Tag: <span>evangelization</span>

May 8, 2021April 22, 2021

Rejection

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The spread of Christianity in the early Church was messy. Paul and Barnabas were in the midst of spreading to the new Gentile Christians the happy news that they didn’t need to be circumcised–but then, Paul orders his new companion Timothy circumcised so as not to upset the Jews. Also, while it is beautiful that they are led very directly and explicitly by the Holy Spirit, that Spirit is not leading them into every place to preach, at least not yet–according to the first reading, He explicitly directs them away from certain places.

Even after Jesus’ Resurrection, even after Pentecost, the world is a dangerous place for Christianity; the pervasive culture is against the Gospel. Then, and now. It is tough to navigate.

As Jesus explains it in today’s gospel: “Because you do not belong to the world,
and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.”

The Church teaches us clearly and explicitly in its social doctrine that as Catholics, we are called to make the world as just a place as we possibly can, bringing the principles of the Gospel into public life.

We can point to times in history when this effort has enjoyed some degree of success. There are kings and queens who have been saints…and in the Western world, we have enjoyed for many years the freedom to practice our faith.

But we should not be surprised, much less discouraged, when the world hates Christianity and all it stands for, and us by extension. This fact sits squarely within God’s providential plan. He knew it, planned for it: That the world by and large would reject Him until the end of time. In the midst of this hatred, though, He calls His chosen ones to Himself.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus for patience and serenity in the midst of this inimical world, which in its majority rejects His teaching. Tell Him you give Him your whole life and your whole self, that He may leverage you to help with the salvation of His chosen ones.

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April 27, 2021April 13, 2021

Safe Sheep

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Jesus’ words in reference to the sheep of His flock in today’s gospel figure high on the list of His reassuring utterances:

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.

At times as we strive to live our Christian life, the words of the now-invisible Jesus can seem so faint, as the roar of the world antagonistic to His word swirls around us, that we can become frightened and perturbed. We can feel like the disciples in the boat on the lake, when Jesus was asleep. At those times we need to call to mind that, even if He is invisible and cannot be heard, Jesus is active in our lives. He is active, not only to inspire us and demand a certain way of life from us, but also to protect us in His grace.

Today’s gospel shows that Jesus is well aware of the dangers threatening His sheep. We don’t need to understand fully those dangers, overpower them, conquer them. All we need do each day is cling to Christ, who assures us that no one can take us out of His protecting hand.

It was with this confidence that the disciples in today’s first reading launched out past Israel into the country of the Greeks, trusting that no pagan influence could take them out of the hands of their Lord. If we have this confidence as well, no fear will keep us from doing God’s will for the salvation of our brothers and sisters.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to give you the same confidence in His protection and guidance that the first apostles enjoyed. Tell Him that you trust Him to lead you actively, even when you do not sense His presence.

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April 14, 2021April 14, 2021

Not Playing for the Crowd

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

After Pentecost, God ardently desired for Jesus’ disciples to spread the word about Him and (as the angel put it in today’s first reading) about “this life” (that is, the Christian life). That is why He sent the angel to usher them out of the jail cell.

If we are truly filled with the Holy Spirit, we will likewise ardently long to share Jesus Christ and Christianity with others.

But, Jesus Himself provides a healthy reality check in the Gospel. Although He says the words looking back on His own coming among the Jewish people, we can imagine the same words stated by Him as glorious Judge at the end of time: “And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.”

Those of us who know and love Jesus, who have decidedly opted for Him, sometimes find it hard to understand how anyone in their right mind could decline His invitation to complete fulfillment and the fullness of life in Him.

We should not expect a different reception from what Jesus Himself encountered, however, when we strive to share the Gospel. Most will prefer darkness to light, because their works are evil. Jesus never expected the majority to welcome Him with open arms. He came for those whom He had chosen, and who would choose Him, and for Him, this is worth it. It should be worth every sacrifice to us as well.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you understand the value of the complete, eternal fulfillment of a single soul. Ask Him to grant you patience with rejection, and renewed determination for evangelization.

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January 25, 2021January 15, 2021

Flash of Light

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

How envious we may feel of the early communities visited by St. Paul, who benefitted from such a holy and zealous apostle, an apostle who spoke the truth fearlessly, without inhibitions.

We can also feel envious of Paul himself, who so fully embodied Jesus’ instruction in today’s gospel: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” Perhaps we wish we were as courageous, direct, and uninhibited as Paul.

But today’s first reading helps us remember that Paul wasn’t always Paul. He was Saul the persecutor of Christians, until Jesus Himself took initiative in his life and completely turned it around. It is Jesus’ action in his life, not his own action, that defines Paul.

We are called to evangelize, to tell the world about Jesus. We can feel like we’re not carrying our weight in this regard, and we may be right. But the solution is not to begin parroting the actions of St. Paul. The solution is to beg Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to take hold of our lives and fill us with the wisdom and boldness to proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Only through their action will we become the sort of apostles we would like to be.

Then, we can pray also that God send more and more apostles like Paul into this jaded world of ours, to bring souls back to Him.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Confidently, without shame, ask Jesus to make you a better apostle. Ask Him to fill you so completely with His joy and with love for Him that you feel truly and deeply compelled to share Him further, like St. Paul.

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October 1, 2020September 11, 2020

Evangelizing from Weakness

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

At first glance, today’s readings go together somewhat awkwardly. We have Job, who has just lost everything, expressing a moving, unconditional trust not only that he will receive good from the hand of God, but that he will receive the ultimate good–that He will see God Himself. The psalm echoes Job’s monumental hope: “I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.”

Then, in the Gospel passage, we see Jesus sending out the seventy-two disciples, two by two, on an exciting mission, where they will exercise His own evangelizing and healing power.

So, let’s put these two passages together. Imagine Jesus entering Job’s life, when he is bereft of everything, and even while Job is struggling and expressing his marvelous virtue of trust, Jesus asks him to launch forth on a mission.

Yet, when we think about it, this is, in fact, the situation of the apostle. While we don’t know much about the seventy-two, we do know that the twelve apostles had left their nets, left everything behind to follow God’s will in their lives. Like Job, they were bereft of everything except God, except Jesus. As for the seventy-two, they are asked to set forth on their mission without money or baggage–without even the bare necessities, and Jesus says He is sending them “as sheep among wolves.”

In our lives, Jesus does not ask us to spread the word about Him from a position of wealth, security, comfort, strength, or even incontrovertible human logic. He asks us to spread the word about Him from a position of neediness, vulnerability, and weakness.

Many hesitate to spread the word about Jesus to others, not because they doubt Jesus, but because they believe that they themselves do not have what it takes. Extreme trust like that of Job is in fact necessary to overcome this hesitancy, trusting not in our own qualities of persuasion, but rather in the direct power Jesus with His grace will exert in the human heart as it hears His message.

Today is the memorial of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. If anyone had an excuse not to evangelize it was she–she was cooped up in a cloister and had access to no one! And yet, because of her deep love for Jesus and desire for others to know Him, and above all her trust in His power, she successfully evangelized through her prayer, to such a degree that Pius XI declared her Patroness of the Missions in 1927.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus in what way He wants you to spread Him to other hearts. If the question is difficult for you, tell Him that you trust not in your own power for persuasion, courage, or good judgement, but rather you trust that He will let you know when and how He wants you to act.

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September 6, 2020August 24, 2020

Prophets

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

We may become frustrated with “the Church”–by which we mean bishops and priests–at times because of their failure to proclaim tough messages. And indeed, today’s first reading warns the prophet that if he does not give the tough message, that is, the message about the need for conversion and the consequences of failing to convert, the prophet himself will be held accountable for the wicked man’s wicked ways.

And, we may rightly think of bishops and priests as today’s prophets, those entrusted with preaching the message of conversion. We may lament that they may appear surrounded by praise and enjoy a relatively care-free life in terms of their own material well-being. They can begin to prioritize sustaining status quo, and the temptation to complacency and “not rocking the boat” can be very real. It can be even more real at times, perhaps, than their own relationship with Christ in contemplative prayer, and their duty before Him to be prophets and (like Him) signs of contradiction.

When such thoughts get us down, we must remember 1) that the prevalence of complacency among leaders has afflicted the Church for all time, and even the people of Israel before Christ; 2) that bishops and priests are human beings with the same strong tendency to sin and mediocrity from which we all suffer, with circumstances that paradoxically make mediocrity even more tempting, and we must pray for them with a merciful heart; and 3) perhaps most importantly, that the prophetic mission does not belong solely to them, but also to you and me.

Every single Christian participates by baptism in the threefold mission and duty of the priest to act as “priest, prophet, and king”–to intercede and offer sacrifice for the Church, proclaim the message of the Gospel (with all its prickliness), and to lead the people of God to Christ.

Do we hold back tough messages that may be precisely what someone needs to hear to convert their hearts to Christ? Do we thereby put our worldly sense of security ahead of the eternal welfare of our neighbor? Are we too concerned about bland peace to provide others with the stimulus that will wake people up from their blithe stupor regarding their eternal destiny?

It is too easy to point the finger at bishops and priests–men who, after all, with all their imperfections, have given their whole lives over to service of the Church at great personal sacrifice–and never once turn the lens on ourselves. Yet we too, as Christians accountable for the prophetic mission of the Church, will be accountable for the wicked deeds of the wicked man, if we have the opportunity to warn him about the path he is on and fail to do so.

In today’s gospel, however, Jesus makes it clear that railing against the wicked from the top of tall buildings just for the sake of doing so has no value. Our aim must not be to check the prophet box, but really to lead others to a full conversion to Christ. This involves appealing to them in private, in words they can understand. We may also say that it involves picking our moment, and tailoring our expression of the message for greatest possible impact and likelihood of receptivity.

Still, we must never allow a false prudence, masking our own attachment to our personal comfort, keep us from words and actions that can lead others to the incomparable joy of a relationship with Jesus Christ–even if those words and actions involve awkwardness or risk to ourselves.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to send you His Holy Spirit to show you clearly when it is time to speak up for Christ. And trust Him to do so. He knows your weakness. He knows your reticence or, perhaps, your lack of tact–whatever it is that makes it difficult for you to be a prophet. And, just as a good father doesn’t give his son a scorpion when he asks for a fish, Jesus will not fail to send us the Holy Spirit to lead us reliably and avoid sins of prophetic omission, if we sincerely ask Him to do so. And, let’s be generous and merciful enough to humbly ask Him to do the same for our beloved bishops and priests.

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