Evangelization & Formation – Page 8

3 unavoidable questions for Christian faith’s reasonability

In recent years, we have seen a significant interest in teaching the faith more authentically, but also we’ve become more attentive to answering the real questions believers and unbelievers have. With the Year of Faith fully engaged now, I think we need to attend to three unavoidable questions whether we are teaching teens, adults, or expanding the horizons of our faith and understanding of the cosmos we live in.

There are no easy answers in proposing the Christian faith to others, especially to teens. Do you want pablum when considering real questions?

Continue reading 3 unavoidable questions for Christian faith’s reasonability

Significant remarks from the Evangelization Synod: a catechist’s view

Tommaso Spinelli, 23, a catechist of young catechumens who works at the Catechetical Office of the Diocese of Rome, has some good things to say:

The new evangelization needs substance: it needs catechesis of a certain depth that is able to say something serious to our lives, but also and above all it needs lives of substance that demonstrate through actions the solidity of the Christian. It is even more important today, now that families are disunited and often abdicate their educative role, that priests demonstrate to the young their faithfulness to a vocation and the possibility of choosing an alternative way of living, better than that proposed by society.

My concern however is that these figures of substance are becoming a minority. The priest has lost trust in the importance of his ministry, he has lost charisma and culture. I see priests who adapt to the dominant thought. The same is true of the liturgy, which in the attempt to become original becomes meaningless. Priests, I ask you to find the courage to be yourselves. Do not fear because where you are truly priests, there you propose the truth of the faith without fear, we the young will follow. Indeed, the words of Peter are also ours: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life”. And we are infinitely hungry for something eternal and true.

I therefore propose:

1) an increase in the formation of priests, not only in spiritual but also cultural terms. Too often I see priests who have lost their role as masters of culture which had made them important for the whole of society. Today if we want to be credible and useful, we must return to having good cultural tools;

2) the rediscovery of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in its conciliar sense: in particular the first part of each session where the documents of the Council enlighten the traditional themes. The Catechism has, indeed, the wisdom of making the premise to the explanation of the Creed an inspired part of the Dei Verbum, in which the personalistic vision of revelation is explained, the Sacrosantum Concilium prior to the Sacraments, and the Lumen Gentium, which shows man created in God’s image, before the Commandments. The first part of each section of the catechism is fundamental to enable today’s man to feel faith as something that relates to him closely, and to be able to give an answer to his most profound questions;

3) Finally the liturgy: too often it is neglected and desacralized. It must be restored with dignity to the center of both the parochial and the territorial community.

Significant remarks from the Evangelization Synod: the Good News ensured by small groups of survivors

The Cambodian Catholic experience is not something that rolls off our lips at cocktail parties or lunch dates in the USA. But the Asian perspective is needed: how does the Good News get rooted. Notice his points at the end of the post. The rather young bishop, The Most Reverend Olivier Michel Marie Schmitthaeusler, MEP, 42, vicar apostolic of Phnom Penh, Cambodia since 2010 told the Pope and the Synod:

The Khmer Rouge genocide killed bishops, priests, religious persons and the majority of Christians. For twenty years now, we are living a new time of the Acts of the Apostles with a first announcement of the Good News ensured by the small group of survivors, supported by the massive arrival of missionaries. Today we have about 200 adult baptisms each year… The small Church of Cambodia is in some ways a laboratory for evangelization in a Buddhist world, fully entered into a process of secularization driven by globalization a bit like the Asian dragons. The Ad Extra Mission is intimately tied to the Ad Intra Mission. Ad Extra and Ad Intra are mutually enriched by stimulating each other with the same and unique Mission of Evangelization!

Some meaningful points for a first proclamation of Jesus Christ and which may be extended also to a reflection about new evangelization. Two fundamentals: 1. The true encounter with Jesus Christ opens the heart to charity and to the experience of forgiveness to lead to the discovery of the gift of life. 2. The laity are apostles in this world (Apostolicam actuositatem).

How can the Church be the sacrament of Christ in the world for a new evangelization in actions and in truth? 1. A Church that touches the heart. 2. A simple Church. 3. A welcoming Church. 4. A Church in prayer. 5. A joyful Church.

Significant remarks from the Evangelization Synod: faith’s different reality in Northern Europe

At the Synod of Bishops men and women from all parts of the world gathered in Rome in October to speak on matters pertaining to evangelization. We in the USA, need perspective: the lower Europe and North America is not the only place where the Christian faith is incarnated. The bishop of Tromso since 2009,
Norway, Berislav Grgić, 52, said to the Synod Fathers:

The Catholic Church in the Northern Lands – Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway and Sweden – is a very small minority and therefore has neither
the advantages nor the disadvantages that the Catholic Church often comes
across in traditional and prevalently Catholic regions. Despite its limited
relevance, numeric as well as social, our Church is nonetheless a growing
Church. New churches are built or bought, new parishes are instituted,
non-Latin rites are added, there is a relatively high number of adult
conversions and baptisms, there are vocations to priesthood and to religious
life, the number of baptisms is much higher than the number of deaths and
number of those who abandon the Church, and attendance at Sunday Mass is
relatively high.

Continue reading Significant remarks from the Evangelization Synod: faith’s different reality in Northern Europe

Julián Carrón says the Evangelization Synod was a “most decisive about the experience”

We need to keep a close eye on what happened at the Evangelization Synod just finished in Rome. A judgment, that is, an assessment of meaning, needs to be made so that we can derive a deeper call to conversion and New Life offered by Christ. Far from being a matter of strategy, the work done at the Synod by the bishops and experts and in time by the Pope, will prove, I think, to be historic.

Among the people appointed to the Synod was Father Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. He addressed a letter to CL in which he said, in part:

Hearing the call to conversion that came from the synod hall, I could not help but remember the call that Fr. Giussani issued many years ago in Viterbo, inviting us to “recover the truth of our vocation and our commitment.” Because we, too, he told us, run the risk of “reducing our commitment too a kind of theorization of a socio-pedagogical method, reducing it to a kind of activism that follows upon this theorization, and then a commitment to the political defense of it. Instead, our task is to reaffirm and to propose to man, our brother, a fact of life.

The text of the letter: Father Julian Carron on Synod.pdf

Significant remarks from the Evangelization Synod: on interreligious dialogue

In the time following the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization I think we need to review what was said. So often we move on so fast when an event is finished. A judgment, that is, an assessment, is required to understand with clarity and charity.

Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, challenged a trend in the work of interreligious dialogue at the recent Synod of Bishops:

Christians often ignorant of the content of their own faith and incapable because of this of living of and for it, are not capable of interreligious dialogue that always begins with the assertion of one’s own convictions: there is no room for syncretism or relativism! Faced with adepts from other religions with a strong religious identity, it is necessary to present motivated and doctrinally equipped Christians. This makes the new evangelization a priority to form coherent Christians, capable of demonstrating their faith, with simple words and without fear.

Work to regain the light of faith lost, or weakened, Pope preaches

The Pope’s homily at the close of the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization.

The miracle of
the healing of blind Bartimaeus comes at a significant point in the structure
of Saint Mark’s Gospel. It is situated at the end of the section on the
“journey to Jerusalem”, that is, Jesus’ last pilgrimage to the Holy City, for
the Passover, in which he knows that his passion, death and resurrection await
him. In order to ascend to Jerusalem from the Jordan valley, Jesus passes
through Jericho, and the meeting with Bartimaeus occurs as he leaves the city –
in the evangelist’s words, “as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a
great multitude” (10:46). This is the multitude that soon afterwards would
acclaim Jesus as Messiah on his entry into Jerusalem. Sitting and begging by
the side of the road was Bartimaeus, whose name means “son of Timaeus”, as the
evangelist tells us. The whole of Mark’s Gospel is a journey of faith, which
develops gradually under Jesus’ tutelage. The disciples are the first actors on
this journey of discovery, but there are also other characters who play an
important role, and Bartimaeus is one of them. His is the last miraculous
healing that Jesus performs before his passion, and it is no accident that it
should be that of a blind person, someone whose eyes have lost the light. We
know from other texts too that the state of blindness has great significance in
the Gospels. It represents man who needs God’s light, the light of faith, if he
is to know reality truly and to walk the path of life. It is essential to
acknowledge one’s blindness, one’s need for this light, otherwise one could
remain blind for ever (cf. Jn 9:39-41).

Continue reading Work to regain the light of faith lost, or weakened, Pope preaches

Cardinal Dolan: Synod message may be too optimistic

The head of the US bishops and archbishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, just finished with many others, work at the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization in Rome. The Synod called by the Pope is tasked to advise him on questions that concern him in his pastoral leadership of the Church.

The pastors and experts are still trying figure out what to make of the new evangelization called for by Pope John Paul II in 1983 when he said that the sharing of the faith needed to be “new in its vigor, in its methods, in its expressions.” What’s now called the new evangelization concerns not only proclaiming the Gospel to those who have yet to hear of Jesus Christ (or know only his name and nothing more) and to re-catechize Catholics. There seems to be a divide in thinking and in approach when you read some interventions by some of the bishops as opposed to the heads of religious orders, ecclesial movements and other of the laity. Dolan admits that some in the Synod are a little too optimistic about the state of the question.

Cardinal Dolan spoke with Vatican Radio about the experience and the message released. You can listen here.

Julián Carrón speaks st the Synod on the New Evangelization

Those who hold the rank of Ordinary members of the Synod Bishops are able to make a public contribution at the Synod. On Saturday, October 13, 2012, the President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, Father Julián Carrón, made his presentation to the assembled Synod members, and the Pope. Pay close attention to exactly what Father Carrón said,

We can no longer “think of the faith as a self-evident presupposition for life in society”. In fact, “not only can this presupposition no longer be taken for granted, but it is often openly denied” (Porta Fidei, 2).

While reading the Instrumentum laboris (142), I was shocked by this observation: “a concern on the scarcity of initial proclamation taking place everyday”. All the efforts made until today are having trouble generating newness of life that will arouse curiosity on how the baptized live. How can the fracture between faith and life be overcome, a fracture that makes it harder for faith to be found in a reasonable way, and therefore, attractive? Without rediscovering and welcoming the precious gift that is faith, new evangelization risks being diminished to being a question for experts.

To incite this interest, we have an ally in the heart of man from any culture and condition. We know that the heart of man is made for the infinite. Awaiting its achievement remains in him. Because there is “no false infinite that can satisfy him”. “What, then, will anyone gain by winning the whole world and forfeiting his life?” (Mt 16:26).

A doctrine, a group of rules, an organization cannot answer this expectation, only an event. As Fr. Giussani said during the 1987 Synod, “What is lacking is not as much the verbal or cultural repetition of the proclamation. Today’s man perhaps awaits subconsciously the experience of the encounter with persons for whom the fact of Christ is such a present reality that it has changed their lives“. A place where everyone is invited to verify what the first verified on the banks of the river Jordan: “Come and see”, because “a faith that cannot be evidentiated and found in present experience, confirmed by it, that is not useful in answering its needs, will not be a faith capable of resisting in a world where everything, absolutely everything, says the opposite”.

Pope Benedict speaks of the New Evangelization as an “encounter the Lord, who alone who fills our existence”

This morning in Rome, Pope Benedict opened the 13th Ordinary Synod of Bishops whose it will be to guide him and the entire Church, in the work of Evangelization. At Holy Mass, His Holiness bestowed the honor of being Doctors of the Church on Saint John of Avila and Saint Hildegard of Bingen. The Pope’s homily follows.

With this solemn concelebration we open the thirteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith. This theme reflects a programmatic direction for the life of the Church, its members, families, its communities and institutions. And this outline is reinforce by the fact that it coincides with the beginning of the Year of Faith, starting on 11 October, on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. I give a cordial and grateful welcome to you who have come to be part of the Synodal Assembly, in particular to the Secretary-General of the Synod of Bishops, and to his colleagues. I salute the fraternal delegates of the other churches and ecclesial communities as well as all present, inviting them to accompany in daily prayer the deliberations which will take place over the next three weeks.

The readings for this Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word propose to us two principal points of reflection: the first on matrimony, which I will touch shortly; and the second on Jesus Christ, which I will discuss now. We do not have time to comment upon the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews but, at the beginning of this Synodal Assembly, we ought to welcome the invitation to fix our gaze upon the Lord Jesus, “crowned with glory and honour, because of the suffering of death (2:9). The word of God places us before the glorious One who was crucified, so that our whole lives, and in particular the commitment of this Synodal session, will take place in the sight of him and in the light of his mystery. In every time and place, evangelization always has as its starting and finishing points Jesus Christ, the Son of God (cf. Mk 1:1); and the Crucifix is the supremely distinctive sign of him who announces the Gospel: a sign of love and peace, a call to conversion and reconciliation. My dear Brother Bishops, starting with ourselves, let us fix our gaze upon him and let us be purified by his grace.

I would now like briefly to examine the new evangelization, and its relation to ordinary evangelization and the mission ad Gentes. The Church exists to evangelize. Faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ’s command, his disciples went out to the whole world to announce the Good News, spreading Christian communities everywhere. With time, these became well-organized churches with many faithful. At various times in history, divine providence has given birth to a renewed dynamism in Church’s evangelizing activity. We need only think of the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxon peoples or the Slavs, or the transmission of the faith on the continent of America, or the missionary undertakings among the peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania. It is against this dynamic background that I like to look at the two radiant figures that I have just proclaimed Doctors of the Church, Saint John of Avila and Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Even in our own times, the Holy Spirit has nurtured in the Church a new effort to announce the Good News, a pastoral and spiritual dynamism which found a more universal expression and its most authoritative impulse in the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Such renewed evangelical dynamism produces a beneficent influence on the two specific “branches” developed by it, that is, on the one hand the Missio ad Gentes or announcement of the Gospel to those who do not yet know Jesus Christ and his message of salvation, and on the other the New Evangelization, directed principally at those who, though baptized, have drifted away from the Church and live without reference to the Christian life. The Synodal Assembly which opens today is dedicated to this new evangelization, to help these people encounter the Lord, who alone who fills our existence with deep meaning and peace; and to favour the rediscovery of the faith, that source of grace which brings joy and hope to personal, family and social life. Obviously, such a special focus must not diminish either missionary efforts in the strict sense or the ordinary activity of evangelization in our Christian communities, as these are three aspects of the one reality of evangelization which complement and enrich each other.

The theme of marriage, found in the Gospel and the first reading, deserves special attention. The message of the word of God may be summed up in the expression found in the Book of Genesis and taken up by Jesus himself: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24; Mk 10:7-8). What does this word say to us today? It seems to me that it invites us to be more aware of a reality, already well known but not fully appreciated: that matrimony is a Gospel in itself, a Good News for the world of today, especially the dechristianized world. The union of a man and a woman, their becoming “one flesh” in charity, in fruitful and indissoluble love, is a sign that speaks of God with a force and an eloquence which in our days has become greater because unfortunately, for various reasons, marriage, in precisely the oldest regions evangelized, is going through a profound crisis. And it is not by chance. Marriage is linked to faith, but not in a general way. Marriage, as a union of faithful and indissoluble love, is based upon the grace that comes from the triune God, who in Christ loved us with a faithful love, even to the Cross. Today we ought to grasp the full truth of this statement, in contrast to the painful reality of many marriages which, unhappily, end badly. There is a clear link between the crisis in faith and the crisis in marriage. And, as the Church has said and witnessed for a long time now, marriage is called to be not only an object but a subject of the new evangelization. This is already being seen in the many experiences of communities and movements, but its realization is also growing in dioceses and parishes, as shown in the recent World Meeting of Families.

One of the important ideas of the renewed impulse that the Second Vatican Council gave to evangelization is that of the universal call to holiness, which in itself concerns all Christians (cf. Lumen Gentium, 39-42). The saints are the true actors in evangelization in all its expressions. In a special way they are even pioneers and bringers of the new evangelization: with their intercession and the example of lives attentive to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they show the beauty of the Gospel to those who are indifferent or even hostile, and they invite, as it were tepid believers, to live with the joy of faith, hope and charity, to rediscover the taste for the word of God and for the sacraments, especially for the bread of life, the Eucharist. Holy men and women bloom among the generous missionaries who announce the Good News to non-Christians, in the past in mission countries and now in any place where there are non-Christians. Holiness is not confined by cultural, social, political or religious barriers. Its language, that of love and truth, is understandable to all people of good will and it draws them to Jesus Christ, the inexhaustible source of new life.

At this point, let us pause for a moment to appreciate the two saints who today have been added to the elect number of Doctors of the Church. Saint John of Avila lived in the sixteenth century. A profound expert on the sacred Scriptures, he was gifted with an ardent missionary spirit. He knew how to penetrate in a uniquely profound way the mysteries of the redemption worked by Christ for humanity. A man of God, he united constant prayer to apostolic action. He dedicated himself to preaching and to the more frequent practice of the sacraments, concentrating his commitment on improving the formation of candidates for the priesthood, of religious and of lay people, with a view to a fruitful reform of the Church.

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, an important female figure of the twelfth century, offered her precious contribution to the growth of the Church of her time, employing the gifts received from God and showing herself to be a woman of brilliant intelligence, deep sensitivity and recognized spiritual authority. The Lord granted her a prophetic spirit and fervent capacity to discern the signs of the times. Hildegard nurtured an evident love of creation, and was learned in medicine, poetry and music. Above all, she maintained a great and faithful love for Christ and his Church.

This summary of the ideal in Christian life, expressed in the call to holiness, draws us to look with humility at the fragility, even sin, of many Christians, as individuals and communities, which is a great obstacle to evangelization and to recognizing the force of God that, in faith, meets human weakness. Thus, we cannot speak about the new evangelization without a sincere desire for conversion. The best path to the new evangelization is to let ourselves be reconciled with God and with each other (cf. 2 Cor 5:20). Solemnly purified, Christians can regain a legitimate pride in their dignity as children of God, created in his image and redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and they can experience his joy in order to share it with everyone, both near and far.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us entrust the work of the Synod meeting to God, sustained by the communion of saints, invoking in particular the intercession of great evangelizers, among whom, with much affection, we ought to number Blessed Pope John Paul II, whose long pontificate was an example of the new evangelization. Let us place ourselves under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of the New Evangelization. With her let us invoke a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that from on high he may illumine the Synodal assembly and make it fruitful for the Church’s journey today, in our time. Amen.