“We may say that the gospels, especially Mark, are aware of a great variety of forms of participation in Jesus’ cause. There were the Twelve. There was a broader circle of disciples. There were those who participated in Jesus’ life. There were localized resident adherents who made their houses available. There were people who helped in particular situations, if only by offering a cup of water. Finally, there were the beneficiaries who profited from Jesus’ cause and for that reason did not speak against it.” The above words from German scripture scholar Gerhard Lohfink describe, as Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes, how people in the gospels relate to Jesus in different ways. Not everyone was an apostle, not everyone was a disciple, and not everyone who contributed to Jesus’ cause even followed him. When we look at church life today, especially as we see it lived out concretely within parishes, it is evident that it is made up of much more than only the core, committed congregation, namely, those who regularly participate in church life and accept (at least for the central part) the dogmatic and moral teachings their churches. The church also contains a wide variety of the less-engaged: people who practice occasionally, people who accept some of its teachings, guests who visit our churches, people who don’t explicitly commit but are sympathetic to the church and offer it various kinds of support, and, not least, people who link themselves to God in more-privatized ways, those who are spiritual but not religious. There were some centuries in church history where Christian spirituality suffered from precisely this misunderstanding, where it was common to think that monks, nuns, contemplatives, priests, and other such people were called to live the full gospel while others were exempt from the more demanding of Jesus’ invitations. No such exemptions. The church may never be divided into the perfect and less perfect, the better and the half-baked, full-participation and partial-participation. The full gospel applies to everyone, as does Jesus’ invitation to intimacy with him. Jesus doesn’t call people according to more or less. Each individual chooses how deep he or she will go, and some go deeper than others, though ideally, everyone is meant to go its full depth. There will always be a great variation in both depth and participation. And Jesus, it seemed, was okay with that.