Disciples on the Way

Discipleship is a way of life! Like life itself, it is a journey filled with rich blessings and difficult challenges. Bearing good fruit over the course of this lifelong journey is our goal. The fruit we bear glorifies God. 

As we grow closer to Jesus Christ throughout our lives, we experience the full breadth of this journey with all its texture and depth. The journey, or the way, is an ancient image for discipleship and the Christian life. In fact, it was an early way of describing the Church when disciples were referred to as members of “the Way” (Acts 19:23).

Over the course of the past few years, I have had the privilege of walking sections of the Way of Saint James, or the Camino de Santiago. The Camino is a network of ancient pilgrim routes reaching across Europe and culminating at the tomb of Saint James the Greater in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Pilgrims have walked “the Way” for centuries. It was during a pilgrimage along the Camino that I began to conceive my latest pastoral letter. 

Each time I make this journey, it affects me profoundly. As I walk my camino, I pray for the grace and wisdom to persevere faithfully in the way the Lord has chosen for me as I lead the archdiocese as a successor to the apostles. We all are pilgrims on a journey, a camino, to heaven. We navigate a path marked with hills and valleys, over smooth and rocky terrain. We find strength for the journey through prayer, the sacraments, the Scriptures and the community of believers that encourages us and centers us in Christ’s love. As Catholics, we never walk alone.

The journey of discipleship presents many challenges and benefits from the encouragement of fellow pilgrims. For early Christians, the Way (the Camino) was more than a physical path or place on a map. It was the path of discipleship and a way of life. Still today, it is a path given to us by Jesus Christ along which he leads and accompanies us. As always, our path of discipleship requires us to learn from him and follow his example. 
The Christian faith summons believers to a lifelong process of continuing conversion to Jesus Christ – to a full and sincere adherence to his person and a decision to walk in his footsteps. Faith springs from a personal encounter with Jesus Christ who seeks our commitment to live as he lived. 

In this way, we, as believers, unite ourselves to the community of disciples and appropriate the faith of the Church (GDC, #53). Beginning with my pastoral letter “Go Make Disciples! Building a culture of conversion and discipleship” and its planning document Vision 2030, we are charting a path that will guide us forward by stages for many years to come. 

The deepest desire of my heart is to see the Church of central and western Oklahoma flourish as a community of faith that nurtures and raises up fervent missionary disciples. Our task is to prepare good soil to receive the seed of faith. Good soil, bearing good fruit. 

We see Jesus in the Gospels inviting others to become his followers, teaching them to be disciples. These lessons are Scriptural schools of discipleship. We find one such Scriptural school in Matthew Ch. 13, which is the Parable of the Sower, an appropriate meditation for us on the theme of discipleship. I encourage you to pause and read this passage (Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23). Pay particular attention to the setting.

The story begins with Jesus inside a house. He leaves the house and sits near the sea to teach those who crowded near to listen to him. Such a large crowd gathers that he climbs into a boat to avoid being pushed into the sea. From the boat, he continues to teach the gathering crowds along the shore. The parable begins, “A sower went out to sow.” 

We hear that some of the sower’s seed falls onto the hard-packed path, and birds come and devour the seed immediately. Some seed falls on rocky ground and since there is little soil, the seed cannot put down roots. The plants spring up quickly, but without roots they die. Some seed falls among thorns. The thorns grow alongside the plants and choke them off. Finally, some seed falls on good soil and brings forth grain – some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold and some thirtyfold. 

This is a relatable parable for us in the red dirt country of Oklahoma since many of us are familiar with farming, gardening and planting; working with various types of soil. Jesus explains that the seed is the Word of the kingdom, the Word of faith.  

Our task is to prepare good soil to receive the seed of faith. Even good soil needs to be cultivated and cared for, nourished and watered. 

How well does one dispose oneself not only to the seed of faith, but to all else that God provides to help with the growth – spiritual nourishment, the watering of grace, the fellowship of other believers? 

These varied soils are present in the hearts of each one of us. In our hearts, we all experience hardness. Sometimes our hearts are rocky ground or the thorny soil. All of us face temptations and distractions. There are things that divide our hearts and compete for our allegiance and diminish our fruitfulness. 

But, we all have good soil as well, and we are invited to constantly cooperate with grace to expand our receptivity to God’s Word in our hearts. Indeed, the primary work of a spiritual life is to cooperate with God’s grace and cultivate the good soil in our hearts to rid ourselves of those things that compete, distract and hinder our receptivity to God’s life-giving Word. The more good soil in our hearts, the greater our capacity to bear fruit for the Kingdom. Bearing fruit is the evidence of authentic discipleship. 

Saint Augustine encourages us with the words, “In one the fruit is more, in another less; but all will have a place in the barn.” I call on us as an archdiocese and as the Body of Christ to a renewed commitment to authentic discipleship.

This column includes excerpts from Archbishop Coakley’s pastoral letter “Go Make Disciples! Building a Culture of Conversion and Discipleship for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.” Read more at archokc.org/vision2030.