Years ago, when I became a Catholic in my early twenties, I took the words of Jesus literally. I wept for my sins and gave away much of what I owned, to the point of taking my $200 Italian leather hiking boots off on the streets of Philadelphia when I saw a barefoot homeless man who could use them more than I. I moved to the inner city after graduation from college to help run a Catholic Worker house of hospitality, ate in a soup kitchen every day, and spent my days ministering to those in prison, refugees, neighborhood children trapped in cycles of violence, and those in the throes of addiction. I had a bumper sticker on my car that read, “If you want peace, work for justice.”

I’m not the radical Christian I was in my youth, but Peace Pilgrim and Rich Mullins won’t let me sit comfortably.