St. Paul talks about foolishness for Christ, the willing embrace of the counter-cultural lifestyle that is necessarily part and parcel of living Christianity. It’s more than just the acceptance of the story that, to some, seems more suited for a child’s bedtime story than weekly communal worship. It’s the organization of your entire life around it. It’s the grounding of your identity in whom you truly are and who you were made to be. Despite this wildly lopsided bargain, Christ’s life for ours, we still find it difficult to express that faith in ways subtle and overt.

The truth is, this hesitation is not based in modesty or even respect for other people’s beliefs. It is not necessary to trumpet your faith to all, but to paraphrase St. Francis, it is necessary to share your faith, and when needed, use words. When it comes to using words, there’s a tendency to shy away from the truth. We judge it to be too potent for the recipient and wrongfully insert ourselves into it. We repackage it, soften it, make it easier to approach or maybe even more palatable. This is a waste of time, and only serves ourselves. Christianity comes to us fully revealed and fully packaged. It requires no adjustment, no adaptation, no simplification, no improvement.

We are participants in the mystical Body of Christ, and while there may be a very stimulating academic conversation to have about what that means theologically, it contains the deepest truth. To the extent that we give ourselves over to God, and orient our heart and mind to Him, we participate in His ministry and truly His power. We say that prayer is powerful, that it can affect real change even in the most impossible and desperate situations. This is not happenstance or luck; this is the Creator of the Universe, for whom atoms rearrange themselves, present and engaged in our lives. Jesus spoke of this with the mustard seed. If we had faith the size of the smallest seed, we’d move mountains. Physical mountains? Maybe, but that’s not the point. What is harder to move, Mount Everest or the heart of a fallen away Catholic?

The best investment of our time, effort, and focus, is on building and improving our interior life. Erecting and then reinforcing an interior fortification that is so resilient that no outside event, no matter how terrible or awful or stressful, can even begin to touch its outermost walls. From that place of strength, we participate fully in the life of Christ and burn with the heat, passion, and energy of a thousand suns. When we do, no part of us will wish to stand in the way of that outpouring of grace.