A Chance Encounter and the Importance of Visibility in the Church

A few weeks ago on Holy Family Sunday after I went back to my home parish to preach for them for the first time a visitor and fellow Black Catholic dude came up to me after Mass as he was leaving. He smiled and wanted to tell me that he wished he saw “someone that looked like” him up there preaching when he was young, and that he was glad to see me up there.

This is a small thing, but it reminded me first how visibility and active representation in the Church is key and how important is for communities to also see vocations emerge from among themselves as well, especially for the sake of further evangelization.

But it also reminded me of my apostolate’s work and why through it I am explicitly and visibly “Black” Catholic. It is not to divide, communicate division, or even place race/skin color above being Catholic. It is about being visible and approachable for those fellow Black Catholics who feel left out and/or need to see someone who “looks like” them doing their thing in the Catholic Church openly and without fear, especially through a vocation.

It is about demonstrating the witness of the Church’s place for every people by highlighting how this true through a particular people that I happen to come from. It is about how my apostolate proves this concretely in the here and now.

I don’t know what would have happened if that young man who came up to me saw a clerical vocation that “looked like” him when he was young. I don’t know what God will do with my visibly witness to him when I just happened to be there that day.

What I do know is that God and the Church’s witness to the salvation of all people never stops.