The Missionary of Wall Street: From Managing Money to Saving Souls on the Streets of New York by Stephen F. Auth

Author:Stephen F. Auth [Auth, Stephen F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sophia Institute Press
Published: 2019-03-07T06:00:00+00:00

8

Bringing Back Lapsed Catholics

St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, SoHo

— Monday of Holy Week 2014

It’s near closing time. Bob is already late for dinner, but he decides to wait at his post for one last soul.

It doesn’t take long. In just a minute or two, a woman comes along who at first says she’s not Catholic. After a few more questions, she says she went to Our Lady of Sorrows school and then to a Catholic high school. Her mom was Catholic, and her father was Pentecostal. There was a lot of conflict between the two, so she grew up confused spiritually.

“Give me two minutes to explain,” Bob counters. He talks about our innate desire to love and be loved.

Soon she’s crying. She’s “having a very difficult time right now,” she says, and she can’t believe how coincidental it is that they’re talking about this. “I feel so bad that when things were going fine I didn’t turn to God. Now that I’m having trouble, I’m turning to Him. It seems very hypocritical.”

“Don’t worry about it. In all situations, God tries to draw us close to Him, sometimes more effectively than others. In the end, all that matters to God is that we’re close to Him.”

Bob walks her into the church, the last soul of the evening.

* * *

People fall away from the Church for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they rebelled when they were young: they rejected the Church because they were rejecting their parents and everything their parents made them do. Going to Mass was part of the package.

They might have made some life decision they knew the Church didn’t approve of — living with someone without marrying, for example.

In some cases, they might just have drifted away. They never made a conscious decision to leave, but after years of no involvement with the Church, they’ve stopped thinking of themselves as Catholic. Or they’re still “culturally” Catholic, but “not practicing.”

Most of these people have one thing in common: they think the Church doesn’t want them back. They think they’ve been away so long that the Church has rejected them. Or they think it would take so much work to get back into the Church’s good graces that they shrink from the prospect.

Meanwhile, they’ve been missing the joy and strength that can come only from the sacraments. They may not recognize what’s missing, but they know something is wrong in their lives. They just can’t get over the barriers that keep them out of the Church.

So, how do we bring them back?

Often the answer is amazingly simple: we just invite them back.

Our experience on the streets is that many of these souls are sad or perhaps even in despair but don’t know how to get back on track. They’ve been away from the sacrament of confession for too long.

So they avoid it.

They stay lost.

But deep inside, they’re hoping they’ll be found.

* * *

Prince and Mott, SoHo

— Good Friday 2018

Our missionary spots a young woman who has been coming right toward him,

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