INFP Catholic (introversion, intuition, feeling, perception)

According to a personality test making its rounds on Facebook recently, I am an INFP (introversion, intuition, feeling, perception).

I retreat to my hermit state sometimes. I focus on a worthy cause and have a few close connections. We INFP-ers are typically writers.

I don’t know how the test knew that about me. But it’s true.

Everything else the website said about me was also true.

There are only 4% of us in the world – those who speak in metaphors like it is our native tongue – who love beauty, morality, virtue – who like to withdraw from the world and become lost in deep contemplation.

Yes, that’s me.

My worthy cause is my faith. This one cause propels me out of my hermit state – to Mass on a Wednesday morning, or to a conference at the Rigali Center, or to a little parish in rural Iowa or Oklahoma or Missouri, where I can tell the stories that pulse within my soul. Stories of conversion, and Mary, and Jesus-in-the-Eucharist. And why a preacher’s daughter and pastor’s ex-wife said “I do” to the Creed and the Roman Catholic Church.

It’s my cause. And I’m an INFP Catholic.

I’m not so good one-to-one – unless you are one of those few close connections. Or, if you are a kindred spirit, and by that I don’t mean a fellow INFP-er. I mean a Catholic with fire in her, a Catholic that wants to set the world ablaze because St. Catherine of Siena told her to do it.

But even here – especially here – our Faith has filled up the gaps in my personality like liquid grace. We hermits aren’t usually good at going-beyond-self. Making introductions. Sitting a spell with someone you’ve just met. But grace helps.

There is much to talk about when Christ shows up – in the face of a stranger – even when I’m predisposed to restricting myself to familiar surroundings and familiar friends.

Chit-chat is not my native tongue – it’s nothing like metaphors and beauty and grace. But sometimes – heck, almost all of the time – this is where evangelization begins.

I’ve only read the first eight paragraphs of Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium, but there’s a line at the end of that eighth paragraph that kind of sums it all up for me.

“For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?”

Faith is my worthy cause, and it is quite possibly the only worthy cause that could propel an INFP out of herself—

Because faith takes possession of me, and I simply must—

Share it.

I am an INFP Catholic.