Part of my conversion to Catholicism, not uncommonly, involved getting my head around the institution of the papacy—that ancient ministry marked by centuries of history, theology, and politics.

Now, of course, I am a believer in it, believing in it as a matter of faith and providence. Now I believe it’s part of the faith as such, not just some accidental organizational feature. That is, my faith in the papacy is rather deep, transcending any particular pope or any particular issue. I believe it to be essential to the fullness of the Christian faith, which is why I’m a Roman Catholic, for example, and not, say, Eastern Orthodox or a Methodist. It’s why I couldn’t keep with Anglicanism’s famous renunciation that the “Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.”^[1]

Now instrumental in all this, for me personally, was the late Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict, the theologian, played a significant role in my acceptance of the Catholic Church, not only as a papal organism but also as something prophetic, beautifully subversive. I liked the way he saw the Church, the way he viewed Christianity and Christians in the world today. It’s a surprising view, remarkable and radical, and I think right. Most people—not having read him—know nothing about it.

“Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures,” he said.^[2] Today, he suggested, the Church “will assume different forms.” “She will be less identified with the great societies,” he argued, “more a minority Church; she will live in small, vital circles of really convinced believers who live their faith.” Yet in doing so, he said, the Church will, “biblically speaking, became the salt of the earth again.”^[3] That is, the Church will be able to speak the truth again, more powerfully, less tied down by the cares and securities of the world. “[W]e are standing before a new kind of Christian era,” he said.^[4] All the old paradigms have been removed, all the old assumptions. His was a view of the Church quite radical, as I said, and one we still don’t really appreciate.

Yet it fits with what other popes have said: Saint John Paul II and his talk of the “New Evangelization;” Pope Francis and his talk of the Church stepping “outside herself” to the “outskirts of existence.”^[5] It fits with what Alasdair MacIntyre, the philosopher (particularly influential with me), said, that “[w]hat matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.”^[6] It recovers Paul’s vision that our citizenship is in heaven, that the community of believers is a colony, in the world but not of it.^[7] It recovers the biblical idea that we’re not be conformed to this age but instead a community of believers who’ve been transformed by the renewal of our minds.^[8] And it’s what Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount.

And this is what excites me, what inspires me. It’s why I’m a parish priest and not some academic, or better (and more appealing to me) some recluse buried underground with his library, like the ancient playwright Euripides is said to have done. This is why I’m a Christian, still in this un-Christian world. Because of this vision of the Church as salt and light, as a mustard seed, as a kingdom both subversive and redemptive—because of this idea that Christians and the Church are to be different. It’s what I think about every time I hear these words of Jesus to his disciples, that they are “salt of the earth” and also “light” meant to “shine before others.”^[9]

It is not an option: you can’t be a private or secret Christian. “Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call,” the great Bonhoeffer said. “A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.”^[10] There is no clever or sophisticated way around it, no separation of public and private. If we’re to be Christians, we must stand up and be counted; both as individuals and as a community, we must be visibly and unashamedly Christian. We must look the part. Yes, we need people who walk the walk, but talking the talk is important too.

But what does it mean to be visibly Christian? This is where we get into arguments. Some will think that being visibly Christian is a matter of reconquering the world in the name of some largely imagined, largely fictional Christian past, turning back the clock, so to speak—this, a sort of idyllic conservatism. Others think it’s about modernizing the faith, jettisoning antiquated theologies and moralities so that we may “evolve” or “develop” along with the rest of the world—this, a sort of up-to-the-minute liberalism.

And, of course, both are wrong. Both make the mistake of judging the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the standards of the world rather than the other way around. The conservative view takes its conservative view of the world and bends the Gospel to suit it; just as the liberal view takes its liberal view of the world and bends the Gospel to suit it. If you don’t see this, look harder.

But we need not get distracted here by these partisan quibbles; in fact, the deeper wisdom here is that your Christianity is not solely identifiable with your opinions. Rather, to return to the question: What does it mean to be visibly Christian? This is a question not only important for you and me as individual Christians, but also for us as a parish, as a Catholic community. You and I, as we wrestle with being faithful in a confusing world in which it’s harder to be faithful (harder even to know how to be faithful); and we, as a parish community, we need to stop and pray and think every day about what it means to be Catholics here in this place today. What does it mean to be visibly Christian? It’s a fundamental and critical question, and one we shouldn’t think we needn’t ask.

Now, for what it’s worth, this is what I think. What does it mean to be visibly Christian? What does a Christian community look like? It looks like this: a community of people from all walks of life, all different but all believers in Jesus. It looks like a community that prays together and worships together, celebrates and cries together. It looks like a community bound together by the Scripture and by the sacraments and by the communion of the apostles. It looks like a community of one faith, but not always of one opinion; that is, it looks like a community willing to have healthy and charitable arguments about important things. It looks like a community that, at the beginning and end of the day, rests itself before the wisdom and mercy and love of the Lord, trusting that over time God will have his way no matter what, no matter our insight or no matter our foolishness, no matter how right or wrong we were.

This is the Church of salt and light, the kingdom, the mustard seed. This, the Church of the Spirit of God, people loving and forgiving and serving each other under a gentle Pentecost day in and day out. Such is the Church. Such is this parish. Such is why I’m here. For this small, slow, and beautiful work of God.

And it is beautiful, isn’t it? I think so. It’s beautiful that this is how God chose to save us, by simply calling us together to be friends. And so, let’s be friends, all of us, so that we may be the salt and light Christ intends us to be. That’s our calling, our gift, our job. And again, I think that’s beautiful. Amen.

[1] Article XXXVII, The Articles of Religion

[2] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 16

[3] Ibid., 222

[4] Ibid., 269

[5] Cf. George Weigel, Witness to Hope, 554; Pope Francis, The Church of Mercy, 99

[6] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 263

[7] Philippians 3:20

[8] Romans 12:2

[9] Matthew 5:13,16

[10] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 132

© 2023 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield