Being in relationship with a God of consequence and a faith community of consequence means nothing unless they compel us to lead lives of consequence. Catholicism calls for us to be agents for dangerous good. The difference between Catholicism and Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, however, is that Catholics do good, not because they are nice people, but because they are disciples to Jesus and are attempting to live out a beatitude lifestyle.

True friendship and true love selflessly desires the best the best for one. In Good Willing Hunting, Ben Affleck’s Chuckie Sullivan confronts Matt Damon’s Will who wonders “What do I want a way outta here for? I want to live here the rest of my life. I want to be your next door neighbor. I want to take out kids to little league together up Foley Field.” Chuckie responds, “Look, you’re my best friend, so don’t take this the wrong way, but in 20 years, if you’re livin’ next door to me, comin’ over watchin’ the Patriots’ games and still workin’ construction, I’ll f…in’ kill you. And that’s not a threat, that’s a fact. I’ll f***in’ kill you.”  (Hey, apologies for the language on the video… Take care if you are in the office)

Their dialogue is about the gift for mathematics that Will has and what a waste it would be for him not to use it to change his life. Chuckie will the do the best with what he has but he knows that Will can do so much better, only his fear is holding him back. Chuckie concludes by saying, “Let me tell you what I do know. Every day I come by to pick you up, and we go out drinkin’ or whatever and we have a few laughs. But you know what the best part of my day is? The ten seconds before I knock on the door ‘cause I let myself think I might get there, and you’d be gone. I’d knock on the door and you wouldn’t be there. You just left.”

Therefore, it is time to increase the ante and the stakes regarding our work with vocation. The work of encouraging vocations is not just about encouraging priesthood, although this is essential to our Church. We need to encourage young people is discern the ways that they will build a lifestyle of discipleship around their baptismal promises.

We can no longer be satisfied with ministry that duplicates itself. True ministry anticipates that the ministry that is engendered from our efforts will advance and improve. We can no longer be satisfied with a ministry that remains comfortable in place. We must recognize that something has sadly died in a ministry that has participants in the same place twenty years later doing the same things.

Fear must be replaced with confidence and motivation. The adult community must first model this lifestyle before imparting it. We must come to the dangerous recognition that the action of one can make a difference and that the life of one can have a purpose and role in the plan of the Lord.

Finally, we must reaffirm the gift of freedom that we both celebrate in our relationship with God as well within our country’s democracy. In a visit to Baltimore in 1995, Pope John Paul II reminded the United States that “Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

It was in the same homily that he suggested the vocational direction. By nurturing a “willingness to let the Lord transform our lives,” we should anticipate “a renewed spiritual and missionary vitality among American Catholics” who would be disciples.

Our story is of the Holy Father’s invitation. Our story is of two catholic boys from Southie in Boston. Our story is of Jesus and the communion of saints who lived as they ought to have lived their lives.

Kenda Creasy Dean proposed that “in a morally insignificant universe—the one a substantial number of American teenagers seem to inhabit—there is no telos, no larger story into which one’s life fits, no judgment or even remembrance of one’s life when it is over, no consequence.” We are called to “send out” others on behalf of all of us to transmit the Good News to others.