Franciscan at Home

As is well known, at the time of the Second Vatican Council the Church adopted a less critical attitude towards the world. Dialogue appeared to be replacing apologetics. Winning the argument gave way to a sharing of hearts and minds. Although the Council documents make some tough statements about the state of the world the overall impression is that of a Church addressing the world in positive tones. “Let us reason together,” seems to be the main form of address.

But in fact the Church does not teach that the importance of dialogue does away with the fundamental duty of preaching the gospel and seeking conversion. And the recent conclusions of the Synod on New Evangelisation contained clear reaffirmations of the need for a renewed apologetcs and a clear proclamation of the Gospel.

So is it perhaps time to look again at our attitude to the world? And why should it be so important? Well, first of all, few would deny that in the western world there is massive ignorance of Christian truth. Secondly a more upbeat, less self-apologising approach to evangelisation has been emerging in the Church for some time now.

Approximately 5 years ago, while teaching at a Conference on Catechetics, I was approached by an older gentleman who asked me a very simple question: “What is truth and what does it have to do with what we teach?” I responded, simply—“everything, because the ‘what’ you speak of is a ‘Who’—the Person of Jesus Christ’. To this day, I recall leaving that dialogue with a renewed interest in probing the question of truth, in particular, the importance of truth as it relates to catechesis. Five years later, I am still probing in light of the new evangelization, and my studies have me going back to the immensely popular figures of Blessed John Paul II and the Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict XVI, while reflecting into the meaning of Pilate’s inquiry: “what is truth?” helps bring into focus the essence and meaning of truth; what is at the heart of what we are contemplating. He states: “In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history (Christ as the Truth). Truth is outwardly powerless in the world…Yet, in His very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power”.[ii] For Pope Benedict XVI, the cross is the definitive sign of truth, because it is the definitive sign of God’s powerlessness, which ‘again and again’ produces power.

Interestingly, it was on his first Apostolic Pilgrimage to Poland that John Paul II used the phrase “new evangelization” for the first time during his pontificate. On that summer day in Mogila, Poland, John Paul II celebrated Mass at the Shrine of the Holy Cross. While reflecting upon the meaning of the cross in Polish history, in particular at the turn of the second millennium, he stated: “Where the cross is raised, there is the sign that evangelization has begun...With it we were given a sign that on the threshold of the new millennium, in these new times, these new conditions of life, the Gospel is again being proclaimed. A new evangelization has begun, as if it were a new proclamation, even if in reality it is the same as ever. The Cross stands high over the revolving world”.[iii] In these words, John Paul II has a challenge to all the Christian faithful setting out to respond to the Church’s call to proclaim the truth in the spirit of the new evangelization: embrace the cross as the epicenter to the new evangelization.

So we have this call ‘to commit to reflect upon the meaning of truth’ along with this obligation to see the cross as a principle constituent to the new evangelization and profound revelation of truth. What does all of this mean for us as Catholics and catechists? We must seek the proper attitude that is necessary for these interlocking towers of the cross and the truth to take root in our heart. So where are we to turn? The first beatitude.

At the recent Synod in Rome on New Evangelisation and the Transmission of the Christian Faith, the Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity made this Intervention, which illustrates how the work of love united to an exposure to the Christian faith is the first step of evangelization.

Your Holiness, Dear Synod Fathers, my dear fathers, brothers and sisters,

Our Mother Teresa is known for the work done for the poor. Not all are immediately aware of the aim of our work that is ‘to bring souls to God and God to souls’. When asked by the Minister of Social Work about the difference between his work and her work, she responded: ‘You do it for something, we do it for Someone’.

‘To evangelize or to be evangelized, that is the question.’ Pope Benedict XVI communicates to us in his Apostolic Letter on the Year of Faith that ‘people are able to evangelize only when they have been evangelized.’ Further we hear from Blessed John Paul II in Christifideles Laici (CL), his Apostolic Exhortation on the Laity, that the lay faithful are ‘personally called by the Lord from whom they receive a mission on behalf of the Church and the world.’ As lay faithful during this Year of Faith, each one of us is given a mission. It is the mission of the Church: to evangelize. Before we can evangelize, however, we first must be evangelized ourselves.

At our reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation, the Bishop in attendance laid his hands on us and said, ‘Let us pray to our Father that he will pour out the Holy Spirit to strengthen his sons and daughters with his gifts and anoint them to be more like Christ the Son of God.’ We were given specific gifts that are to be used on our mission. We are not merely laborers who work in the vineyard but we ourselves are a part of the vineyard (CL, 8). A vineyard is comprised of nothing more than a vine with its branches. If Jesus is the vine and we the branches, then who we specifically are as people is the vineyard. We must take a look at the vineyard this Year of Faith to see how much fruit is being born within it.

And Preparing for the Baptism of the Child

Archbishop Kurtz explains how "The Blessing of the Child in the Womb,” approved on 8 December 2011 by the Congregation for Divine Worship for use in the United States of America, can be a pastoral moment of first evangelization of the child and of new evangelization of the family.

"The Blessing of the Child in the Womb” was approved on 8 December 2011 by the Congregation for Divine Worship for use in the United States of America. This blessing is a pastoral moment of first evangelization of the child and new evangelization of the family. Warmly extending the love of Christ to families as they prepare for the birth of their child, this sacred gesture is both a positive and hope-filled way to announce to society the great gift of human life as well as a gracious invitation for the parents to begin steps for the baptism of their child, once born.

In this address given to the recent Synod for the New Evangelization and the Transmission of the Christian Faith, Pedro Ossandón, Auxiliary Bishop of Chile, calls us to a new awakening of our awareness of the Holy Spirit working in our own lives and in the Church for the handing on of the Faith. This, he says, is the key to the new evangelisation.

Our beloved Blessed John Paul II wrote appreciatively of the gift of the Second Vatican Council, fruit of the action of the Spirit, of our indebtedness to this Council, and of the necessary examination of conscience we must undertake concerning its reception. He also left us a vision: “To make the Church the home and the school of communion: this is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God’s plan and respond to the world’s deepest yearnings.”[i] The Pope here was inviting us to a new spirituality. This, I believe, is the challenge of the present moment: to rebuild and to reignite our communities throughout the world in the life of the Holy Spirit in a way that lays solid foundations for the New Evangelisation.

In baptism the Holy Spirit calls us to sanctity[ii]. He makes His dwelling in our hearts, not as a mere place of passive residence, but as the best place from which to move us to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. So we are to recognise the Spirit as the Teacher of the interior life and the Teacher of evangelisation who helps us discover and walk the journey of faith, both personally and as the Church of God.[iii] From within ourselves, therefore, through the indwelling of the holy Spirit, should spring that mystical life that every Christian ought to cultivate in order to give, in the very heart of society, an eloquent testimony of his faith, shining like a light in the midst of the world.

In this article, Léonie and Stratford Caldecott share their convictions about evangelization, drawn from many years of experience in Catholic cultural and faith renewal.

In Italy and other places there is a Slow Food movement, and there are designated “Slow Cities”. You can read on Wikipedia about Slow Fashion, Slow Money, Slow Parenting, and even a World Institute of Slowness. The Slow Movement believes that quality of life and thus real wealth comes from slowness, care, and contemplation, rather than non-stop activity and frenetic speed. We believe in Slow Evangelization.

Newman’s Spring

2012 was the 160th anniversary of John Henry Newman’s prophetic sermon, “The Second Spring”, marking a turning point in the history of Christianity in these islands – the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the beginnings of a Catholic revival that went on to produce Christopher Dawson, G.K. Chesterton, and a whole host of poets, novelists, and apologists, many of them published by Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward.

It is worth recalling that when Newman gave the Second Spring sermon at St Mary’s College in Birmingham, he was still only 51 years old, and a relatively recent Catholic. It was only two weeks after the ending of the humiliating Achilli trial, which had brought to the surface much anti-Catholic feeling around the country. The newly reconstituted Synod of Bishops was meeting for the first time, in a neo-Gothic seminary designed by Augustus Welby Pugin. Newman used his platform at the geographical centre of England and at the dawn of a new historical epoch to prophesy a resurgence of Catholic culture – one that would affect not just intellectuals but the whole population, through the building of churches and schools and the re-entry of Roman Catholics into the political, economic, and social life of the nation. “O Mary, my hope, O Mother undefiled, fulfill to us the promise of this Spring.”

One of the best-known encapsulations of the new evangelisation is the phrase used by Blessed John Paul II in 1983 who spoke of the need “not of re-evangelisation, but rather of a new evangelisation; new in its ardour, methods and expression”. The call is both evocative and challenging, and it is clearly calling for a creative response from the Church on a number of levels.

In this editorial I would like to look just at the first of these elements, the call to discover a “new ardour”. It is the first point in John Paul’s list and it clearly addresses the will and the need for a renewal of love. “New ardour” calls to mind, perhaps, the words that the Lord speaks against the Church in Ephesus: ‘I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first.’ (Rev 2:4) The Church in Ephesus possessed many virtues (“I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance”), but the transmission of the Christian faith requires more than this. It needs more than our good works and more than a capacity to bear hardship and withstand difficulties. All of this is absolutely necessary, but it does not capture the essence of the Christian faith, which is to receive and respond gladly to the overwhelming love of the Father, manifested in the Son and proved by the gift of his life and death for us. Without this as the clear centre of our vision we “fall back into fear” and a “spirit of slavery”, as St Paul put it in his Letter to the Romans (8:15). But when we are possessed by a new ardour we cry out in joy, through the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts, “Abba! Father!”.

In this article, Jared Staudt explains and explores the surprising teaching of Blessed John Paul II that culture stands at the center of the new evangelization.

The movement toward a New Evangelization, first enunciated by Bl. Pope John Paul II, is picking up steam in the Church. This is evidenced by the recent creation of a new dicastery in the Roman Curia dedicated to the promotion of the New Evangelization and the Synod of Bishops dedicated to this topic, which met in the fall of 2012. The New Evangelization has become a buzz word as of late for clergy and laity alike. Since John Paul laid out the vision for the New Evangelization, it is helpful to continue to turn to his teaching as a guide for understanding and implementing this great initiative. What may be surprising is that John Paul thought that culture was at the center of the New Evangelization. Shortly after becoming Pope he created the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization and in his regular addresses to this Council, he laid out a vision for culture’s central role in the New Evangelization. I will draw upon these addresses and other writings to elucidate John Paul’s teaching on culture in the New Evangelization.

Church teaching helps us to see how to personally appropriate the Scriptures as living sources for our lives and for our catechesis.

John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Catechesi Tradendae (CT) begins by underscoring the christocentricity of catechesis. Since a Person, the Person of the Lord, is at the heart of catechesis, then the “primary and essential object of catechesis is… ‘the mystery of Christ.’” Moreover, this means that “the aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ: only he can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity” (CT §5).

A deeper understanding of the mystery of Christ is tied significantly to the Word of God, as it is articulated in Scripture and Tradition. The catechumen and catechesis itself are to be “impregnated” with the word of Scripture (CT §§20, 27).[i] The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) reinforces and deepens these points by teaching that “Christ … is the Father’s one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word…[in whom] he has said everything” (CCC §65) and that “through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely” (CCC §102).[ii]

Given the correlation between the living Word of God, Christ, and the Scriptures, it is not uncommon for catechumens and catechists to tell of reading or hearing Scripture in a way that speaks directly to their hearts and the circumstances of their lives. Those who have received this grace testify to the intense sense of meaning that is found in the personal appropriation of Scripture that now fills, spiritually feeds, and directs their lives. The Scriptures are for them no “dead letter” (CCC §111; cf. 2 Cor 3:6) but the living word of God (Hebrews 4:12).

As wonderful as this experience is, it raises two questions. First, how may we explain theologically the experience of personal appropriation of Scripture for one’s life? Second, how is such an interpretation of Scripture deeply personal and yet not private so as not to succumb to the literalism of biblical fundamentalism?