic schools,
including the final winner.
Disclaimer: two
weeks ago I did not even know those teams were playing. But throughout my life
I have been tuned to events where Catholics have come out on top. Catholics are
winners.
But the more I am
steeped in the thought world of the New Testament, the more I realize that the
followers of Jesus Christ did just fine without being winners. The didn't even
come close to being winners until Constantine took their side in the 300s, and
his action started us on a very unfortunate path, to where Christians thought
they had to control everything: politics, religion, and everything in between.
So why do we think
we need to be winners today?
I am thinking of
the hand-wringing about the "loss" of so many Catholics to other
religions or to no religion. Why do we have to hang onto the allegiance of
every person who happened to be baptized Catholic? Answer: if we don't, we're
losing.
But we don't need
to win. Each one of us just has to be open to the Spirit in the time and place
where God has situated us. So some of us go elsewhere. We are conditioned to
see their decisions as indications of a failure on our part. We must be doing
something wrong. We probably are, because we are unfinished in so many ways.
We can mourn the
departure of friends to other religious places without the assumption that we
have failed to control their decisions. God loves them as much as God loves us.
God can be working in their decisions as much as God works in ours. We are not
called to control or manipulate their decisions. We are called to be faithful
to what God calls us to do, right here and now. Maybe our behavior will
motivate others to join us, and maybe it won't. If we are doing our best to be
open to God, hopefully we will find our way of approaching God good for us, and
we will want others to share our way. But wanting is not controlling.
We do not need to
be winners. just players.
