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Christian Witness |
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“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem . . . and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). In the American legal system, a witness generally means an eyewitness, one who testifies to a fact known firsthand about someone or something else. But how does one witness to Christ? Christian witness differs from legal witness in two fundamental ways. First, since the end of the Apostolic Age, Christian witness has not been an eyewitness account. People come to the truth about Jesus Christ either (rarely) through some kind of direct illumination or (commonly) from studying Scripture and hearing the teaching of the Church. Moreover, Christian witness often is silent witness. The First Epistle of Peter says: “Always be ready to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pt 3:15). But the average Catholic in everyday life communicates conviction by being a certain way, by following a certain path in life. Behavior reveals belief in Jesus and the Church he founded. Pope Paul VI’s 1975 apostolic exhortation On Evangelization in the Modern World, Evangelii Nuntiandi, which calls evangelization “the essential mission of the Church,” makes this point so clearly as to justify quoting at length: “Above all the Gospel must be proclaimed by witness. Take a Christian or a handful of Christians who, in the midst of their own community, show their capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, their solidarity with the efforts of all for whatever is noble and good. Let us suppose that, in addition, they radiate in an altogether simple and unaffected way their faith in values that go beyond current values, and their hope in something that is not seen and that one would not dare to imagine. Through this wordless witness these Christians stir up irresistible questions in the hearts of those who see how they live: Why are they like this? Why do they live in this way? What or who is it that inspires them? Why are they in our midst? Such a witness is already a silent proclamation of the Good News and a very powerful and effective one” (21). We have all seen Christian witnesses, and most of us are witnesses at least part of the time. Priests and religious offer the special witness of dedicating their whole lives to the service of God and neighbor. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes clear, the countless thousands of Christian martyrs who have gone to their deaths for “the truth of the faith and of Christian doctrine” (2473) are the ultimate witnesses. The witness of the ordinary Catholic is more subtle, but no less real. The man who attends daily Mass gives witness. So does the one who organizes a summer basketball league on inner-city playgrounds, though he may never speak of Christ, provided he visibly acts from religious motives. The woman who serves as minister of the Eucharist gives witness. So, too, the one who does pro bono legal work for an indigent client. The high-school senior who volunteers as a retreat leader gives witness, as does the one who shovels an elderly neighbor’s sidewalk. Witness is letting your light shine. The Catechism says: “The transmission of the Christian faith consists primarily in proclaiming Jesus Christ in order to lead others to faith in him” (425). The witness of the Apostles was in one respect unique, since they were “chosen witnesses of the Lord’s Resurrection” (CCC 860). But the duty to give witness to Christ is a duty for all his followers, including laypeople, who by reason of Baptism and Confirmation have a right and duty, individually and in associations, “to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth” (CCC 900). Purposes of Christian Witness • The Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem, offers a description that, though more formal, is consistent with Pope Paul’s: Lay Catholics exercise their apostolate “when they endeavor to have the Gospel spirit permeate and improve the temporal order, going about it in a way that bears clear witness to Christ and helps forward the salvation of men” (2). The first purpose of witness, then, is evangelization. By living so as to prompt the questioning Pope Paul mentions, Catholics exert a kind of moral gravity. They draw people by their example to salvation in the Church, which “increases, grows, and develops through the holiness of her faithful” (CCC 2045). Witness has another purpose as well. The Catechism says, “By living with the mind of Christ, Christians hasten the coming of the Reign of God, ‘a kingdom of justice, love and peace’ ” (2046). Hastening the reign of God includes working to improve the temporal order, a phrase now somewhat out of date. The “temporal order” (the order of time as opposed to eternity) is simply our everyday world, which individual Christians make better by acts of faith and kindness that help repair the damage sin has caused and shape reality evermore closely to God’s loving intent. The world’s evil is clear enough; human history is a litany of horrors that includes, in the twentieth century alone, two major wars and countless minor ones, starvation and oppression on every side, and the murderous miseries of Nazism and Stalinism. This record need not breed despair, however. Central to Christianity is the rhythm of sin and forgiveness, suffering and redemption. Every good deed a Christian does for the love of God ennobles human existence and moves us by imperceptible degrees toward the Father. If the doctrine of the kingdom of God is to be taken seriously, a kind of quasi-evolutionary process indeed animates the universe. Hope in the ultimate victory of good prompts the Christian’s untiring testimony. Christian witness, though primarily the act of an individual, is rarely solitary; as we are social creatures, so our witness is social. The Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People insists that “the apostolate of married persons and of families has a special importance for both Church and civil society” (11). Given the cancerous spread of divorce in recent years, a couple witnesses most powerfully by mutual fidelity “for better or for worse,” demonstrating the indissolubility of Christian marriage and providing their offspring a stable platform for growth. They also witness by educating their children in the faith, often at great personal sacrifice. A Christian family holds people in a strong, intimate, and cheerful embrace. It is a model that others will long to imitate, the living cell of any sound society. Catholics traditionally associate the word “vocation” with priests, sisters, and brothers. In fact, however, every Christian has a vocation, a calling, a job to do. We help build the kingdom of God most immediately through our daily work, whether that be as banker, homemaker, waiter, or parish director of religious education. Two aspects of work deserve notice, one painful, both positive. First of all, I may shape reality more closely to God’s will as a direct result of my labor: by being an honest banker, a caring and efficient homemaker, a skillful and courteous waiter, a religious educator faithful to the Church. To understand the second way that work changes the world, one must recall the Christian theme of redemption through suffering. Christ did not redeem humanity by riding a wave of popular acclaim to the top; he did it by undergoing torture and death. Without the cross there is no Resurrection. Without the Resurrection there is no redemption, and we remain condemned to die like our dogs and cats. Pope John Paul II says eloquently in his encyclical On Human Work, Laborem Exercens: “[Jesus’] work of salvation came about through suffering and death on a cross. By enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the son of God for the redemption of humanity. He shows himself a true disciple of Christ by carrying the cross in his turn every day in the activity he is called upon to perform” (27). Motives for Witnessing • In the passage from On Evangelization in the Modern World quoted above, Pope Paul VI imagines people asking of Christians: “Why are they like this?” What, indeed, would motivate one to live a life of Christian witness in a world where “nice guys finish last” and where hypocrisy and greed gather rewards? For many, perhaps, it is a matter of honesty. They accept the Church’s teaching about humanity: that the Father created us in the divine image, that Jesus Christ redeemed us from sin through his death and Resurrection, that the Holy Spirit penetrates and guides the Church toward the world’s salvation, and that each of us will live forever. These are fundamental human truths. Everything else we can say about ourselves – that we inhabit a fleck of rock spinning in a void unimaginably vast; that we share the same genetic code with all other life-forms on earth; that our moral history is one of altruism and selfishness, kindness and brutality, idealism and warfare – is secondary. People who behave consistently with this vision are Christian witnesses. Christians also find motivation in the drive to realize the reign of God on earth. Religious utopianism, involving efforts by God’s self-appointed spokesmen to impose his reign on others, is a very destructive temptation, as episodes like the Puritan revolution in England attest. But indifference to building up the kingdom has even worse consequences; it allows the ever-present evil in the human heart to flourish unchecked. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats caught the problem brilliantly in his poem The Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” When Christian witnesses lack conviction, humanity’s long slow climb into God’s embrace seems to slacken and “mere anarchy” substitutes for his reign. Since the Church is the People of God, it would seem that her witness to the world is simply the collective action of her members. This is not quite the case, however. The United States stands as a symbol of democracy not because all Americans behave democratically, but because the nation was established with a certain constitution and with certain structures, laws, and customs. In the same way, the Church as an institution witnesses to the world through what Christ founded her to be. “ ‘The Church, in Christ, is like a sacrament – a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men’ [LG 1].The Church’s first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner union of men with God. Because men’s communion with one another is rooted in that union with God, the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race” (CCC 775). A sacrament brings about the reality it signifies. Baptism, for example, wipes away the stain of original sin as the baptismal water washes the skin. It follows that the Church, as “ ‘the universal sacrament of salvation’ . . . [LG 9 §2, 48 §2; GS 45 §1]” (CCC 776), is destined in the course of ages to gather all of humanity in communion with the Creator. It is heresy to believe there is no salvation outside the visible structures of the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the Church is uniquely witness to and instrument of God’s saving power. As a sacrament, the Church must visibly express her spiritual reality, just as the baptismal water expresses cleansing. If her task is to unify the whole human race, she can never rest until all Christians are one. The unity of the Church is a pledge, a necessary first step, toward the unity of all. Thus the urgency that attaches to the work of ecumenism. The Church also witnesses to the truth of Christ by her acts. Lumen Gentium says: “Henceforward the Church, endowed with the gifts of her founder and faithfully observing his precepts of charity, humility and self-denial, receives the mission of proclaiming and establishing among all peoples the Kingdom of Christ and of God, and she is on earth the seed and the beginning of that kingdom” (5, quoted in CCC 768). The Church seeds the kingdom of God on earth as the individual Christian does, by work and by example. She is the greatest provider of human services the world has ever seen. Her ministries of healing, of feeding, of clothing, of sheltering, of welcoming, of comforting spring from Christ’s own words in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food. . . .” The hospitals, the parish food pantries, the great charitable organizations, the inner-city schools, the homeless shelters, the hospices and places of warm hospitality stretching in unbroken succession for two thousand years are testimony that the reign of God, “a kingdom of justice, love and peace,” is not only possible but is already here, though in embryo. Christians nurture that embryo by the witness of lives lived “as if they could see the invisible” (On Evangelization in the Modern World, 76) – as if they could sense God’s Holy Spirit saving the world through them. St. John’s Gospel closes with these words: “This is the disciple who is bearing witness to [Jesus] . . . and we know that his testimony is true” (Jn 21:24). Unlike John, modern Christians do not have the privilege of seeing the Lord with their own eyes. Their testimony is true when they act in the bright and guiding light of faith. See: Apostolate; Church, Nature, Origin, and Structure of; Ecumenism; Evangelization; Laity; Martyrdom; Truthfulness; Work.
Suggested Readings: CCC 758-780, 2045-2046, 2471-2474. Vatican Council II, Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem, 1-14; Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 1-17, 30-42, 48-54. Paul VI, On Evangelization in the Modern World, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 21. John Paul II, On Human Work, Laborem Exercens, 25-27. David M. Byers
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