Catherine Doherty

It seems that it is time for all of us Christians to face God and to tell him, “Yes, Lord, we are with you, for where else can we go?” or to say, “No, Lord, your sayings are too hard, and we shall not follow you any longer.”

A sense of deep sadness comes over me when I think of how Christians sit on the fence. What is the matter with us? Have we forgotten that we are followers of a crucified Christ? Have we forgotten that he was just the son of a carpenter, himself a tradesman, a strange itinerant preacher who crisscrossed the tiny country of Palestine, preaching his gospel to the poor? Have we forgotten that from the moment he began preaching he walked in the shadow of death? Have we forgotten that following him means to take the greatest risk that man can take? Have we forgotten that following him means living dangerously?

It seems that we have spent centuries trying to eliminate the risk and the danger of his call. It seems that we have cushioned the risk and practically eliminated any and all danger by drawing up a set of moral rules that give us security instead of holy insecurity; rules that lull our conscience to sleep instead of making it wide awake and ready to undertake the risks of being a Christian.

Christ said that if we are not with him we are against him. How do we measure up to this saying of his? Are we really with him? Are we ready to give up father, mother, sister and brother, in the sense that he means it, that following him demands? Are we ready to lay our lives on the line of his law of love with its fantastic dimensions of dispossession and surrender? Do we truly love one another, beginning with ourselves?

I wonder how long we can sit on the fence of compromise. God is not mocked.

We have to begin to love one another in the fullest sense of Christ’s teaching. But to do so we must pray. It is only through prayer that one can follow Christ to Golgotha and up onto the other side of the cross, and to become free through this ascension. The immense problems of war, of social injustice, of the thousand and one ills that best our world, these can be solved only if we begin to love one another. When man begins to see love, respect and reverence  Christ in the eyes of another, then he will change, and society will change also.

Christians must openly declare their allegiance to Christ, or their nonallegiance to him. The story of the disciples who had to choose is repeating itself today among us. “Who do you say that I am?” Peter, for the other apostles, openly declared himself for Jesus. On another occasion, Christ’s words were too harsh, and other disciples admitted it and left him. It is time we did likewise and stopped fooling around. If ever there was a time when humanity needed followers of Christ and fewer fence-sitters, that time is now.

 The Gospel Without Compromise Ave Maria Press (1979). p. 74-76