Dear Parishioners,

Last weekend, the disciple John asked our Lord to prevent someone else from casting out a demon in His name. Jesus responded, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.” He is basically saying that no one can be against Him while using His name and that’s a good thing.

Unfortunately, some people can take this passage and twist it to mean that it doesn’t matter if you are explicitly a follower of Jesus at all. It does matter because our Lord explicitly says salvation is a narrow path and He is constantly calling people to follow Him. So, one way to interpret this Gospel is that using the name of Jesus might lead them into being followers of Jesus later. That’s why Jesus allows it.

There are many people in this world who can say all sorts of great things about Christianity and the faith yet never consider converting. These people recognize the benefits of living in a society founded on Christian values. Because of the influence of Christianity, we have all benefited from the belief in the dignity of the human person, the importance of marriage (and family life), hospitals, education, art, music and even science. I won’t go into the particular arguments of how Christianity gave us these things because people who know history recognize these things easily. Yet, these same people can in the same moment be agnostic to the bigger questions of life and allergic to “organized religion”. Ideally, someone who sees the good Christianity has done in the world should be then open to the truths that inspired people to do these things. Likewise, whatever good someone does, especially inspired by Christ should lead them to come to know the God that inspires them.

What keeps people from converting then? Because many Christians are shy to witness their faith. It will never be popular to say that Christianity is the true religion because conversations around religion are some of the hardest conversations you can have with someone. This is especially true if you do not know your faith that well, and fear being put on the spot to answer for it. Also, people who think they know all about the Church are likely to bring up the worst parts of our history as an excuse to never listen to the message. To all this, I say witness the faith anyway. For the real reason that many people do not convert is that they never hear from someone who actually does believe and love their faith.

I am very glad that in college I had the good example of friends of mine who did show me the truth of the Catholic faith. If it was not for them, I would not be Catholic today. They were literally the first Catholics I ever met who were devout and faithful and did not bad-mouth their own religion. I am eternally grateful for that witness. Does that mean I immediately converted? No. I argued, read and prayed. It was a process and it was not until months later that I was able to admit to them that I wanted to convert. And I’m very glad that I did.

God Bless!

Fr. Carter