Finding wild Gospel living with SEEK
We say it all the time. “The Gospel.” As ashes were put on our forehead for this season of Lent, we may have heard, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” We read from the Gospels at every mass. As a Franciscan, I am fond of the saying, “Preach the Gospel at all times, use words if necessary.”
Lately the Gospel has been reverberating in my heart and mind, but something is pushing me to dig deeper. What is the Gospel? What does it compel me to do? How do I live the Gospel with my whole heart, mind and soul?
I think we often reduce the Gospel to something small, something we can manage or check off a to-do list. We think of it as a word, a prescription, a list of do’s and don’ts, or maybe a law. But in my experience, the Gospel is alive, not containable, perhaps not even “doable” in human terms. The Gospel is like a lion with claws in my heart, moving, escaping, opening me up beyond what I can imagine. Like my relationship with Jesus, trying to believe and preach and live the Gospel is always wildly dynamic.
In the last few months I have had some experiences where the Gospel escaped the narrow categories we often keep it in and became vibrantly alive, begging me to sink deep and become more with my life.
In January Sister Julia Walsh and I traveled to St. Louis and attended the 2024 SEEK conference, a collaboration led by FOCUS, a Catholic outreach organization missioned “to share the hope and joy of the Gospel with the world.” Over 20,000 Catholics came together, mostly college students, to pray, share, discuss, listen and seek deeper in their faith. I have never been in a gathering so big, perhaps ever.
Mass was stunning: an hour and a half in a sports stadium with bishops and an endless stream of priests. The talks were meaningful. Sister Julia and I participated in the conference’s exhibition offerings with an FSPA booth, where we had some powerful conversations with people from all over the country, sometimes praying together and sometimes just learning more about each other.
Honestly, as one of the few sisters from a congregation that does not wear a habit, I did not know how I would feel. Would I feel welcome or ostracized? That is when the living Gospel bubbled up. I felt like I belonged. At the center of our faith is this heartbeat that we name the Gospel. Together we know we are the beloved God and called to go out and share that love, especially with the most vulnerable.
… it is time to lay down our excuses and pick up our crosses.
We may not agree about every issue, we may not choose to live religious life in exactly the same manner but the Gospel binds us together. At the same time the Gospel refuses to be bound, but is always creating something new.
And this is exactly what I experienced at another conference later in January, the Hope Esperanza gathering facilitated by The Leadership Collaborative. We were 250 Catholic sisters under the age of 65, from 106 congregations and over 20 countries, with attendees numbering 150 in person and 100 virtual participants. Here the Gospel was hopping, busting out of neat categories and asking me to stretch.
We often talk about creating the future of religious life and building bridges between what has been and what will be. But there — in a room full of people who are, in fact, the future of religious life — there was none of that. Because we are also the “now” of religious life, of the church, and of our faith.
Navya Neelam, CSJ, spoke to my heart when she said we are called not to build bridges but to be bridges. There is so much pain, hatred and division in our world. As true followers of the Gospel, we are called to lay our bodies over the pits of despair and create a new way forward. God has placed in our life a gap, a division, to overcome. As Sister Navya said boldly, it is time to lay down our excuses and pick up our crosses.
This is the heart of it for me. To become undone. To not fit the Gospel into any box or label but truly pick up my cross. This is to unravel my heart so I am radically available. I do not know what is coming down the road and sometimes, when I truly read the signs of the times, I lean toward panic. The wild lion of Gospel clawing in my heart lives beyond fear, lives in Hope/Esperanza. To live in the Gospel is to not know with certainty what will come, but to be transformed each day into a living (and wild) path forward.
Sarah Hennessey is a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration based in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She grew up in North Carolina as an active Quaker and became Catholic in 2000. For her, Jesus’ messy business includes falling in love with Christ AND with the People of God! Her heart is on fire for her Franciscan community, poetry and singing and accompanying people through birth, death and the living that comes in between. She currently ministers as a spiritual director at Franciscan Spirituality Center in La Crosse.
