Two-fold Evangelization Approach

Fifth Sunday of Easter
    How do we help others recognize the important of joining the Catholic Church and living as a disciple?  Does a secret recipe or formula exist?  What program do we need to buy?  Our readings give us a hint of how we can evangelize effectively.
    Really, it comes down to two phrases from our first reading and Gospel, with the second reading an affirmation of what we heard in the first reading.  The two approaches that God gives us through His Sacred Word today are: report what God has done; and love one another.

Statue of St. Paul from St. Peter's Basilica

    The entire Bible lays out what God has done for us, which is why we read it week after week in the Church.  We’re following the pattern set down for us in the Acts of the Apostles where Paul and Barnabas, “called the church together and reported what God had done with them.”  The story of our Church, the one founded by Jesus Christ, stretches back to Judaism and the Book of Genesis, and goes all the way through the Book of Revelation.  This inerrant, privileged communication of God demonstrates what God has done.  He rescued us from the sin and death of the fall of our first parents through the Resurrection of Jesus, and then accompanied that proclamation of new life by signs and wonders.  Whether it’s the first patriarchs from the Book of Genesis, Moses and Joshua, the Judges, the good and bad kings, or the prophets, we hear how God interacts with us and calls us to the life that brings us happiness.  We then hear the life of Christ and how God worked through the second Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity.  And then we hear how the Holy Spirit continued the work of Christ through the early Church and the activity of the Apostles Paul, Peter, James, Jude, and John.  And we close Divine Revelation in the Scriptures with the culmination of how God will make everything right through the Book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse of St. John.  
    The Bible tells a very objective side of how God has worked, but we also make up the larger story of salvation history, that did not end after the death of the last apostle.  And so, part of effective evangelization also entails communicating what God has done in our own life.  No matter who we are, God works in our day-to-day life.  He’s not the God that many of the founding fathers of our country posited, who created the world, but then stands afar off, like a distant clockmaker who put together the clock and watches it wind down.  No, He’s intimately involved in every part of our life, or wants to be, and wants to guide us to live in a way that prepares us for heaven.  
    As the Book of Revelation tells us, God dwells with us as our God, and we are His people.  He works to help us stay on the narrow path to get to the place where tears are wiped away, where death, mourning, wailing, and pain no longer exist, because He has cast away the old life of sin and death, and made all things new.
    But, being a disciple goes beyond simply telling others about God.  To live as a disciple means loving others as God has loved us.  Jesus gave us this command in the Gospel today, and connected the living of this commandment to the glorification of God.  When we love others as God loves us, we glorify God, and God is glorified in us.  
    But love is not some amorphous idea.  Love means willing the good of the other in individual circumstances.  Whether we work in the home, raising children, or work outside the home; whether we are in school or on vacation; whether we try to find the right job or enjoy retirement from our job; God calls us to will the good of the other.  This can seem vague, but think about individual choices we make: if I hit my sibling because he or she annoys me, can I really say that I am willing my sibling’s good?  If I look at another person, whether live or online, with lust and use them for my own gratification, am I really willing that person’s good?  If I drive in a way that endangers my own or another’s life, am I willing the good of my fellow drivers?  If I treat people based on what they can do for me, or how productive they are for society, am I truly willing the good of those people?  The vague becomes pretty concrete when we think about it that way.
    The early Church seemed pretty good at sharing what God had done for His People (generally) and them (individually).  They were convinced that others needed to hear the hope and joy that God does not dwell in some far-off heaven, removed from our everyday experiences, but loves us and wants us to involve Him in our day-to-day life, to increase our joys and bear our sorrows with us.  They did not treat people based upon their social status or economic bracket, but loved even those whom society had cast away or who seemed dispensable.  And in this way, whether in Judea, or Egypt, or Persia, or India, or Rome, or wherever, the Gospel spread.  
    So while there are best practices in evangelization, there is no secret recipe or formula.  There is no program that we can buy that can replace these two essential factors: sharing what God has done for us, and loving others.  Not just to grow our parish, but to help people get on the road to heaven, God calls us to these two aspects of evangelization.  Will we share the Gospel and help others get to heaven?  Will we share what God has done for us, and love them as God has loved us?

Why?

Third Sunday of Easter

    There’s this age that a child reaches, and it varies by child, where the child wants to know why.  And, for some children, that seems to be the main word that comes out of their mouth: why?  “It’s time to go to bed.”  “Why?”  “We’re going to see grandpa and grandma.”  “Why?”  “Eat your vegetables.”  “Why?” 
    Peter in our first reading, and Jesus in the Gospel are answering the question “why”, without a child asking it.  Peter talks to the Jews gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost, and Jesus talks to the disciples on the road to Emmaus.  In both cases, there is confusion about who Jesus is, and why what happened happened.  Jesus, and Peter, following His example, open up how the Old Testament pointed to what happened to God’s Messiah and Son, Jesus.  The Passion, Death, and Resurrection weren’t simply accidents or forces stronger than Jesus to which He had to submit.  The Passion, Death, and Resurrection were all part of God’s plan from the beginning, culminating in new life for all those joined to Jesus and following Him.
    We call this treatment of the overarching theme of salvation history the kerygma, from the Greek word meaning proclamation or preaching.  It is the telling of how God has saved His people.  And it is a message that needs to be heard, not only among the unbaptized and those who do not know Christ, but even among the baptized, even among those who go to church every Sunday.
    Because it’s easy, especially for certain generations or personality types, to do what we’re told is right simply because we’re told it’s the right thing to do, or a person in authority tells us to do it.  But for others, they want to know why.  They want to know the deeper reality behind the rules, or else they will often leave due to their own lack of understanding.
    So do we know the story of salvation?  Could we explain it to someone?  I’m not talking about doing a doctoral dissertation on different aspects of the faith, but being able to explain, as St. Peter says, our reason for hope, and how God was working from creation to the Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost for the salvation of the world, and continues to work today?
    To understand salvation, we have to first believe that we needed to be saved.  And we have to know from what we needed to be saved.  This takes us back to Genesis.  God created Adam and Eve without sin.  They had everything the need, and enjoyed friendship with God.  But then they traded friendship with God for trying to be their own gods on their own terms, and sin entered the world.  A rupture was created between God and humanity, a rupture which we could not heal ourselves. 
    From that point on, every person needed a savior.  No matter how good a person could be (think Abraham, Moses, and David), they could never be “good enough” to earn heaven.  But God did not abandon His people.  He was helping them to learn how to be like God on His terms, not on their own.  God gave the law through Moses as an instructor, to help form virtues in each person, and to encourage them to say no to sin and yes to God.  But even though some approached following the entire law, no one did it perfectly, as God’s own people, the Israelites, would often wander away from His rule, because they thought they were doing fine on their own.  The prophets would call them back, but people generally ignored the prophets.  So God allowed the consequences of their sinful actions to fall upon them, which, more often than not, made the people realize that they had abandoned God, and returned to Him. 
    God’s preparation of His people culminated in sending His Son, Jesus, who would not just teach a new law, but would, because He is truly God and truly man, be able to repair the sin of Adam and Eve, and reconcile God back to Himself, and open heaven, a paradise even better than the Garden of Eden.  In God’s mysterious plan, our rejection of God the Son became part of the way that we were saved and that heaven was opened.  Jesus took upon Himself our punishment for sin (death), but conquered sin and death, which victory was proven in His Resurrection.  After the Resurrection Jesus, especially through His Church after He ascended into heaven, calls people to be joined to Him to receive the gift of eternal salvation by saying yes to God to the best of our ability each day.  Fr. John Riccardo, a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit, summarizes the kerygma by putting it into 4 words: created; captured; rescued; response.  That’s it.  That’s the basic of salvation history. 
    We probably knew parts of it, if not all of it.  But now our challenge is not only to make sure that we do follow Christ throughout our life, but also that we help others to recognize the basics of salvation, because they need it, or need to be reminded of it.  And without knowing it, others, or maybe even we ourselves, are more at risk for walking away from the gift of salvation that Jesus offers us. 
    Being Catholic is not just about following the rules, but is about doing those things because of our relationship with Christ.  Others want to know: why should I have a relationship with Christ?  Can we now share with them the answer?
 

The Hard Way

 Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–At the Vigil Mass

When I was a freshman in high school I had a science class.  I like science, in general, but I’m not good at science.  One of our final projects in the class was to make a car from a mousetrap and have it travel 3 feet or so.  We could use anything we wanted to, as long it didn’t include a motor.  All we were given were the mousetrap and four plastic wheels.  I had seen someone else use CDs for wheels, and though that was a good idea.  Besides, what else would I do with all those AOL CDs that we got in the mail each month?  Try as I might, I could not get it to go forward.  I was left with simply pulling the arm of the trap back, and quickly releasing, trying to get enough forward momentum from my arm releasing it quickly.  It didn’t work.  When it came time for us to demonstrate what we had done, I watched my classmates and saw their cars.  They used strings or rubber bands attached to the arm of the trap, which were connected to the axels of the wheels, which, when the arm was released, propelled the mousetrap car forward.  It seemed so obvious, and yet it hadn’t occurred to me at all.  I certainly hadn’t found the easiest way to do things.  In fact, I have a special gift for often missing the easiest way, and finding the hardest way to do something.
    It may seem like God also chooses to do things the most difficult way.  St. Paul gives the basics of the Gospel as he is preaching in the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia, which we heard in our second readings.  God chose a people, is where St. Paul starts.  The story would have been familiar to the Jews.  But in case it’s not as familiar to us, let’s make sure we know that the people God chose were not a strong nation, or the best warriors, or the smartest.  No, God chose a family, Abram and Sarai, who were very old, had no children, and lived in modern-day Iraq, and told them to go to the land of Canaan.  That family, starting with the miracle child, Isaac, slowly grows into a small household, who sell one of the brothers into slavery, and then they have to beg from that brother for food during a famine.  
    The family makes its way to Egypt, lives comfortably there for a while, before Pharaoh gets nervous about their fecundity, and enslaves them.  God sends them Moses to free them from slavery, but this people, this nation now, always seems to think life was better in Egypt as slaves as God tries to give them Canaan and freedom.  God promises them the land and peace as long as they follow Him, but they can’t do it for even one generation.  So they struggle with the surrounding nations, until they beg God for a king, even though God tells them they have a king: Him; they don’t need another.  But they whine some more, and God gives them what they want.  First comes Saul, who is pretty bad at following God, and then David, who is much better at following God, except when he’s murdering to cover-up his adulterous relationship.  Still, David is mostly for God, which is good, because he’s the last king like that.  
    The people, throughout the centuries, wander away from God, get in trouble, cry out to God, and then God saves them, only for the people to get comfortable again, and turn away from God.  Then God sends John the Baptist to prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus.
    One would think that the Messiah, God’s own co-eternal Son, would have things easier.  Instead, His mother is almost divorced by His foster-father; He has to make numerous trips, first in the womb, then as an infant, then as a young boy.  Jesus’ foster-father, Joseph, dies before Jesus reaches the age of thirty, and then Jesus preaches God’s message, first welcomed with open arms, but eventually rejected by his followers, betrayed by one of his closest friends, and then dies on the cross, abandoned by almost everyone except His mother and few others.
    That’s not the easiest way.  As we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate that God took flesh, and so could feel the jostling in the womb on the road to Bethlehem; was cold as he was delivered in a cave, because no inns had room.  Jesus, the eternal God, could be hungry and thirsty, could stink from soiling his diapers, and could feel the emotional struggle of rejection as He grew up, similar to everyone else in appearance, but clearly very different from his neighborhood friends.  
    God didn’t choose the easiest way to save us; but He chose the best way.  He entered into our forsakenness, our desolation, so that He could change us into His Delight and His Espoused.  It was not clean and easy, but neither was humanity.  Whether it’s building mousetraps or trying to live as disciples of Jesus, we seem to choose the harder, not smarter, way.  But God loves us enough to enter into that messiness so that, by His grace, we can clean up.  
    What we celebrate at Christmas is that God didn’t take the easy way out.  He could have simply willed to save us, but instead He sent His only-begotten Son to become like us in all ways but sin.  He took on our messy history, the saints and the sinners, and made it His own history.  God became man, so that man could become God, to paraphrase St. Athanasius.  
    This Christmas is hard, no doubt about it.  But the Good News is that God is here, and He understands our challenges, our difficulties, probably better than we do ourselves.  But God is still working to save us, no matter how hard, how difficult.  And that love, that dedication to us and to our eternal happiness that humbled itself to become like us in all things but sin, is definitely worth celebrating, and is something that not even COVID-19 can take away.  O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

One of my major complaints about movies today is that Hollywood no longer knows how to tell a new story.  Many of the movies that have come out recently are either telling a story that’s already been told (like in a comic book), or continuing with a story that was told earlier (like the new Star Wars movies).  I was recently chastised by an older friend who was appalled both that I liked the new “True Grit,” and that I had never seen the original “True Grit” with John Wayne.  

But the great things about the movies that stick with us is that they tell a timeless tale.  In any movie that works, there is a decisive event, which leads to a challenge, and that challenge must be overcome to find success.  As I understand literature, the comedies are the stories where the success involves the life of the hero; tragedies are the stories where the success involves the death of the hero.

Human redemption is not simply a story, but it is the basis for all good stories.  Salvation history, writ large, is about the decisive event (the Fall of Adam and Eve), and God reconciling humanity (quite a big challenge because of our stubbornness and our attraction to sin), and God overcoming our challenge by the Death of His Son, Jesus.  Of course, in Jesus, we find both tragedy and comedy, as Jesus both dies, but then lives again.  

In salvation history, redemption is always tied up with death, either literal or metaphorical.  In our first reading, we hear about the redemption of Israel from the slavery of Egypt by the death of the lamb, which also saves them from the death of the first born, the tenth and most drastic plague.  And as Jesus institutes the Eucharist (which St. Paul talks about in the second reading), He gives His apostles a way to connect, not only simply to remember, but to connect to His death, which He anticipates in His early celebration of the Passover.  Perhaps that is why God inspired the Psalmist to say: “Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.”  Psalm 116 seems to see the necessary connection between death and redemption.

The Eucharist is precisely redemption given to us as food and drink.  In the Eucharist, Calvary is given to us under the appearance of bread and wine as Jesus gives His Body and Blood for us.  That is why the Church asks that a crucifix occupy a most central place in the sanctuary: so that we can see and be drawn to the love that we receive on our tongues and in our hands.  

Redemption involves death, but God turns death on its head so that death actually becomes an opportunity for life.  We will see this on Saturday night and Sunday, but we also see it in Jesus washing His apostles’ feet.  Jesus does not literally die when He washes the apostles’ feet, but He dies to elevating oneself and what should be.  He is the Lord, they are they servants, and yet He makes Himself their servant.  He is the Rabbi, they are the disciples, but His teaching involves elevating them, rather than Himself, and then He says that just as He has done, so they should do.

Bishop Boyea washes Fr. Anthony's foot at his
presbyteral ordination

It is easy to pass over (if you’ll pardon the pun) the depth of this event.  Every Holy Thursday we hear about Jesus’ washing His apostles’ feet, about Simon Peter resisting because it’s unbecoming, but then overcompensating by saying he wants his hands and head as well.  But remember this: Jesus would wash the feet of Peter, who would, that same night, deny even knowing Jesus.  Peter would not die to his fear, to his pride, and so death, which is what sin is, would enter his soul.  Judas also had his feet washed, the same Judas who that same night would find the temple guards and lead them to Jesus to betray Him.  Everything in Jesus’ human will must have screamed against treating Judas, the betrayer apostle, the same as John, the beloved apostle.  But He died to that temptation so that He could live in obedience to the Father.

It would be to facile to simply say, “serve others.”  What Jesus did on Holy Thursday, in the washing of the feet and the institution of the Eucharist and the ministerial priesthood, is much stronger than “do good for others.”  Jesus invites us to be a part of the grand story, the grand reality, of our redemption.  But as we are reminded, redemption, our own redemption, involves death.  Perhaps the death of our bodies (there continue to be armies of martyrs crowned with the palm of victory), but more likely the death of our wills, where we let go of what we want, where we let go of what the world says is right, and we hold on to dear life to the will of God, which is often not what we want and not what the world says is right.  

Tonight we have the opportunity not only to remember what Jesus did, not only to recall our redemption in Christ, but also to actually participate in our redemption.  As we receive the Eucharist, we receive Jesus’ death for us.  And if we allow the Eucharist to do the work that it is meant to do, we can participate in the great story of human redemption.

A Tour of Salvation History with the Holy Spirit

Solemnity of Pentecost–At the Vigil

Why?  That is the question in some of your minds right now.  Why so many readings?  This may remind some of you of the Easter Vigil.  But this is the Pentecost Vigil, and it is one of two Masses in the year that the Church gives us the option of an extended Liturgy of the Word, to hear the Word of God and meditate on it to a greater extent than usual.  Just as we prepared for and began our celebration of one of the great mysteries of our faith, the Resurrection of Jesus, with an extended time of prayer, so as we prepare for and begin our celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, we have an extended time of prayer.

The introduction that I said at the beginning of Mass, also reminds us that tonight, as we gather, we are following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Apostles and disciples, who were waiting for Jesus’ promised gift of the Spirit, who would be their Advocate, and help them to proclaim Jesus to the world.  We are invited to relive all of salvation history in a quick glance, and see how God’s promise of the Holy Spirit was from the beginning and continued through the Old Testament, as was the Resurrection of Jesus.

The readings that we heard tonight tell us something about how the Holy Spirit acts in us, as He acted in the Apostles.  The Holy Spirit unifies what sin divided.  In Genesis, sinful humanity tried to get to God on their own terms by building a tower to the heavens.  But it didn’t work.  We cannot get to God on our own terms.  And where our sinful pride led to the multiplication of languages, the Holy Spirit, given at Pentecost, allowed the Gospel, the new of way life and the way to eternal life with the Father, to be proclaimed so that all could understand.  

The Holy Spirit is the source of power, and consecrates the People of God.  In Exodus, we are told of how God’s people are called to be a “‘kingdom of priests, a holy nation.’”  And Mount Sinai gets wrapped in smoke and thunder and fire, with trumpet blasts, so much that the people are afraid to approach God.  Through Baptism, we are made priests, so that we can offer our spiritual sacrifices in union with the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and we are given power from on high.

The Holy Spirit is the giver of life.  If we are just flesh and bone, then we do not have life.  But if the Spirit of God fills us, then we are no longer zombies, no longer the walking dead, but are filled with life.  When God first made us, He breathed His life into us.  We lost that divine life when Adam and Eve disobeyed God.  But through the Holy Spirit, new life is given to us.  Finnian will receive that new life today as he is baptized, so that he is not dead in his sin, but alive in Christ.

The Holy Spirit helps us to understand the things of God.  In the Old Testament, only certain people were able to speak for God, and they were called the prophets.  God would speak to individuals like Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel, and they would pass on what God had said.  But in this new age after the Resurrection, all of God’s people have access to His voice, and have the possibility of seeing with the eyes of God.  All flesh has the possibility to receive the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is a well-spring of life.  We cannot live without water.  But Jesus promises the Holy Spirit will be a river of living water flowing from within us.  It will give us new life so that we can truly live, not for ourselves, but for God.  The Holy Spirit helps us to believe in God the Father and His Son, Jesus, and to quench our thirst for the infinite and the eternal, that can only be satisfied in God.

All of what I mentioned happens today as Finnian is baptized.  Finnian is united to God, receives power and consecration to be a member of God’s priestly people, receives new life, is able to understand the things of God, and is given the ability to live for God.  All of that happened to us when we were baptized.  And it was given to us in a new way in the Sacrament of Confirmation.  Union with God, power and consecration, new life, seeing things through God’s eyes, and living for God are all possible because of the great gift of the Holy Spirit, who continues the work of Jesus.  That work is continued in us.  Will you cooperate with the Holy Spirit in proclaiming the Gospel and living as a disciples of Jesus, as the disciples did after they received the Holy Spirit?  Will you put into action in your life what was foreshadowed in the Old Testament?  Will you receive the Holy Spirit?