You Can’t Have One without the Other

The famous song-writing team of Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen wrote Love and Marriage, which Frank Sinatra first put on the map in 1955. I have created a respectful (though lyrically cumbersome) parody based on the Episcopal motto of Bishop Barres, the Fourth Bishop of Allentown. With necessary apologies to Cahn and Van Heusen (and to the reader!) we proceed:

Holiness and Mission, Holiness and Mission

They’re the substitute for rash ambition

This I tell you, brother:

You can’t have one without the other.

Holiness and Mission, Holiness and Mission,

They are found in Scripture and Tradition:

Ask in every century—

The saints will say it’s elementary!

Try, try, try to separate them—

It’s an illusion.

Try, try, and the Catholic Church will come

To dissolution.

Holiness and Mission, Holiness and Mission

Keep our diocese in fit condition

Ask the Blessed Mother:

You can’t have one without the other!

Bishop Barres’ motto sets forth a splendid vision for the Church in general and our diocese in particular. The key word in the motto is and. Holiness without mission easily becomes a haughty pursuit of self-perfection for its own sake. Mission without holiness just as easily becomes a raging vendetta against everybody who (pace Mr. Sinatra) isn’t doing it “my way.” “Having one without the other” sunders the Great Commandment to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Luke 10:27; cf. Deuteronomy 6: 5 and Leviticus 19:18).

The swinging of the Holiness-Mission Pendulum has yielded painful results that fill Church History textbooks and propel misguided (if sincere) zealots in our own time. It is played out in nearly every dispute and faction that threatens to carve up the Mystical Body of Christ. By aiming for another member, the axeman unwittingly aims for the Head. Though the Head will never be destroyed, every member of the Body has at times caused or endured the great divorce of holiness and mission. Original sin unavoidably and quickly gets personal.

Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians offers a corrective: “I urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace” (4:1-3). In his initial statement to the diocese, Bishop Barres pledged to work for Christian unity. He considers this task an integral part of the call he has received. It takes nothing less than a Pauline person imbued with such virtues to carry it out. Perhaps the most compelling witness to ecumenical and interfaith relations can be offered by fostering a unified diocese, a unified parish, a unified family, an integrated individual. Like charity, holiness and mission begin at home, but have no earthly end.

The heaven-made marriage of holiness and mission doesn’t guarantee a placid life “’til death do us part.” It may alternately call for the beating of “swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4) and “plowshares into swords” (Joel 4:10). Hard work and hard prayer lie ahead. Our new general will have many battles, but his is the strategy of every worthy leader of faith: surrender to the wise and loving plan of God. His are the “weapons” that the Church has wielded since the days of her Founding Fathers: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, interpreted by a Magisterium that is attuned to the Spirit of Unity. His foot-soldiers in every unit—clergy, religious, and laity—must know the plan and follow it with enthusiasm for the Common Cause. It is the Plan of our Redeemer, which fulfills His promise to remain with us “always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Our faithful High Priest pledges to lead us through temporary inconveniences and setbacks, beyond sin, suffering, and death, into the embrace of the Holy Trinity.

We pray that our wise and loving God may fill the heart of our new bishop, so that his ministry among us may be “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). We pray that Bishop Barres will lead us in the reconciliation of holiness and mission, two crucial and inseparable dimensions of the Christian life.