How about where are you coming from?

The discussion in the most recent Allen-related post below is all over the map and intriguing, not to mention a little discouraging. Let’s put it this way.

Read the homilies and addresses of Benedict XVI from, say, the Good Friday before John Paul II"s death to the present. What do you read? You see, certainly, attention paid to the problems of the Church (especially in thost Good Friday stations) and the world, the importance and centrality of truth. "In truth, peace" is his message for the new year, after all.

But what, above anything else, grabs you? It is the conviction that human beings need Christ, and when they find Christ, they find joy. Is the Pope selling out by not hammering on orthodoxy, heterodoxy and dissent every chance he gets? Is he papering over differences? No…he’s acting as a teacher and pastor.

There are times for everything, for all kinds of ways of teaching, discussing. Many faith-related problems do often come down to a failure to understand, for example, the teachings of Jesus properly, or what our stance towards that truth should be.

But a whole bunch of it just comes from being lost, from being overwhelmed by modernity, its demands and its cruelties. Sometimes in these discussions, it is very easy to discern who is or has been engaged in pastoral ministry, and who basically sits and views the world via ideas alone. And if you know me, you know that I do not use "pastoral" to mean "watered-down." I mean it in its true sense – meeting people, every day and through the evening, in their sadness, brokenness, fears and frustrations, their sad astonishment that their lives, which once seem to have held such unlimited promise, have come to this, a situation which they perceive as an isolated trap, in which they can not find meaning, love or, the sum of it all, God.

Those are the people I write for. Those are the young people I write for, trying with every ounce of whatever gifts God gave me, to help them avert that trap, to journey through life confidently, with Christ as their companion and guide.

And yes, the truth about Jesus is vital. That is not the point. Don’t forget that I have written books on apologetics and separating fact from fiction on various thorny topics.  But what appeals to me about what Allen said, and what I see is so important, is to simply find voices – and be one of them – who can evangelize on an elemental level, helping people awake to the identity of the Voice calling to them beneath, above and beyond the din of modern life and its lies. Which is why I’ve decided, even though other little tasks keep interfering, that for me at this point, telling stories is the way to go. Everyone likes a story. Everyone, no matter what Mass they go to, will sit still and listen to a story…and they might even talk to each other about that story when the storyteller finishes. They just…might.