evangelization – Communio

Jesus is always the center of evangelization

These days I am thinking about the work of evangelization. I am asking myself: what holds the work of evangelization together. Key points:

“Currently, Evangelization, which is always a pressing task, requires the Church to work even more assiduously throughout the world in order to ensure that all mankind may come to know Christ.”

“Jesus, the Word incarnate, is always the center of our announcement, the point of reference for our evangelizing mission and for its methodology, because He is the human face of God, Who wishes to meet all men and women so as to bring them into communion with Him, in His love.”

Benedict XVI
May 11, 2012

Francis outside the Walls: called to proclaim, witness, worship God

At the Mass offered by Pope Francis at the Basilica of St Paul outside the Walls today reminded us that “we must obey God”! Francis asked, do we know how to speak of Christ today?

Faith is born from listening and strengthened by proclamation.

The teaching gained from today’s papal homily as the Pope took possession of the this basilica that is close the Petrine ministry, he gave yet another way of looking at being in relationship with the Lord Jesus in concrete ways. He was not abstract, he did give us a direction. In typical Benedictine terms, that God be glorified in all things (the Jesuits say, adapting the phrase just quoted: “to the greater glory of God). We need to be carried by God’s will under all circumstances, even if it costs our lives. Every detail matters in speaking of the grace given by God. We all, no matter to rank, experience, education, socio-economic class, are in relationship with Jesus Christ. The tangible witness of our lives is crucial. Inconsistencies by pastors and ministers betray Christ and undermine the Good News. We need to be close the Lord as the 12 were, as the 72 were, as those who heard and saw Him as described in the Acts of the Apostles.

Do we worship the Lord? Do only turn the Lord ask of Him things, or do we turn to Him to worship Him?

Worshiping God means learning to be with Him, stop dialogue, but sensing his presence is the most true and most important of all. It means striping ourselves of our idols (e.g., money, power, and fame) and placing God in the center of our lives. Does God have the first place in our lives, that we are convinced that God is the God of our lives and our history?

The Pope’s three key ideas spoken: proclamation, witness, worship.

That heaven and earth touch, St Peter’s Omaha guides

I was reading one of my favorite blogs this afternoon, Fr. Z’s Blog (olim: What Does The Prayer Really Say?) and read his post St Peter’s Church in Omaha, NE. As I am curious about many things, especially in the ways the Incarnation is made manifest in parishes, I was stunned with the clarity of the pastor’s clarity, charity, and competence in leading souls. In fact, I watched the video on St Peter’s Church more than once because I had to get it clear in my mind and heart what Father Damian Cook and his collaborators are doing, and in the ways the Holy Spirit has allowed His gifts to be extroverted. There is a distinctive focus on the cultures of prayer, community, study and service which is a wonderful gift. St Peter’s is a place that the proposal of the gospel and the Church come alive.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Father Cook is orchestrating so many good things for Christ and His Church, both universal and in the local Church of Omaha. But let’s be clear: it is not Cook but Christ; it is not the community that’s center, but the Communio of the Trinity. I don’t want to canonize Father Cook but I do want to draw attention to the good being done.

As the Prophet Ezekiel showed us, and more importantly what the Lord did for us in His Resurrection: that it is possible for old bones to be constituted again (and in the Lord’s case, in a glorified body). Father Cook is illustrating how a decaying church community in urban Omaha can become a thriving religious and cultural treasure.

This is a clear and contemporary example of Saint Benedict rebuilding culture, or Saint Francis rebuilding the Church, or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta caring for all people. And the examples are plentiful…

Is it possible to be spiritual and not religious and still be Christian?

The question I seem to come back to: who cares? In the context of the practice of religion where we often seem to slice the pie in half: spiritual and religious, one wonders even we know what the words mean. The archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George, wrote about this topic in his column for Easter in the Catholic New World. The Cardinal outlines the issue pretty well: religion is becoming an isolated affair (some use the word private but I think it is better to say isolated since many families rarely talk about transcendent things with each other), that a question of authority disappears when you “when you make it up as you go along” and what it means to say there is an objectivity of what is true, beautiful, good and one is no longer easy to hold as a given. What exactly is religion? Not to mention, many of our friends are now saying that the faith community as less and less credibility and the community of faith is trite. The missing element here is that Christianity is not about a set of rules, it is about a person; the practice of religion is not about the worship of myself, but the worship of a personal God revealed through the biblical narrative and seen in the sacraments; Christianity’s truth is weak unless it is about conversion, vocation and mission made manifest in the life we share with others. As Cardinal Geroge said,

Meeting the risen Christ spiritually therefore depends upon believing in him religiously. We are given the gift of faith in the sacrament of Baptism, in which we are configured to the risen Christ. Faith perdures, even when there’s not a lot of spiritual tingle in our lives! “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief,” is the cry of a religious person who asks Christ to take him beyond his own spiritual experience into a new world where bodies as well as minds share in God’s grace. Faith takes seriously everything that comes from God. The faith-filled person is sure of God and distrustful of himself. Unlike faith in God, experience is often wrong in religious matters.

Here is the full text of Cardinal George’s “Easter 2013: I’m spiritual but not religious.”

In short, it is impossible to call oneself Christian and not be honestly engaged in the weekly practice of worship with the faith community and worthily receive the sacraments.

The First American Pope: Catholicism’s turn into an evangelical future

National Review Online published today George Weigel’s “The First American Pope: Catholicism’s turn into an evangelical future.”

Weigel calls His Holiness, Pope Francis a “True Man of God,” “A Pope for the New Evangelization,” “A pope in defense of human rights and democracy,” “The 2005 runner-up takes the checkered flag in 2013?” and “The first Jesuit pope?”

Fr Pacwa on The Eucharist for the Year of Faith

In this Year of Faith there are some new books that have arrived and that are coming out to help all of us discover anew the the beauty of the Christian Faith. No one can ever say that they know it all, or, have heard it all before, and at the same maintain credibility in knowing the Truth. It’s not possible.

Father Mitch Pacwa, SJ, theologian and EWTN host, is in the middle of a publishing campaign to help us respond with confidence to the proposals of the Year of Faith.

Father Pacwa is a Chicago native who earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Detroit, a Masters from the Jesuit School of Theology (Chicago) before being ordained a priest in 1976. He also earned a PhD from Vanderbilt in Old Testament studies which included learning 12 languages. Father Pacwa offers the Mass in both the Latin and Maronite Churches. He is the president of Ignatius Productions.

On 23 January, The Eucharist: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics will be released to the public. Order now.

The Eucharist is published in order to draw connections between the Holy Eucharist and the Bible. The author looks at Old Testament types of the Eucharist, shows the centrality of the Eucharist in Christian life, what Eucharistic Presence means to call Jesus the Lamb of God, the meaning of sacrifice as applied to the Sacrifice of the Mass and more.

Continue reading Fr Pacwa on The Eucharist for the Year of Faith

Charles J. Chaput to Campus Ministers: enable students to hear God

Speaking to Catholic campus ministers on January 10, 2013 in Florida, Capuchin Archbishop Charles J. Chaput addresses the urgent need to give good, authentic formation to college students in the ways of God. As he says, the status quo is not good enough. Chessy programs are not satisfying.

The frequent question is how do we evangelize and give good formation to our college students today? I think we know what needs to be done. SO, let’s get to work; let’s teach, lead and pray. Campus ministry has an objective: seek the face of God; to enable one to hear the voice of God in the still small whisper. Of course, the issues of formation are not germane only to the college aged.

An excerpt: Campus ministry needs to lead young adults not just to good religious activities that keep them busy, but also to the beauty of interior silence that enables a person to hear the will of God and entrust his or her life to Jesus Christ.

The whole text: Charles J. Chaput on Catholic Campus Ministry Association 2013.pdf

Pope Benedict speaks to Roman Curia, reviews 2012, gives Christmas greetings

It’s custom for the Holy Father to speak to the members of his Curia in way that reviews the past year, assessing the “situation” faced in the Apostolic ministry, and to give some idea of what will be worked on in the coming year. The address is ALWAYS worth the time to read, to study, and to reflect on in a serious manner. The Pope is a masterful thinker and writer; he really sets the bar pretty high but with clarity. One is clear to me is that the Pope is calling the laity to a new engagement in faith formation, worship of God, and cultural and political activities (not activism, there’s a difference). You might say that the goal of the Pope in his address is to help us to rediscover the gift and beauty of Catholic faith. As he notes, God comes to us in the circumstances of life. Some people will latch on the sensational parts of the talk, especially with some of the more heated topics discussed in society today but the raising of issues and talking about them intelligently isn’t a sign of trouble or weakness in the communion of the Church, but a way to seriously look at what is before us and to rely on God for help. We do, as you will agree, have a nostalgia for the Infinite which shows that we are limited human beings in need for a deeper conversion to the Good News. What the Pope reminds us here is that our Salvation doesn’t come from within us but is given by Someone outside, that is, by the Most Holy Trinity.

The foci:

A. pastoral visits: Mexcico, Cuba, Milan, Lebanon

B. post-synodal exhortation to Eastern Churches

C. synod of bishops: on the New Evangelization

D. matters of concern: the family, marriage, justice, peace, interreligious dialogue, sexuality, evangelization, the person, community life, self-giving, conversion

The papal address

It is with great joy that I meet you today, dear Members of the College of Cardinals, Representatives of the Roman Curia and the Governorate, for this traditional event in the days leading up to the feast of Christmas. I greet each one of you cordially, beginning with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, whom I thank for his kind words and for the warm good wishes that he extended to me on behalf of all present. The Dean of the College of Cardinals reminded us of an expression that appears frequently during these days in the Latin liturgy: Prope est iam Dominus, venite, adoremus! The Lord is already near, come, let us adore him! We too, as one family, prepare ourselves to adore the Child in the stable at Bethlehem who is God himself and has come so close as to become a man like us. I willingly reciprocate your good wishes and I thank all of you from my heart, including the Papal Representatives all over the world, for the generous and competent assistance that each of you offers me in my ministry.

Continue reading Pope Benedict speaks to Roman Curia, reviews 2012, gives Christmas greetings

Chaput says Catholic life needs to be reignited; American culture is a new kind of mission territory

Philadelphia archbishop and Capuchin friar Charles J. Chaput writes well about the sobering reality of evangelization in his weekly column for this week. (Get in the habit of reading the Archbishop’s weekly essay.) The content of His Excellency’s essay “The new communities and the ‘New Evangelization‘” has “three simple things today: first, I’ll share some observations on the general state of the Church; second, I’ll talk about the role of new communities and charisms like the Sodalitium in the new evangelization; and third, I’ll offer some thoughts to this group as a brother in consecrated life, based on my own experience as a Capuchin and a bishop. I have a fourth point to mention as well; but it’s really more of a story. I’ll come back to it at the end of my remarks.”

Among the remarks of the archbishop’s are those he talks about the new communities, sometimes called the ecclesial communities. Each group has it’s own gift to give to the life of the Church. Each community answers a need and helps a person to be faithful to the Gospel in a new, vital way: a manner of really living the Good News and recognizing the grace of God right now.

Real Christian discipleship rejects and resists the kind of radical personal license and acquisitiveness that animates a consumerist society. So when the Catholic Church teaches about the dignity of the unborn child, the purpose of human sexuality, economic and immigration justice, the rights of religious communities and believers, and the

nature of marriage and the family – she’s not just “unpopular.” She’s hated as the enemy of individual privacy and personal freedom. And that theme shapes the way the Church is treated in the mass media.

For Catholics in my country to recover their vocation as a Church, they need to be awakened; they need a reason to be zealous again about their faith. They need to hear the witness of people like yourselves who live the Catholic faith with confidence and joy. They need to see their Church growing and fruitful, and young again, instead of constantly retreating and in decline.

This is the value of the new ecclesial communities and movements. They’re alive in Jesus Christ, and their new life and energy spill out into the whole Church.

For those of us who follow/live within the ambit of an ecclesial community whose founder is dead, what we compromise on? What will sacrifice to fit into the culture at large? Will we lose touch with the reasons that was the impulse of the founding of our community? Answer: may be; but I hope not.

Read the essay –it won’t take you long.

Our Lady, Star of the New Evangelization, pray for us.

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.