When I was a little girl, around four and five, I had a best friend named Jessica. The day I had to move away, we vowed that we would always be best friends. My family moved about two hours from her and, as is normal, our friendship faded away like the Beatles on “Hey, Jude.”
Flash forward to my first day of college. I was back in the town I had left so many years before and I wondered about Jessica. Was she still around? She was one year older than me, so I figured if she was at college, I could look her up. I did and…I found her. I was so excited to meet her and rekindle our old friendship. She invited me to coffee and I happily accepted.
Coffee was nice, but the spark of our childhood days was not there. I told myself that we just had to get to know one another again. After coffee, she invited me to a girls’ Bible study at her house and I agreed to join. Deep down I was really hoping we could be good friends like the days of yesteryear.
To cut a long story short, Jessica and I were never able to recapture what we had as little girls. It’s strange how people change. I’ve thought a lot about why we couldn’t connect and it came down to one thing for me: She was fully living her faith and I was not. She made me uncomfortable. Jessica was happy, good, positive, sweet, caring and fully on fire for her faith. I, on the other hand, was angry, steeped in sinful living, bitter and not living my faith at all. At one point, she gently tried to ask me about my relationship with my then boyfriend. She encouraged me to live chastely. She wasn’t cheesy about it or anything, yet, I did not want to hear her. So, I dropped her like a hot rock and removed her from my life. I could not handle her piety because it was making me look bad. She was shining a light on troubled areas of my life and that made me very, very uncomfortable. At the time, I wished she would just knock it off with all the Jesus stuff and just be more normal. Translation: I wished she would be more like the world.
I was having a conversation the other day with someone about living our faith. This person has a family member that thinks they should calm down with all the religious stuff. The person I was talking with asked me, “Can you live your faith too much?”
I fully recognize that some people are dripping with
However, I’ll be clear: We should never lord our piety over others. We should never try to make a show of it. You can never have a holy-than-thou attitude about it. The virtue of piety must flow naturally and genuinely in our lives guided by the Holy Spirit. It’s important that piety not turn into a stifling burden on people’s lives. Don’t become a kill-joy all in the name of piety. It’s perfectly okay to be a pious person and have fun at the same time. It’s just our fun needs to be ordered towards our good.
But, can you live it too much? I guess you could if, say, your devotions made you neglect your children or if you were so steeped in prayer that you forgot to acknowledge your spouse. I’ve never heard of anyone like this, but maybe there’s someone out there. God would never ask us to pray so much that we neglect our family members or other
I suspect, though, that when people say this, it’s because deep down they feel uncomfortable. A pious person can shine a light on dark things and sometimes that makes those in the dark scuttle away from the light. We have this misguided notion that a pious person is prudish, joyless, and stern; s
However, piety is a gift of the Holy Spirit. If it’s a gift of the Holy Spirit, it must be a good thing. It’s pretty typical that our culture has tried to paint it as something terrible. Piety simply means “the quality of being religious or reverent.” Basically, trying to live your faith and live it well.
Every single time I look at Christ on the Cross, I am reminded of what He did for me. He gave His life for me and you. God the Son endured the worst to save us. We owe Him everything–every day, every hour, every minute. How could we ever live our faith too much when God gave everything?
“God has loved me too well for me to spare myself henceforth in his service: the mere thought of doing so horrifies me.” St. Claude La Colombiรฉre
But what does it mean to fully live our faith every day? Here’s a little riddle. What do you get when you give your life to God and try to live out His Will? What do we call a radical Catholic? A saint. How did they live their lives? In a thousand different ways, they used their gifts to glorify God. They sinned, sure, but they got back up and kept trying. They sought truth, beauty, and goodness. They decreased so that God might increase in them. They were so full of the Divine Life that they had the capacity to love people more fully and freely.
Yet, I speak in the past tense. I speak about those saints in the past. Does this mean piety isn’t attainable for us? Of course not. There are saints among us now and all Christians are called to sainthood. We can’t do that if we “calm down” our passion for Christ and live lukewarm lives. Nobody sets the world on fire when they “tone down” their flame. God can’t show you who you were created to be if you only give Him a passing acknowledgment now and then.
Christ said, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” I’m pretty sure Christ didn’t mean that we could just sorta, kinda, maybe put our hearts into our faith. We either go all in or we ride the bench. I’m here to tell you from experience that riding the bench sucks.
Our Catholic Faith gives us a thousand and one ways to live our faith with devotion and true, sincere piety. We can’t do all the things and that’s okay. Don’t be afraid to live your love for Christ fully. It’s when we order our lives around Him that all else falls into place. We find
Don’t be afraid to go all in with your love for God, Catholic Pilgrims. There will be those that tell you to knock it off, but you just keep on fighting the good fight, finish the race, and keep the faith. 2 Timothy 4:7 (My favorite verse, paraphrased a little)
“There would be no safety for me in any half-measures: I know myself, and I should soon fall into
