The Great Jubilee and the New Evangelization

The preparations for the celebration of the Year 2000 outlined in the last two columns should help to make us an evangelizing people. A new millennium calls for a new evangelization; the 2000th anniversary of Jesus’ birth requires our finding a new way to tell the world who he is. But there’s an unfilled gap in our--or, at least, in my--thinking about evangelizing. We talk about Jesus at prayer, and we talk about values in society. We aren’t very good at talking about Jesus in society. In fact, we’re often not very good at talking about Jesus among ourselves, in the Church. Listening to all the conversations about organizing and financing and planning that I’m party to, I sometimes wonder if the Archdiocese of Chicago would be much different if Jesus had not risen from the dead. What exactly would change in our charities, our schools, the pastoral center, our rectories? Would the agenda be greatly different, would our priorities shift, our conversation change? Do we talk too little about Jesus and too much about ourselves?

A few decades ago, a book was published with the comical but cynical title: How to Become a Bishop without being Religious. It was a spoof on “church management”, on all the ways that pastors, and lay people as well, can be absorbed in tasks that start with religious motivation and are designed to support the mission of the Church but which take on a life of their own and get transformed into something that no longer “speaks” of Jesus. The problem is that all the tasks and the programs and the support systems seem necessary and are organized and planned and financed by really good people. Jesus is certainly pleased with our hard work. But we talk about those we love; and all of us have to learn new ways to speak of Jesus in a new evangelization.

In the past few weeks, several bishops have died who devoted a lot of time to talking to and about Jesus. Their lives would not have been possible, would have made no sense, if Jesus had not risen from the dead. Reflecting on their lives and ministry became a kind of examination of conscience for me, although I still haven’t figured out how to change my schedule to become a bit more like them.

I first met Dom Helder Camara, the retired Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, in l973, when I was visiting the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in northeastern Brazil. He lived in a small room attached to the back of a tiny church in one of the poorest quarters of Recife. He was a diminutive man, very welcoming, very busy without giving the impression that he was hurried. He had his day clearly outlined in his mind, but he went through it without a great deal of fuss and without much of a support staff. He was known to the poor of the city as a father to them; he was disliked by many and was aware that he made many mistakes. One of his mistakes, which he came to recognize later in his life, was his conviction that Marxist economic theory was “scientific”. He once even gave a talk about that here at the University of Chicago. But if his head wasn’t always on target (and whose is?), his heart was constantly with the Lord and therefore with the poor. He changed often in his lifetime--from a smart and rather comfortable churchman who thought, in the ‘30’s, that fascism was the wave of the future and would help the poor, to an ecclesiastical official who organized the Brazilian bishops’ conference, to a pastor horrified at the military takeover of his country, to an archbishop harassed by the police, to a sick and aging man who had learned to live with the Lord and accept what Cardinal Bernardin, in his last days, called “the gift of peace”. Some of his difficulties were self-inflicted, as they are for all of us; but all of his life was transparently given to Christ.

My first encounter with Bishop Edward O’Rourke, the retired Bishop of Peoria, was also in l973, when I went to see him about the work of the Oblates in the Peoria diocese. Usually conversations with bishops were about ministries and works; Bishop O’Rourke asked me, instead, how the Oblates were living their vow of poverty. He talked for an hour about the poor and about Jesus. He talked about what he loved. His successor, Bishop John Myers, quoted in his funeral homily Bishop O’Rourke’s remarks at his own episcopal ordination: “Let us extend comfort to all who are lonely and broken-hearted or in pain. We must strive to reconcile those who are alienated and restore economic security and dignity to those who are poor.” Bishop O’Rourke was, it seems, often impatient--with himself, with others and sometimes with God. In the way he lived, however, everyone could know that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Our own Bishop Alfred Abramowicz left a big hole in the Archdiocese and the world and in all our lives when he went to the Lord a few weeks ago. His determination was legendary; and it was a determination born of faith. His concern for the poor of Poland, for the freedom of those he loved, for the faith of the Poles of Chicago and for the Church he served so faithfully can focus our own lives if we let his faith shape ours. He confirmed most of the South Side, we were reminded at his funeral. He called into others’ lives the Spirit that filled his own. He was a witness to Jesus’ resurrection, and his prayers can help us now to become an evangelizing church.

God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.
Archbishop of Chicago

 

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