Everyday Discipleship

A friend of mine once said to me, “You’ve got it easy. Because of your job, you have the luxury of being able think about God and what God wants all the time. I’m a wife and a mother of two very active daughters and I have a full time job as a librarian. I don’t have time to figure out how God is ‘calling’ me to be a better disciple."

I tried to explain as best as I could that my friend was already living the life God had envisioned for her: she is an attentive, responsible and joyful parent, a loving and supportive wife, competent in her work and a fair-dealing supervisor; she is an active parishioner at her church and gives back to her parish and local community regularly through service projects. All in all, she is an exceptional disciple of Christ just by living her life based on gospel values. She was unconvinced. And, I was left to wonder why she was feeling guilty that she “should be doing more.” Where did she get the idea that “real” discipleship is something other than living an ordinary life intentionally with extraordinary (read gracefilled) faithfulness? Or that discipleship is an unrealistic expectation placed on ordinary folks by an uncompromising God and an over-demanding Church?

By example, Christ showed us what it means to be holy—surrender (Phil.2)—the complete out-pouring of God's own self for the salvation of all. Therefore, Christ was completely for the other. Every act of Jesus recounted in the Christian Scriptures was a prelude—a preparation—for the greatest act of service of all: his surrender to death on the cross for the life of the world. For the initiated, this means that our very lives are on the line so that others “might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). "We live no longer for ourselves" (Rom. 14:7-8). We live for Christ, especially the Christ who exists in the "other” (Rom. 12ff).

Somehow, my friend got it into her head that authentic discipleship was the exclusive domain of ordained and lay ecclesial ministers. At the time, I didn’t have a compelling enough argument to the contrary. Now I know enough to know that my job as a lay ecclesial minister isn’t about giving people reasons for discipleship. It’s about giving people a language to describe the sacrificial stuff of their everyday lives as discipleship.

The views expressed in this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.